Strontium Bitchings

Recent genre TV

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:34:53 GMT

Recent genre stuff I've been watching on the telly...

MISFITS: Discovered this almost by accident on E4. Loved the first episode. Great performances, memorable characters, interesting premise. Not entirely sure what the hell the ‘superpower’ the black girl has got is supposed to be, but I shall be watching more of this.

FLASH FORWARD: Is okay, although I think I am missing a fair bit from not having seen the pilot episode. Most of the characters are interesting, though some of the soap opera stuff is beginning to pall. I’m gaming on Mondays, so I’ve been watching the Friday repeat. Or I was until C5 decided in their wisdom to move it from 22.00 to 23.00. I was just too tired to bother this week.

TRUE BLOOD: I never would have said I was prudish, but if they cram any more shagging and masturbation into True Blood, I may have to adopt it as a new mindset and change my name to Mary Whitehouse. It reminds me of reading Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series – you are happily following the story then think "Oh god they’re shagging AGAIN! Can we skip a bit and get back to the plot please?" However, as the plot in True Blood isn’t that gripping and I only actually like one of the characters (Tera) I’m really only watching it because it’s on immediately before Generation Kill. Since that ends next week, my watching of True Blood will likely also cease. C4 are also packing the adverts in like there's no tomorrow. It takes from 22.00 to 00.40 to screen one episode of True Blood and one of Generation Kill. Thank the Lord for the mute button!

DEFYING GRAVITY: Exploring the solar system = interesting. Dealing with breakdowns and crises on the ship = interesting. Mysterious alien stuff = potentially interesting if they’d just pick up the pace a bit. Endless soap opera flashbacks about who had a relationship with who back during astronaut training = dull beyond belief. All the characters are bland and identikit. The only one who stands out is the Indian guy who was bumped from the mission due to Mysterious Alien Stuff Yet To Be Revealed, and he doesn’t get much screen time any more. I also note that whilst the blokes get to have flashbacks about all aspects of human existence - from manly heroic stuff on a disastrous mission to Mars, to drunken juvenile antics in a lap-dancing bar, to techy, geeky bonding stuff - the women get to flashback to interminable conversations about whether one of them should have an abortion. I say interminable because (a) the audience already know she DID have one, so there is no tension at all in these scenes, and (b) we’ve had to suffer several of these should I/shouldn't I conversations.

I’m sure the writers THINK they are giving said female character a trauma to angst about, the way several of the male characters angst about traumas in their past. But they are either too gutless or too witless to let her actually angst about The Actual Event, the ways the guys do. The guy who has hideous burns has a scene where you see the warzone and the explosion where he got them. The guy who had to make the decision to abandon crewmembers to their deaths gets to have nightmares about it. The woman who had the abortion flashbacks to conversations before it happened and hallucinates a baby crying months after it happens, so gets a tenth of the emotional impact of the blokes' scenes. The hallucinations are either (a) ‘cos she’s gone bonkers, or (b) because the Mysterious Alien Stuff has taken an anti-abortion stance. I’ll never find out which as I’ve given up on the series.

So much for Lifelong Learning...

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:40:01 GMT

A friend at work mentioned the other days that he had started an evening course, and I thought "Hang on. I haven't had the Continuing Education prospectus from the Uni yet. Maybe its got lost in a postal strike..." So I went onto their website - and lo and behold, the Curse of Accreditation has finally hammered the last nail into the coffin of learning for the the love of learning.

There is no prospectus, because there are no courses. There are no courses because the government has withdrawn all funding for 'Level 0 courses' (that's the just for interest ones, the beginner level ones, and the I'd like to do a degree but I have to do the basics first ones. Also, they won't subsidise anyone who already has a qualification so, for instance, should me (a zoologist), Liz (a geologist) and Richard (a GP) decided to do today the part-time archaeology course that we did several years ago, then the Archaeology Dept would get no subsidy for teaching us.

From this I conclude that the government's policy on Lifelong Learning is:
a) Did we say lifelong? We were talking about the lifespan of a hamster, not of a human being.
b) Want to learn for the love of it? Tough luck.
c) Want to learn so that you can switch careers? Tough luck if you were foolish enough to get a qualification in your first career.
d) Want to learn? You'd better have oodles of dosh, because everything's about to get much more expensive... Oh no, wait a moment, it got so expensive so fast the courses aren't running at all.
e) All of the above.

Here is the University of Bristol Art's Faculty's explanation of the situation and here is a declaration by some of the Science Depts.

Twilight 2013 - or, Why are Americans Obsessed by the Monarchy?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:41:30 GMT

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have bought the Twilight 2013 RPG. I love post apocalypse games, and have been playing, running and buying them since way back in the 1980s when Gamma World and Aftermath were on the go. I never played Twilight 2000 when it originally came out, but I got it when they reprinted it 5 or 6 years ago, and ran it then. It was a bit of a culture shock to realise how much of the mentality and ethos of the game was of my generation (raised on Cold War politics and the We’re All Gonna Die When The Nukes Fall mindset) and was alien to the students that were at Gamesoc when I ran it. For instance, there was this conversation:

ME: Here is a list of the countries in the Warsaw Pact.
STUDENT: What’s the Warsaw Pact?
ME: Eeeeek! You’re all so young!

So anyway, it was pretty much a given that I would eventually succumb and buy Twilight 2013, which is the updated version, with a new history that leads to the nukes flying in 2011 instead of 1996. Over the last week or so I have been reading my way though the background and rules, and I’m not entirely convinced that it is an improvement on the 80s game. Mainly because of the background.

That's not to say that there aren’t good points. Character generation is very, very nice. I haven’t read much of the actual system yet, and it looks crunchy, but not to the extent of the original, which can only be a good thing. (There were times in the original combat system where a flow chart and a calculator were essential, and hiring a mathematician could be handy). The trouble is the new background. Instead of some tightly detailed stuff about one or two areas of the world (Eastern Europe and the USA in the old version) it tries to encompass the whole world and ends up being a bit wishy-washy as a result. In the old game, if I wanted to set the game in Poland, there was more info than I knew what to do with, but if I set it in Peru or Iceland, I would have to write all the background myself. In the new game Poland, Peru, Iceland or any other country get a paragraph here and there, but I’d STILL have to do buckets of background writing before I had a campaign setting.

There are nuggets here and there that make me squee with plot possibilities – such as the EMP from a nuke over Paris having effects that could be felt as far away as Ireland and Denmark – but then those Gee this is cool thoughts will be squished by some Bonekickers level of bonkers politics. For example, here is a quote:

"With the rest of the Royal line devastated [snip], the Earl of Ulster, previously 20th in line of succession is crowned King. Unchallenged, the Earl ascends to the throne of Britain, taking the title King Alexander IV."

Some of you are no doubt blinking in surprise at this, and wondering when Alexanders 1 through 3 held the throne. The answer is in Scotland in the 12th and 13th century. So, you see, he’s King Alexander the IV of Scotland...

Only he’s not, because that IV is the single and only reference to Scotland in the background. The text goes England, England, England, England, England, Britain, England, England, England, UK, England, England, England, Wales, Cornwall (more of that later), England, UK, England, England, England. In the fine tradition of sports commentators everywhere, England is synonymous with United Kingdom, and is a big sign of the authors’ not having a clue.

And so I present the second piece of evidence, M’lud – back to King Alexander IV for another quote: "His first act as Sovereign is to take control of the Armed Forces, and via a swift coup coupled with Royal perogative, he dissolves what is left of Parliament, replacing the coalition government with a new advisory body. In doing so, he implements a plan to return Britain to an absolute monarchy..." My apologies to anyone drinking while they read that last bit, as they have probably sprayed coffee all over their screen.

As an aside, neil_exile has a gamer mate called Alexander who is roughly 20th in line to the throne. neil_exile reliably informs me that, should he inherit, his friend is unlikely to declare an absolute monarchy, but if there is any way he could convince the British Armed Forces to switch back to using cavalry, he’d be well up for it.

Anyway, as those of you who have now finished cleaning your screens of hot beverages have doubtless realised, this absolute monarchy does not go unopposed. No indeed. For here is what the rulebook says on the matter: The remaining governments of Wales and Cornwall state that they will not follow the dictates of the King... [snip] ...and declare their secession from the United Kingdom in order to become independent nations focused on their own survival. Wales and Cornwall form a joint defence pact against the Royal Armed Forces.

Yes, you did read that right. The government of Cornwall. Boy, the Cornish National Party must have been busy of late. I’m surprised it didn’t make the news. And to think that when the book was written, Cornwall hadn’t even been amalgamated into a Unitary Authority. It’s a prophecy, I tell you! A prophecy! The Cornish shall rise up and defeat the evil plan of Alexander IV to have cavalry charges for no reason other than they look cool...!

All this makes me mistrust the rest of the background, rather. I know next to nothing about Bolivia or the Czech Republic, for instance, so what if those bits of background contain the same level of Not Getting It as does Alexander IV King of England, England, England, England, England?

Let’s hope the game system rocks, 'cos otherwise there’s not much of actual use in the book.

Browncoat Ceilidh and Post-apocalypse Housewives

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:49:04 GMT

I was at the Browncoat Ceilidh and Mini-Con here in Brizzol yesterday, which was very entertaining, even if the ceilidh bit was cancelled due to lack of appropriate music. Or musicians. I wasn't quite clear on that.

Anyway, some fun panels, a very nice GoH speech about types of hard SF by Alastair Reynolds, and a chance to chat to various people that I hadn't seen for aeons, as well as folk I'd never met before. Here's hoping that it becomes an annual event.

Meanwhile, in other news... I finally gave up waiting for the Twilight 2013 RPG to ever turn up in a games shop and ordered it sight unseen over t'interweb. I'm having a read through it now and it looks (thankfully) far, far less crunchy than the first edition (Twilight 2000) and has opened up character generation so that the players don't have to be military characters if they don't want to be.

That does make for more realism, but there is the potential for a certain amount of silliness creeping in. I could, for instance generate an accurate RPG character to represent The Cutoid (a.k.a. the hairy brother) - by taking the Student lifepath, followed by four repeats of the Slacker lifepath...! I'm not sure how useful a character that would be in roleplaying terms!

I'm also intrigued by the Homemaker lifepath. It's for housewives, househusbands or retired people. The intriguing bit is that you can buy the following skills as part of it - Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Deception and Intimidation. Agriculture I suppose you could pass off as doing a bit of gardening, and Animal Husbandry as looking after endless goldfish and hamsters for your kids, but I wouldn't expect anyone to develop great animal breeding skills doing the latter.

Deception, however, seems a bit off as a parental skill! Especially since this is the skill for telling lies, not the one for detecting your children's fibs. Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy don't quite seem to cover it. Meanwhile, Intimidation is defined in the rules as "gaining social dominance and eliciting compliance through implicit and explicit threats". Parents must be scary people in the world of Twilight 2013!

Is it just me, or...?

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:32:56 GMT

The rest of the world apparently feels different to me about flowers and birds and food. Or, to be more precise, floral scents, birdsong and blisteringly hot food.

I loathe floral scents. I find the vast majority of them sickly and unappealing, which mean that most perfumes and air-fresheners make me go "bleugh!", rather than carol out "Oh how delightful!". In fact, perfumes tend to hit the back of my throat in a horrible astringent way that just boggles me that anyone can find them pleasant. A brief survey of all the scented candles around my house will reveal that they smell of food - cinamon, vanilla, maple syrup - and not of flowers. Yuck.

Birdsong just IS. It's not beautiful, it's not aesthetically pleasing. Nor is it unpleasant or painful. It is just tweety and twittery noises with no appeal to me. The cooing of a pigeon is far more interesting than the twittering of a skylark or nightingale. I've been watching footage where Sir David Attenborough waxes lyrical about the beauty of a nightingale's song. Sorry, but I just don't get it.

Food is meant to be tasted and enjoyed. So why do people like my mother (and many restaurants) insist on serving it at a temperature where the only sensation upon putting it in your mouth is pain? If the food is too hot for you to stick your fingers in - and fingers, after all, have nice tough skin - then it is too hot to put anywhere near delicate things like your tongue! I've lost count of the number of times that I've taken the skin off the roof of my mouth, or spent the whole of the next day guzzling water to soothe a scorched tongue. Do other people have cast iron mouths or something?

Accidental death?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:33:39 GMT

I have received some bumph from the bank, trying to tempt me to take out accidental death insurance. The offer is intriguing, but possibly not for the reasons they were hoping it was!

For instance, my cover apparently would include "winter sports, childbirth... and members of the armed forces". Doubtless they intend to mean that members of the armed forces can take out the insurance, but they way they phrase it makes them sound like a cause of death. Poor pregnant Matilda, she went on a snowboarding holiday and was shot by the SAS on mountain survival training..."

I'm also wondering what their definition of accidental death is, because it apparently happens to people over 70 more than it happens to the rest of us (they get less cover). But it doesn't happen to them while they are travelling on public transport, as the leaflet carefully stipulates they get the same amount of cover for that.

Perhaps members of the armed forces don't travel by bus? :-)

To the self-absorbed 4x4 driver who almost ran me over this morning

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:00:44 GMT

Some words of advice:
1. DON'T park at bus stops. It forces the bus to stop away from the kerb and to disgorge its passengers into the road.
2. If you absolutely must park at a bus stop and force a bus to halt in the road, then do NOT pull away from the bus stop by first REVERSING two metres.
3. When reversing – whether at a bus stop or in any other situation – then USE YOUR BLOODY REAR VIEW MIRROR. It's not just there to check your make-up in, dear.

A side note on number 3 – I was not the first passenger off the bus, so the not-checking-the-mirror was obviously a Not At All situation, not an I Glanced Before You Stepped Off situation. Nor was I the last. So no behaviour by the large, obvious, twelve metre long, white, pink and purple bus could have given you cause to believe that it was finished with disembarking passengers.

And whatever tearing hurry you were in (so that you didn't feel the need to check your rear view mirror) did you a fat lot of good, because I overtook you – on foot – about ten metres from the bus stop, where you were stuck at the lights. You didn't notice me glaring or gesticulating at you. Possibly because you were busy talking to yourself. Or singing along to the radio. Or – dare I suggest it – gabbling away on your hands-free mobile phone?

Arsehole.

Fortunately for you, my reflexes were on tip top condition this morning, and I dodged. Also fortunately for you, I didn't think of throwing my rucksac at your car until you'd pulled out of throwing range.

The Kraken Wakes

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:40:42 GMT

The BBC has recently been repeating their 80s version of Day of the Triffids, which probably means that the new version will imminently be arriving on our screens. And that reminded me of my re-reading of The Kraken Wakes a couple of months ago, and how it is a book just crying out to be made into a BBC series. For starters it is a good, old fashioned, British end-of-the-world tale, which has tons and tons of potential for updating and, of course, our new-fangled, modern CGI and effects could make stonkingly good 'sea tanks', meteor showers and flooded cities.

The hero and heroine are both journalists, so they both witness some of the events firsthand and investigate the aftermath of others, plus they interview survivors and eyewitnesses. In the book they are a weird kind of multi-tasking journalists, who seem to do newspaper articles, radio programmes and make telly. It would be easy to make them both TV journos to maximise the visuals for a TV adaptation of the book. In the original they mostly work for a fictitious rival to the BBC, but subverting that so they are actually BBC journalists (or freelances working for the BBC) would be eminently sensible, plus let the script-writers do all the fun stuff like including a few real newscasters or reporters to star as themselves in bit parts. And now over to Andrew Marr at 10 Downing Street… Plus all the 'eyewitness' stuff of blurry pictures sent by mobile phone, amateur video, etc that can push the story towards being a punchy visual experience without destroying the feel of the novel.

In the book, there are several, unnamed, American journalists. These could easily all be wrapped up into one American character with some significant screen time if you want to get your hands on money from an American co-producer. In fact, there is nothing to stop one of the hero or heroine being an American ex-pat who lives in the UK.

Because of the time the original novel is set, there are worries in the book about sea travel, as ships are sunk all over the place… and the public has to - gasp! – turn to air travel to get about the globe. Now obviously a lack of passenger liners chugging across the Atlantic is not something that bothers us much today. However, there are all sorts of other sea-based stuff that could replace it. There were no supertankers or North Sea oil pipelines at the point the book was written, so oil slicks and fuel shortages galore. And if the sea tanks start severing undersea cables, so that suddenly no-one in the UK can get internet access to any IP site in New Zealand or America, then obviously civilisation as we know it would collapse! :-)

The storyline of the novel is also ideally set up to include a few epic shipping disasters. The hero and heroine are on a cruise ship on their honeymoon at the start of the book, when they witness the first meteor shower. Later a famous cruise ship sinks. It would work well to just wrap those two ships into one – let the audience see the ship and get to know some of the crew members at the start of episode one, so they are recognisable faces when the ship goes down in episode 2...

There’s lots of lovely riffs that could be done on modern paranoias and attitudes: rising sea level nay sayers could be a way to poke fun at climate change nay sayers; conspiracy theory nutters coming out of the woodwork before anyone knows for sure what the meteors are; millennial end-times-are coming preachers predicting doom or salvation; the scientist who can’t get his theories peer-reviewed and published could put them out on the web for a ‘read it on the internet- must be true’ scene, much beloved of TV and movie thrillers.

Go on BBC, I dare you!

The end of an era...?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:34:19 GMT

My brother was in town this weekend and wanted to go to Forbidden Planet, so while we were there I picked up my comics standing order. However, having come home and dumped the comics on top of the 'to read' pile, it only reinforced the nagging doubts as to why I am still buying the things. Y'see, the comic part of the 'to read' pile is roughly a 3 month backlog, judging by the number of 2000ADs in the heap. Therefore I haven't been possessed by the need to read any newly purchased comics since before Easter. I still enjoy a lot of them when I do read them, but if I have a spare hour and the choice of reading a book, reading some comics or watching the telly, the comics seem to lose out every time.

I've also been eyeing up the various comic boxes about the house - all twenty one of them. Big, space-eating boxes that contain thousands of comics which I haven't re-read in years. Some I've never re-read at all. I am increasing possessed by an urge to get rid of the whole bloody lot!

I think the old comics are rapidly dwindling on what Talis describes as "their emotional half-life". Whereby a possession goes from 'I can't live without this' to 'this can go on a shelf out of the way' and finally to 'why am I still keeping this?'. I've got rid of 3 or 4 boxes of comics via the Comics Expo in 2007 and 2008, and I'm no longer keeping series that I rate as only okay, but I'm now getting twitchy even about those. After all, if I'm suddenly possessed by an urge to re-read anything five years from now, buying the graphic novel is always an option.

The comics that are left in those twenty one boxes still have enough emotional half-life that I don't want to put them out for the recycling. I'd prefer to give them to someone who might read and enjoy them. But selling them on ebay seems like far too much hard work. I may have to organise a 'looting and pillaging' day for the comic collectors I know in Bristol - come and take away anything you want from my boxes.

Then after that I need to have a serious cull of the books, and finally get around to chucking out the videos that I know I'm never going to bother replacing with DVDs...

Eastercon LX 2009

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:26:46 GMT

Got back from Eastercon last night, knackered but happy. The hotel they picked for the venue was a very good choice - good space, friendly staff, cheap and plentiful bar food. The programme was packed with interesting stuff to go to (more on that below), and everything seemed very well organised.

The downside was that the hotel wasn't big enough to house us all... and the overflow hotels were either (a) very far away or (b) only 1.5 miles away, but it was down a dual carriageway and onto an industrial estate, so part of the route had no pavements or street lights! To counter this, the committee had helpfully organised a shuttle bus service. However, the timetable for that was more hope than reality, with the result that it took me almost 2 hours to get from con hotel to my hotel and back again when I decided to get rid of all the stuff I've bought in the dealers' room. As a result, I just stayed in the con hotel all day on the Sat and Sun, and lugged books, water bottles, etc about with me.

Favourite panels that I attended included:
Terraforming versus Pantropy i.e. do you adapt the planet to humans or the humans to the planet? A lively, informative and entertaining discussion - though it only just began to touch on the ethics of terraforming and the ethics of generation starships when it ran out of time. Topics for discussions next year, perhaps?

Who Watched the Watchmen? A debate on whether the movie was a good or bad adaptation of the comics. This was a vastly entertaining hour, as much for the vehemence with which the panel members disagreed with each other on just about everything, as for the actual discussion itself! :-)

Ricardo Pinto - book launch for The Third God This is the 3rd volume in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy and I've been waiting bloody ages for it to come out. It's fantasy, but it has no elves, dwarves, wizards and all the other fantasy tropes that drive me to distraction. Ricardo's talk was alternatively intense and amusing as he talked about the personal and publishing reasons for the book's delay (e.g. his house burned down), and the emotional and psychological paths he and the book have taken. I'm now dithering as to whether I should reread the first 2 volumes before I pounce on my copy of the 3rd.

Guest of Honour interview of Jon Courtenay Grimwood, and a reading by him I'd been recommended his books a while back, but only got off my arse to read one shortly before Eastercon. Bloody hell, it was brilliant! I shall be off to Borders to get some more come payday! His GoH spot and reading were both thoroughly enjoyable, and he kindly passed round his Kindle, so that those of us who had never handled a e-book before could get a good look at it.

Gaming twinges

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:00:50 GMT

I've wanted to run the Battlestar Galactica RPG for aeons... and then I bought Summerland and was immediately seized with an urge to also run that... Needless to say, given that I'm running Bastet and playing in Stargate at the moment, there aren't really enough days in the week for running either of those to be feasible.

But I've been watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles on telly recently and I can feel the 'run something' twinges starting up again. A group of people get sent back from the future with a mission to complete and some pissed off terminators on their tail... hmm, ideal RPG scenario.

And then, following the success of Time Team & the Ancient Horrors game (which I adapted from one I played in at Stabcon), Jimbo suggested as a joke that I do a Bonekickers & the Ancient Horrors game. And bloody hell, but doesn't that have potential too? I can just see the Radio Times blurb: The cast and crew of Bonekickers have gathered to film a new episode of the archaeological drama series. And what do you know - their location scout has found them a REAL haunted castle to film in. What could possibly go wrong?

I obviously need to win the lottery and dedicate my life to gaming... :-)

Another SF book meme (the Clarke Awards)

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:42:06 GMT

Below are the winners of the Arthur C Clarke Award for science fiction novels (from 1987 to 2008).
1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Mark them as read it, intend to read it, ~~hated it~~.
3) Feel free to say what you thought of them.

Black Man by Richard Morgan. Not my favourite of Mr Morgan’s books, but still a stonkingly good read.
Nova Swing by M. John Harrison
Air by Geoff Ryman
Iron Council by China Mieville
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
The Separation by Christopher Priest
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Distraction by Bruce Sterling
Dreaming in Smoke by Tricia Sullivan
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh. Been meaning to read this for ages and never quite got around to it.
Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley. I keep forgetting how much I like Paul McAuley’s books. I must read more.
Fools by Pat Cadigan
Vurt by Jeff Noon
Body of Glass by Marge Piercy
Synners by Pat Cadigan
Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland
The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack
The Sea and Summer by George Turner
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Not a great score... I've only read 7 of them.

Continuing the 5 Things Meme

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:43:29 GMT

Below are my ramblings on 5 things from chris_maslen.

1. Miniatures. Should nuclear war ever break out, I shall be perfectly safe due to the layer of lead I have coated my home in. The lead, for aesthetic reasons, is cunningly disguised as 25mm and 28mm scale wargaming and role-playing miniatures. Hundreds of them, lurking on shelves and in cupboards and in boxes all over the house...

I did once count my unpainted lead pile, and it was about 400 miniatures. Needless to say, I have bought more since then! Last year the painting more or less kept up with the buying, but since I have now got into sculpting my own, I am now MAKING minis as well as buying them. I may, at some point, need to move to a bigger house! :-)

If you want to look at the prettiest ones, there are pics on Displaced Miniatures

2. Scotland. I like where I live, but I do still get a real boost when I go home to Scotland and am surrounded again by people with Scottish accents. And who understand what a haggis pudding supper is and where and why you might wish to purchase one! I came to understand that I was enjoying History of Scotland on the telly (with Neil Oliver) as much for his accent as for the history. (Well, that and the fact it had more interesting characters and better acting than Demons, which was on the other side at the time).

I'm not sure if I'd ever move back there (providing work etc gave the chance). I'd like to live in Scotland again, but I've got squillions of friends in Engerland and Welsh Wales now, so a large chunk of my life is here. If I did go back, it would have to be to a city, as I'm waaaay past small seaside town life these days!.

3. RPGs are one of my favourite hobbies. I've been playing since one of my brothers came home with some funny shaped dice and tried from memory to explain what this Dungeons & Dragons game his friend had bought was all about. I prefer tabletop to LARP because, as neil_exile so brilliantly put it, I don't want to roleplay being me. I like games where the characters are competent, but not superheroic in their skill levels. I like games where what the characters does matters, and where there are consequences for their actions. I like running games as well as playing them, even if sometimes the former can be hard work. Though I'm hoping that this afternoon's game won't be!

4. Trashy science fiction DVDs. Sir, you malign me! All my science fiction DVDs are of the highest quality, sir - the highest!

The video shop across the road, on the other hand, has a selection of science fiction DVDs of the trashiest quality imaginable. Or indeed trashiest representatives of any other genre. I think that someone ought to write an equation to describe how the probability of renting a trashy DVD rises exponentially as the number of people involved in the selection increases. It is also related to quantity of pizza ordered from the takeaway, and amount of alcohol consumed. And it doubles when Jimbo is there, because he goes to the cinema far too often and thus say "Seen it" to all the halfway decent films...

5. I like Stargate because it doesn't take itself seriously, and because they messed with some of the stereotypical SF characters - so the geek is a woman, and the person who is the voice of conscience and says "Er, maybe shooting them is a bad idea?" is a guy. Any show that can take as its premise the drivel spouted by the likes of Erik Von Daniken and Graham Hancock and then make it believable, fun and entertaining has a talented writing team!

Bearer of Bad Tidings

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:57:34 GMT

For those that know them and haven't heard yet...

Fox is currently homeless and virtually possessionless. His upstair's neighbour's flat caught fire on Sun night. Fox and the downstairs neighbour are fine, but the upstairs guy was killed in the fire.

The flats are uninhabitable, so he is staying at the Morrises, and is trying to sort out somewhere to live. He's seeing a guy about another flat at the weekend. Pretty much everything he owns is fire, smoke or water damaged - he's a bit too spaced out by it all to properly assess the damage yet.

And other bad news - James' Dad has had a stroke. Prognosis looks good as it was a minor one, but Jimbo will be heading up north a lot to help out his Mum. And to add to his misery, he has caught the winter vomiting virus thing, so is at home being ill and infectious at the moment.

The 5 Things Meme

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:24:26 GMT

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

These from pellegrina
1. Bradley
2. Silver hair
3. Eastercon
4. viala_qilarre
5. Bristol

1. Bradley is my RPG character of long standing from the Stargate campaign which is now in its 6th year and doing its 100th mission. I've never found an exact visual reference for him as he appears in my head (my drawing is too crap do a decent pic), but Stephen Caffrey as he appeared in Tour of Duty is pretty close - see my userpic for this entry. Bradley is however blonder, with shorter hair, more aggressive, more bad tempered, more right wing, more gay... and more prone to be involved in firefights with aliens. I think he's one of the few characters in the campaign that hasn't been dead at some point (it's Stargate - people tend to get better from that sort of thing). Though he did temporarily not exist due to a time glitch that involved his father several years before he was born.

2. Silver hair - and getting more silver every day. I've had some grey since I was 17. I think I must take after my Dad in that respect, who had grey in his hair as far back as I remember. And he has a cousin who was entirely grey by the time he was in his late twenties. Because Mum obsesses about her grey hair and dyes it to hide it, I have been for some years now much greyer than my own Mum!

3. I've been going to Eastercon regularly since I stopped being a student and became rich beyond the dreams of avarice (i.e. employed and not on a grant any more), though I had actually been to one in Glasgow before that. I love it because it is mainly book focussed rather than about media fandom, but there is plenty of that about too if I fancy a bit of it. I get to catch up with lots of friends from around the country, and venture to strange places that I'd never travel to if there wasn't a con there, such as Hinckley or Canary Wharf. And fans are such a friendly lot - hotel staff are constantly bewildered that fans will happily sit beside any other fans at breakfast, even if they don't know them, and chat away. Most of the authors there are former fans, so they mingle in with everyone else too. It's a fantastic way to spend the Easter bank hol.

4. viala_qilarre is my bestest friend from school. We weren't in the same year at school, so I didn't meet her until we both conspired to avoid Sport (hawk, spit) by hiding out in the Art dept to do leisure art instead. I can't even remember what I was drawing, but there was this girl next to me who was doing illustrations of characters from The Leisure Hive episode of Dr Who. Why? Well, Target hadn't done a novelisation yet, so she'd written her own. Hey, that's so cool! Do you like Blake's Seven too? And the rest is history...

5. Brizzul was a bit of a shock after Aberdeen, as it was twice the size. Though now I tend to think of it as quite a small place. In fact it is just as well it is small, given the crapness of its bus service. But there is now a multiplex cinema within walking distance, so yah boo sucks to First Bus!

Genre book meme from pellegrina

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:08:39 GMT

Genre fiction book meme -
1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) House rules: read one or all of, intend to read, loved, ~~hated~~.
3) Feel free to tell your friends what you thought of them.

In no particular order:

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. [It says 'no particular order', but suspiciously LOTR is always at the top!]
2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
3. ~~The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien~~ [Gave up less than 100 pages in]
4. Foundation series, Isaac Asimov [Audiobook of one of them]
5. Robot series, Isaac Asimov
6. Dune, Frank Herbert
7. ~~Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein~~ [Gave up about a third of the way in].
8. Earthsea series, Ursula le Guin [The first three only]
9. Neuromancer, William Gibson
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
12. A Book of the New Sun series, Gene Wolfe
13. Discworld series, Terry Pratchett [I've read about 10]
14. Sandman series, Neil Gaiman [So graphic novels are on this list too?]
15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
16. Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffrey [Though everything from All the Weyrs of Pern onwards has been a bit pants...]
17. Interview with the Vampire series, Anne Rice [I managed the first three, then lost the will to live]
18. The Shining, Stephen King
19. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula le Guin
20. The Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny [Nope, and never intend to, despite people going on and on and on about how great they are. Not gonna play the RPG either...]
21. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
22. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
23. Ringworld, Larry Niven
24. ~~Elric of Melnibone series, Michael Moorcock~~ [Read a couple of short stories - not impressed]
25. The Dying Earth series, Jack Vance
26. Lyonesse series, Jack Vance
27. ~~The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson~~ [I've ranted before about how much I disliked the character and his actions]
28. A Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin
29. The Worm Ourobouros, E.R. Eddison
30. Conan series, Robert E. Howard
31. Lankhmar series, Fritz Leiber
32. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
33. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells [So long ago I can barely remember...]
34. The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells
35. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
36. Eon, Greg Bear
37. Book of the First Law series, Joe Abercrombie
38. Miss Marple stories, Agatha Christie
39. Hercule Poirot stories, Agatha Christie
40. Lord Peter Wimsey stories, Dorothy L. Sayers
41. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
42. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan [A book at school that I actually liked!]
43. Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
44. Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft
45. Inspector Wexford stories, Ruth Rendell
46. Adam Dalgliesh stories, P.D. James
47. Philip Marlowe stories, Raymond Chandler
48. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
49. The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth [Only read Dogs of War by Forsythe]
50. The Fourth Protocol, Frederick Forsyth
51. Smiley series, John le Carre
52. Gentleman Bastard series, Scott Lynch
53. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson
54. Watchmen series, Alan Moore
55. Maus, Art Spiegelman
56. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Miller [ALAN Miller??? The one I read was by FRANK Miller!]
57. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi [It's on my 'buy when the graphic novel pile has gone down and I'm not skint' list]
58. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling [Managed the first, but it was too much a kiddie book for me]
59. Chrestomanci series, Diana Wynne-Jones
60. Ryhope Wood series, Robert Holdstock
61. Wilt series, Tom Sharpe
62. Riftwar Cycle, Raymond E. Feist
63. Temeraire series, Naomi Novik
64. Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
65. His Dark Materials series, Phillip Pullman [First as a book, the rest as plays on radio 4]
66. Dragonlance series, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman [Not a chance. I tried one of their SF books and it was excruciatingly awful]
67. Twilight saga, Stephanie Meyer
68. The Night's Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton
69. Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer
70. Honor Harrington series, David Weber [I read the first half dozen or so - must work out which is next in the series]
71. Hannibal Lecter series, Thomas Harris
72. The Dark Tower series, Stephen King [Found the first one a bit dull, didn't read the rest]
73. It, Stephen King
74. The Rats series, James Herbert [From my mis-spent youth - our school library had several of these!]
75. Dirk Gently series, Douglas Adams
76. Jeeves and Wooster stories, P.G. Wodehouse
77. The da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
78. ~~The Culture Series, Iain M. Banks~~ [Tried one and struggled though it as I didn't care a jot about any of the characters]
79. The Duncton series, William Horwood
80. The Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
81. The Aberystwyth series, Malcom Pryce
82. Morse stories, Colin Dexter
83. Navajo Tribal Police stories, Tony Hillerman [Need to re-read these in order sometime!]
84. The Ipcress File, Len Deighton
85. Enigma, Robert Harris
86. Fatherland, Robert Harris
87. The Constant Gardener, John le Carre
88. The House of Cards trilogy, Michael Dobbs
89. The Dark is Rising saga, Susan Cooper
90. Psychotechnic League and Polesotechnic League series, Poul Anderson
91. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
92. Star Wars: Thrawn trilogy, Timothy Zahn
93. Ender's Game series, Orson Scott Card
94. Gormenghast series, Meryvn Peake
95. Miles Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold
96. The Once and Future King, T.H. White
97. Fighting Fantasy books, Ian Livingston & Steve Jackson [I might have done - can't remember]
98. The Stainless Steel Rat series, Harry Harrison
99. The Lensman series, E.E. 'Doc' Smith
100. The Cadfael stories, Ellis Peters [Read a couple but they didn't grab me]

So the score on genre is FAR higher than the lit book list! :-)

Literary book meme from pellegrina

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:33:41 GMT

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) and my own special addition: red font for ones you only read part of (or only read part of a series)

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible - various authors. I read all of the New Testament, but got bogged down in Exodus when I tried to read the Old.
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman. Read the first, listened to the others as radio plays.
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. [Where's 15?]
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows– Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis Not sure why this isn't covered under item 33!
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne. I've read some of the Pooh books.
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens Got forced to read this at school and hated it. Never finished it.
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker. Tried to read it when I was a kid and gave up.
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray. Tried to read it when I was a kid and gave up.
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens. Another school 'read it to better yourself' book, but I actually liked this one!
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I've read 17 of them, and partly read (or read the first in the series) another 7. I think I'll do better on the genre list! :-)

Books Read in 2008

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:19:37 GMT

Here's the list of what I've read over the past year

FICTION
I finally finished the housebrick sized book that is Maia by Richard Adams (fantasy). Enjoyed it, but not as much as Shardik.
Ally by Karen Traviss (SF)
Judge by Karen Traviss (SF). The final volume in the series.
See Delphi and Die by Lindsey Davis (historical/crime)
Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis (historical/crime)
Destroyer by C.J. Cherryh (SF)
Pretender by C.J. Cherryh (SF)
Deliverer by C.J. Cherryh (SF)
Dead of Night by Brendan Dubois (thriller that is really alternative reality SF)
Resurrection Day by Brendan Dubois (thriller that is really alternative reality SF). Mr Dubois really likes nuking America in his books…!
Final Winter by Brendan Dubois (thriller). No nukes in this one.
Black Man by Richard Morgan (SF). Not as good as his Kovacs books, but still a stonking good read.
Jumper by Stephen Gould (SF). Re-read to remind myself how much I enjoyed it the first time around and to confirm that no way was I going to see the movie!
Banner of Souls by Liz Williams (SF). I really must read more Liz Williams.
Company of Glory by Edgar Pangborn (old and rather dated SF)
Speaking in Tongues by Ian MacDonald (SF short story collection)
Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon (SF)
Victory Conditions by Elizabeth Moon (SF)
Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson (mainstream/comedy)
The Alienist by Caleb Carr (historical/crime). Brilliant – gripping stuff and fascinating characters.
Killing Time by Caleb Carr (bloody awful SF). I got this out of the library on the strength of having read The Alienist. Oh boy, I am SOOOOO glad I didn’t spend money on this insulting drivel – this is SF in the fine tradition of ‘all SF fans are morons who won’t care about the plot as long as there is a UFO and a nymphomaniac in a jumpsuit in it’. Gave up about 180 pages into it. This would have got my Worst Book of the Year award, if not for Ghost (see below).
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton (old but NOT dated SF) I’d never read this before – a huge and fascinating future history of mankind and their descendants.
Maxie’s Demon by Michael Scott Rohan (time travel fantasy).
Rat Run by Gerald Seymour (thriller)
Man in the Middle by Brian Haig (military/legal thriller) This never did come out in paperback, so I snapped and bought the hardback. Write more books Mr Haig!!!
Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson (thriller). Thriller is a misnomer – it is really dull. AND it became obvious about page 70 that it was a sequel to another book, of which no mention was made on the cover or the blurb. I won’t be reading the prequel or sequel, if there is one.
Ill Wind by Kevin Anderson (SF). Post apocalypse technothriller... or rather, a 'watch the apocalypse happening' technothriller...
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (mainstream... crime... fantasy... all of the above?)
Days of Atonement by Walter Jon Williams (crime/SF). I’ve posted elsewhere about how much I was impressed by this book.
Meat by Joseph D’Lacey (horror... in a post-apocalypse setting). Again I’ve waxed lyrical about this one before now.
Hounhynm by Constance Campbell (fantasy). Bloody awful. Reads like bad fan fic. I gave up 11 chapters in.
Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks (SF). 'Read Iain (M) Banks' everyone kept telling me. 'If you like Richard Morgan and Ken McLeod you’ll love Iain Banks!' Well, nope. What they should have said was 'If you think Alastair Reynolds’ books are full of potentially gripping spectacles and vast canvases that have any interest or engagement leached out of them by being peopled by a bunch of unlikeable characters whom you don’t care an iota about - then you’ll dislike Iain Banks’ books too'.
Forever Free by Joe Haldeman (SF – definitely not about Joy Adamson reintroducing lions into the wild). Great start, meh ending.
Skallagrigg by William Horwood (mainstream). Fantastic. I’d seen a BBC adaptation of this years ago, but that didn’t even begin to touch on the multiple layers of story.
Game Night by Jonny Nexus (fantasy). A gaming related parody... the gods do a bit of role-playing. Scarily I think I have gamed with all of these people...
The Lonely Dead by Michael Marshall (thriller). Sequel to The Straw Men and just as good.
Blood of Angels by Michael Marshall (thriller). Third in The Straw Men trilogy. I’m hoping it’ll be a quadrilogy (if that’s a real word).
Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham (SF alternative history). This author is my find of the year, and his trilogy on a 2021 naval taskforce ending up in 1942 is riveting and with all the consequences beautifully thought through. I’ll be looking forward to whatever he writes next.
Designated Targets by John Birmingham (SF alternative history).
Final Impact by John Birmingham (SF alternative history).
Ghost by John Ringo (thriller). It had strong competition from Killing Time and Hounhymn but this is definitely the WORST READ OF THE YEAR, partly because of the in-your-face ultra-right politics, partly because of the misogyny and partly because I like his Posleen books so much this felt like a betrayal. I managed to stomach the whole of part one (about 200 pages) before I gave up. There is an utterly fantastic (but very long) review of the Ghost series here . NO JOHN RINGO, NO!
The Shades of Time and Memory by Storm Constantine (fantasy)
The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence by Storm Constantine (fantasy)
The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (SF). Interesting but ultimately disappointing, as it goes from the characters planning stuff to the aftermath of said stuff, missing out the ‘how they pulled it off’ bit that I was itching to read.
Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden (historical). A chance pick up at the library. I shall be reading more in the series.
Survival by Julie Czerneda (SF)
People of the Nightland by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear (historical… or more accurately a prehistorical). Not their best, but still a fine addition to the series.
The Margarets by Sheri Tepper (SF with fantasy elements).
Cat and Mouse by Harold Coyle (military thriller). Yay! Another Dixon book finally out in paperback.
Hominids by Robert Sawyer (SF). A lovely book, gripping and sweet by turns. I'll definitely be after the sequels.
Pandora’s Legion by Harold Coyle & Barrett Tillman (military thriller). Mostly good, but the turn of phrase used by the British characters jars a bit now and then. And it appears that it is not just George W, Bush who doesn’t realise that 'Paki' is an offensive term for Pakistanis...

And I’m about halfway through The Light Bearer by Donna Gillespie (historical). Gripping stuff and great characters – I'll be tracking down more by Ms Gillespie. The only quibble is that she seems to think there are antelopes and pumas in Iron Age Germany. At least I think she means a puma when she refers to 'the mountain cat' – she makes it clear that she doesn’t mean lynx or wildcat.

NON-FICTION
The Struggle For Europe by Chester Wilmot
Overlord by Max Hastings.
Feminism: A Very Short Introduction by Margaret Walters
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
What We Believe But Cannot Prove by John Brockman (ed.)
Seven Million Years by Douglas Palmer
British Cattle by Val Porter
The Future of Man by Sir Peter Medawar. Written in the 1950s and based on his BBC Reith lectures. It contains some bona fide hard facts on such things as the increase in the number of male babies born after both the world wars.
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Bennett
Dark Horses and Black Beauties by Melissa Holbrook Pierson
The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context by Sheenagh Pugh. Interesting stuff.

GRAPHIC NOVELS
DMZ 1: On the Ground by Brian Wood
DMZ 2: Body of a Journalist by Brian Wood
DMZ 3: Public Works by Brian Wood
The Falklands War by some French people whose names I forget. The translations are a bit stilted in places.
The Surrogates by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldell. Bloody fantastic!
Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot. Part way through this at the moment...

Favourite books

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:56:58 GMT

Following on from pellegrina's book meme, here are my favourite books in various genres. It was going to be all Top Ten's but I was too determined to list all my favourites in SF, as most of them are far, far more beloved than even the top three fantasy. Exact rankings are subject to change, depending on what mood I'm in...

HISTORICAL AND PREHISTORICAL
1. The Visitant (and sequels) by Kathleen O'Neal Gear & Michael Gear
2. People of the Lakes by Kathleen O'Neal Gear & Michael Gear
3. The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis
4. The Eagle & The Raven by Pauline Gedge
5. Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow
6. Mother Earth, Father Sky by Sue Harrison
7. Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel (Many of the sequels suck, though)
8. The Morning River by Michael Gear
9. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
10. Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Scarborough

FANTASY
1. Surrender None by Elizabeth
2. The Horse Girl by Constance Ash
3. Metal Angel by Nancy Springer
4. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
5. The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick
6. Shardik by Richard Adams
7. Lion of Macedon by David Gemmell
8. The Heavenly Horse From the Outermost West by Mary Stanton
9. The Wolves of Time by William Horwood
10. The Ice is Coming by Patricia Wrightson

SCIENCE FICTION
1. Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh
2. Rider at the Gate by C.J. Cherryh
3. The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
4. Broken Angels by Richard Morgan
5. Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
6. Grass by Sheri Tepper
7. Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham
8. The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey
9. The Chysalids by John Wyndham
10. City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
11. Santiago by Mike Resnick
12. Little Heroes by Norman Spindrad
13. When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger
14. Once A Hero by Elizabeth Moon
15. Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
16. A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo
17. Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle
18. Jumper by Stephen Gould
19. Chaga by Ian McDonald
20. Moonseed by Stephen Baxter
21. K'iln People by David Brin
22. The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld
23. Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
24. West of Eden by Harry Harrison
25. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

SF&F book meme from pellegrina

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:04:38 GMT

The top fifty SF & fantasy books (no idea who compiled the list).
Bold the ones you've read, strike the ones you hated, italicize the ones you couldn't get through. Asterisks for the ones you loved - more asterisks, more love. Plus signs for the ones you own.
Pellegrina's added rule: question mark if you can't remember if you read/own it...

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov. What do you do if you've only read one of the trilogy???
3. Dune, Frank Herbert**+
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Leguin*
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson**+
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr*+
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov**
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett***+
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison+
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey***+
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. ~~The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R Donaldson~~ Hey, I've been cured of leprosy, so it's okay to rape a woman as long as I angst about it afterwards!
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman**+
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams***+
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice+
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement*+
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon+
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith+
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute. Always meant to, never got around to it.
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien Managed about 60 pages.
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson. It's in the 'to read' pile as I type this..
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

What did we do before the internet?

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:45:38 GMT

Some fun places to visit on t'interweb. The first was shown to me by Keith, and those who can speak German are advised to watch it with the volume turned down low.

What Hitler thinks of Torchwood

Make your own Bayeux Tapestry

Wretchopedia I really want to post to this if I can figure out how!

Wretchedness - a photographic celebration of the UK today

Why I won't play D&D... a looooong rant

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:39:31 GMT

This mostly applies to 1st and 2nd AD&D, with a bit of 3rd ed. I’ve no intention of ever playing 4th ed.

Various people keep trying to persuade me that I want to play AD&D. While I admit that they may have a greater probability of succeeding at this than someone who tries to persuade me that I want to play ice hockey, their overall chance is still vanishingly small.

Part of it is because fantasy as a genre doesn’t really interest me. I read more crime fiction, horror fiction, historical novels, prehistoric novels and even westerns than I do fantasy novels. I quite understand that other people may think that high fantasy is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I personally do not.

I’m also quite aware that what I see as a vice in a game (e.g. levels), others may regard as a virtue. But hey, that’s life! And yes, I have noticed that a bad GM can make the world’s greatest game into a steaming pile of horse dung, whilst a good GM can raise a crappy game into an entertaining event. So don’t think this is all based on getting stung by the first and only bad AD&D game I happened to play. I’ve played LOTS of AD&D (mainly first and second edition, but a fair bit of 3rd ed). God’s sake, when I started roleplaying you could lose one hand in a tragic gardening accident and still not end up short of fingers to count the alternative RPG systems to AD&D! Some of the AD&D I played was good, some of it was bad, some of it was indescribably awful. But all of it fell down in the face of the many and varied systems and backgrounds that have evolved in the RPG world since then. Here are the reasons why.

Likes and Dislikes in Any Sort of Roleplaying Game
I like to be able to go through the following process:
Step 1 - decide what sort of character I want to play;
Step 2 – design that character with help rather than hindrance from the game system;
Step 3 – roleplay that character with help rather than hindrance from the game system.

Any system that has random dice rolls, random card draws or random pulling rabbits out of hats, fails big time on Step 2. If I have decided in Step 1 that I fancy being a strong but thick thug, then it just succeeds in pissing me off to discover during character gen that I am actually of average strength and quite smart. Points based systems are best. You may not get exactly what you want if the points run out, but at least you are in control of shaping it in the right direction.

What I also want from a game is a background. I am far more impressed by a game that has an interesting and detailed background but crap mechanics, than a dull/non-existent background and brilliant mechanics. After all, I can always steal the game mechanics from another system to bolt on to the nice background. Therefore, if I have to pick between several games, I’ll always opt for the one with a coherent and/or interesting background (Legend of the 5 Rings, to give a fantasy example) in preference to games without one at all (e.g. AD&D). Of course, the fact that I don’t care much for sword & sorcery means that an SF game with a slightly naff background (e.g. some anime stuff I've played) will nearly always win out over a fabulously detailed fantasy one (e.g. Middle Earth).

Fantasy Games in General
What I enjoy most in RPG terms is science fiction. Given the choice between a SF game, a horror game and a fantasy game... the fantasy scores a poor third every time. Slightly better than bog standard fantasy, but something that I also don’t particularly like are the 'mixed' SF/Fantasy games like Shadowrun – what's the bleeding point of having cyberdecks, automatic rifles, trolls and wizards in the same universe? It makes no sense at all, and just seems to be a sop to those who can't live without their 'Fwackooom!' spells or being able to play an elf. Worse still are games/books/comics that advertise themselves as 'proper' SF and then turn out to be full of demons and wizards. Grrr.

A mainstay of fantasy games is obviously magic. Low powered stuff can be quite fun, in the same way that low powered psionics in an SF game, or low powered supernatural stuff in a Vampire or Werewolf game is quite fun. High powered, NPC-vaporising and plot destroying stuff – bleurgh! Magic that helps you out a bit is okay. Magic that becomes the be all and end all of the plot (i.e. you can’t do the scenarios without 270 spells and a golf bag full of magic wands) tends to get tedious. Especially for those not playing spellcasters.

A special bugbear is spell versus counter-spell systems or magical traps that only have one solution – I hate this! In a lot of games it is used as a cop out to scupper the players' plans and make damn sure there’s a big punch up, no matter how careful or clever they are. We’re trying to rob the bank and we planned for security guards, guard dogs, security cameras, silent alarms, noisy alarms, the police, SWAT teams and the National Guard. But we didn’t plan on there being an ethereal teleporting hippopotamus, so didn’t bring the only items that can deal with said magic – the Geegaw of Seeing Ethereal Things or the Soft Cushion of Hippopotamus Dispelling. We’re buggered.

Generic (i.e. Background-less) Fantasy Games
All AD&D basically is, is a rules system. It has no background! The lists of races, monsters and published scenarios give you a wishy-washy, pseudo-medieval feel, but there is no real shared consciousness in AD&D. Say "Go roll up a D&D character please", and one player may think I'll be a tragic but noble elf from Tolkien, another I'll be a dashing, swashbuckling hero from Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood and a third Whahaaay! Thrud the Barbarian!. These are far enough apart that there is almost no overlap in game style, and the result is either (a) an incoherent mess, or (b) a highly structured game where the structure is ENTIRELY due to the effort the GM put in, but unfortunately 2 out of the 3 players mentioned above will be disappointed with it.

The same criticism, of course, applies to other generic fantasy systems (Rolemaster, basic GURPS, etc), but it doesn't seem to plague SF and horror in the same way. Science fiction and horror are acknowledged as wide genres, so the first thing one of these games does is tell you which of the standard 'furnishings' of the genre exist in this universe. Is this a Star Wars like universe – do we have hyperspace and light sabres? Or is this a Star Trek clone – no hyperspace but we’ve got matter transmitters? Are we low tech with cold sleep and pulse rifles as in Aliens? Does communication travel faster than light? How long does it take a ship to get to the next star system? Are there more alien races than you can shake a stick at or are we alone?

In generic fantasies like AD&D it’s more a case of 'Fuck it – anything goes!'. Norwegian trolls? Yeah, sure. Egyptian mummies? Fine, no problem. Thieves Guild from Lankhmar? Yup, just turn right at the Unseen University, go straight on past the Ninja training school and then left at the Court of King Solomon. Can’t miss it.

AD&D's Odious Personal Habits
1. Dungeons
Right, who the hell thought these were a good idea??? I do roleplaying games because – gasp of amazement – I want to roleplay. Open the door, kill the monster, take the treasure, open the door, defuse the trap, take the treasure is NOT roleplaying. Even the most hardened of thespian geniuses who can wring a 20 minute soliloquy out of going for a pee would be hard pushed to find anything to roleplay during the interminable wandering around corridors and hacking things to pieces.

What I want in games is (a) to be able to play an interesting character, and (b) have a plot to follow. When you are stuck down a dungeon for session after session of game play, the fact that your character is doing all this looting/killing to pay for Auntie Ethel’s heart bypass or because you need to be fabulously rich to ask for Princess Ermintrude’s hand in marriage becomes completely irrelevant.

Please note: a brief 5 minute bit of flavour text stating the likes of King Cliché the Third has summoned his most faithful retainers and asked them to go beat the crap out of the Evil Wizard who is writing nasty letters about him to the Times is quite common at the start of a dungeon crawl adventure. This in no way constitutes Plot. Plot involves interacting with a lot of NPCs – and by interacting I don't mean cleaving them in two with a Vorpal sword three seconds after you laid eyes on them.

2. Levels
Another appallingly bad idea. I like the idea that you character may improve with time, but the Level system is a baaaad way of doing it. You have naff all control over how your character improves. You may desperately want to get your archery skill up high enough to fit in with that Robin Hood concept you had during character gen, but tough luck – your xp does nothing for ages and them puts a whole screed of stuff up at once. You can’t channel it where you want it.

Also, because the Level system runs from 1 to 36 (in 1st and 2nd ed) or 1 to 20 (in 3rd ed) and the AD&D inventors didn’t want 20th level characters to be superhuman (they failed big time), then low level characters are crap. Especially at all the subsidiary stuff like picking locks and tracking animals that actually makes the characters in any way distinctive or interesting! So throw away any concept you might have that your 5th level Ranger is a hardened backwoodsman who stalks deer for his supper and tracks man-eating wolves back to their den – this guy wouldn’t be able to recognise a dog footprint in wet concrete if the dog were standing next to it at the time. It might be argued that all AD&D characters under 10th level are in fact spotty teenagers who know sod all, but that isn’t how it is hyped. And besides, sometimes I might not want to play a useless, spotty teenager.

The power increase with levels, and the fact that the bad guys scale to meet it, also means that you can’t mix levels. So two grizzled veterans (20th level) leading a band of spotty teenagers (3rd level) either ends up with the teenagers having nothing to do as the veterans lightning bolt their way thru the 10 kobolds they meet in a single combat round... or the teenagers getting killed 0.1 microseconds after the 2 dragons that are a decent challenge for the veterans turn up.

3. The Shopping Trolley Effect
Apart from the +1 bonus to Save versus Flying Gerbils and the extra spell you get as your Character Class Ferret-Polisher goes from 3rd to 4th level, the main way your character improves in AD&D is by collecting Stuff (TM). Shed-loads of Stuff, most of it some sort of magical bollocks. +10 swords, Rings of Spell Storage, Bracers of Invisibility, Potions of Storm Giant Strength. There are scenarios and supplements just bursting with all this crap. Aladdin had a lamp, King Arthur had Excalibur, Cucuchlain was extravagant enough to have a Spear and a Cauldron. But your average AD&D player has a whole shopping trolley full of magical gizmos. So much of it, in fact, that if you find a +3 sword, you sell or give your +1 one away. But at the same time there is no shop, armourer or eccentric wizard in the whole of the AD&D multiverse who will SELL you one of these things BEFORE you go on the dungeon crawl. Nope, you’ve got to hack your way through the fifty lizard men and the naga to get them.

I find collecting all this Stuff rather boring. You’ve killed the werewolf, says the GM, and in his lair you find a +3 longsword, a +2 mace, a ring of invisibility and a cloak that gives you a +1 bonus to your armour. My response? 'Yeah, whatever.' I don’t CARE. We’ve been doing perfectly well up to now, so we don’t actually need the stuff. And as soon as the whole party DO all accept +3 swords, all that will happen is that the GM ups the ante so that it is just as difficult to kill the monsters as it always was.

4. Hit Point Increases
In fact, it’s MORE difficult to kill things as you go up in levels. You can generally kill low level monsters like orcs, goblins or whatever in 2 or 3 blows. However, once you are up to high level and are meeting dragons and the like, you have to hit them twice as often if you are lucky or ten times as often if you’re not. The result? High level fights take forever. Hour upon hour upon hour of endless TEDIUM.

Why do these fights take so long? The ever increasing hit point ladder, that's why. The thing you are trying to kill probably has 150 hit points, so getting it to go down involves more hacking than felling a tree takes (hey, a game to while away the hours during one of those boring hackfests – try to work out how may hit points a tree has, from the number of axe blows needed to fell it!). And at the same time you yourself probably have 50 hit points now, so it can’t kill you quickly either. If King Harold had lived in the AD&D universe, he’d never have died at Hastings simply from one poxy arrow in his eye! Poor bloke would have looked like a pincushion...

5. Fighters Never Get Any More Skilful
My preference for character types in fantasy is Fighters and Thieves first, Clerics second, Wizards and Paladins last (I can’t be arsed with the schizophrenic swings from chivalry to psycho frenzy in the presence of 'evil' that the Lawful Good alignment expects of you). However, +10 Vorpal swords aside, Fighters never actually improve worth a damn, because of two things. First the fact that combat ability is not an actual skill in AD&D/d20 (more on that below) and secondly due to the way that the bad guys scale up as you increase in levels (see section 4, above). A beginning Fighter has about a 25% chance to hit and – as mentioned above – kills things in 2 or 3 blows. A high level Fighter may have climbed to the lofty heights of a 40% chance to hit some monsters! Oooooh, be still my beating heart!
Meanwhile the bloody spellcasters don’t need to roll to hit with Lightning Bolt or whatever, so they get more and more powerful.

6. Character Class
Now I’m not against character template or character classes per se – they are really quite a useful step in character gen. However, AD&D goes about them in a completely arse-about-face manner.

Some games follow the line of logic thus: (1) You want to play the Archbishop of Canterbury; (2) the Archbishop template either gives you or tells you to spend points on Wisdom 14, Theology 16, Public Speaking 16 and a Pointy Hat; (3) great, you are now an Archbishop!

AD&D on the other hand goes more like this: (1) You want to play the Archbishop of Canterbury; (2) oh dear, you need Wisdom 14, Theology 16, Public Speaking 16 and a Pointy Hat to be an archbish, but unfortunately you only rolled Wisdom 9 and that only gives you a Theology of 7; (3) damn, you’ll have to be a ferret polisher instead!

7. Lack of skills
First edition AD&D only had four basic skills: Killing Things, Healing Things, Avoiding Traps and Detecting Treasure. Aficionados might quibble about this a bit, but 99% of what AD&D had to offer fell into these categories. Hell, you were on a dungeon crawl – what else did you need? The GM could always fudge it and decide that OF COURSE everyone could swim or read ancient runes as the scenario required, and everyone always agreed that it was a bit silly that the only person who could climb a wall was the Thief...

Meanwhile, off in roleplaying groups about the globe, people were discovering that chatting up the barmaid, or gambling the party fortune on a hand of cards, or taking part in a chariot race, or looking for clues as to who had murdered the town crier, or haggling in the market over the price of a new hunting dog was actually fun. And that for some or all of these scenarios a few dice rolls might be in order. But wait! AD&D couldn’t cope. We got a more extensive skill system as an afterthought in 2nd edition, but it was clumsy and – as mentioned earlier – low level characters usually failed their Finding Your Bum With Both Hands And A Map roll. And if characters are going to fail the rolls all the time you can’t hang the plot on those skills... and if those skills become peripheral, we are back to Killing Things, Healing Things, Avoiding Traps and Detecting Treasure... and it is off orc bashing again. 3rd edition is allegedly better (not for Stargate it isn’t!), but then GURPS and the like have a fully fledged skill system so why bother with the half arsed AD&D one in the first place?

And then, of course, there is the fact that for some bizarre and bonkers reason, the AD&D/d20 system doesn’t actually classify any combat ability as a skill. If you want to get better at speaking French, then you put skill points into Language – French. However, if you want to get better at archery or rapier or Bohemian Ear Spoon, then tough shit. The only way is to level up. Then even if you have never touched a Bohemian Ear Spoon in your life, you will mysteriously be better at it because your Basic Attack Bonus has gone up. It isn’t anything the player or character can influence. Getting better at combat in d20 is like getting taller as you go through childhood – it is entirely out of your control and just kinda happens.

8. Killing Things
That, at the heart of it, is what AD&D is all about. End of story. It is all the system expects and all the system (officially) rewards you for – see p207-8 of d20 Modern where they gleefully tell you that an encounter where the PCs question a traumatised witness to a murder is worth ZERO experience points because said NPC is no threat to them. No, no, no! That encounter is what roleplaying is all about!

What it boils down to is that in AD&D/d20 you might encounter the odd murder mystery, political intrigue, struggle to survive after a shipwreck, voyage of discovery or royal tournament, but hey, it's all just a gloss over the path to the next set piece battle with the Dark Lord of the Ultimate Evil and his Teeming Minions. AD&D/d20 is about regular fights to the death.

As mentioned above, I find looooooong fights wrist slashingly monotonous. This is regardless of whether they are fantasy, horror or science fiction. Hours of rolling dice and slowly whittling away at something’s hit points/armour/ psionic shielding (delete as applicable) is in no way entertaining to me. Similarly, endless shorter fights also get very boring, very quickly unless there are very plot driven reasons for why they are happening, and a chance to do some decent roleplay in between the carnage.

In the case of both long fights and numerous short fights I soon cease to care whether my character lives or dies – what you have effectively done is changed what I am doing from an RPG into a shoot 'em up computer game with very poor graphics and an appalling processor speed!

So there you have it. AD&D isn’t really on to a winner with me. Most of the AD&D games that I have enjoyed were despite of, rather then because of, the system. None were dungeon crawls. Several we had whole sessions go by without a whole-party-gets-involved fight happening. And I have far, far fonder memories than all of them of GURPS fantasy games, Vampire games and a vast panoply of science fiction one-offs and campaigns...

A Gamer's Guide to Problem Players

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:36:46 GMT

Whole PhD theses have been written on Rules Lawyers and Munchkins in other places, so I shall not be dealing with those here. Instead here are a few other RPG player types who have managed to cause me headaches as a GM or immense irritation as a player. Read ‘em and weep!

THE DEMOCRATIC TYRANT
Most players only have one character. Some players have multiple characters and pick which one they want to play in any given session. However, some players have multiple characters and insist on playing as many of them as possible simultaneously as some sort of gestalt entity, so that they can dominate the game and bully other PCs into following their course of action. But of course, in their twisted minds, this domination is fair and not bullying at all, because they have more characters and should thus have a greater say... Democracy in action!

GM: So are you going up-river or down-river?
TOM: My Ranger votes we go up-river.
DICK: My Cleric also votes we go up-river.
HARRY: My Paladin Sir Stupendous, and his lady love the Princess Perfecta, and their faithful retainer Jeeves, and his intelligent pegasus Dobbin, and the entire Guild of Seamstresses who are making the commemorative tapestry of their adventures, all vote to go down river. That's 35 votes to 2. We go down river!

THE BLACK HOLE
A Black Hole is a player who sits on vital plot information or gizmos. They don't pass on the info to the other players. They don't use it themselves. Plainly and simply, they do bugger all, even when it is patently obvious that their inaction will derail the plot or cause the game to grind to a halt.

GM: Sir Prancelot - a letter from your cousin arrives. He says that he's heard rumours that the Royal Chamberlain is plotting to murder the King. What do you do?
BLACK HOLE: I put the letter in a safe place.
GM: And...?
BLACK HOLE: I go to watch the jousting tournament.
GM: Um...er... okay. You and the other PCs go to the joust. Everyone enjoys it, including the King. Afterwards there's a banquet and you see the Chamberlain fussing over the King's food. What do you do?
BLACK HOLE: Is there roast lamb? If there is I eat lots of roast lamb.
2nd PLAYER: You know, I heard that the Chamberlain has sacked the palace cook and appointed his own.
3rd PLAYER: Really? I heard he'd been visiting spice merchants from the Dodgy Kingdom Known For Poisons a lot recently.
BLACK HOLE: Maybe he likes spicy food. Will there be dancing after this banquet?
GM: Sob!

THE DRAMA QUEEN
This type of player takes everything that happens in the game personally. Incredibly, obsessively personally. In-character arguments are seen as personal attacks. Uncomfortable plot twists are viewed as deliberate jibes or malicious bullying. And if the dice keep rolling low – well, that’s because those little pieces of plastic are just spiteful and cruel.

GM: So are you going up river or down river?
DRAMA QUEEN: I say we should go up river.
TOM: I dunno. We got pretty badly chewed up in that last fight with the grizzly bear. Maybe we should go down river and recuperate in the village for a few days.
DICK: Yeah. We need supplies too. Let’s go downriver, stay a couple of days and return.
HARRY: My horse was killed by the bear. I’m on foot unless we go to the village and buy a new one.
DRAMA QUEEN: Oh it’s not fair! You never do what I want to do! You all hate me and want to go down river just to spite me – I just know it! [Runs off sobbing and it takes 30 minutes of ego-massaging to get him back into the game].

THE SECRET SQUIRRELLER
This sort of player loves secrets. He’s obsessed by them. He wants to have lots and lots of his own – and he wants to know everyone else’s. Even when he doesn’t actually HAVE any secrets, he’ll still pass notes to the GM to try and convince the other players that he’s up to something mysterious.

GM: Okay, you go into the nightclub and—
SECRET SQUIRRELLER: Hang on, I’m writing a note... [Hands GM a piece of paper that says "I intend to order real ale at the bar"]
GM: Um... yeah. Okay, the club is fairly crowded, and there’s no immediate sign of the guy you’re trying to find.
2ND PLAYER: I show the barman his photo and ask if he recognises him.
SECRET SQUIRRELLER: I’ll go do the same with the DJ. [Hands GM a piece of paper that says "I’ll request the DJ plays an Eminem track".]

THE EMOTIONAL BLACKMAILER
Many types of players want to dominate the game. Some do it by shouting everyone else down. Some do it by Rules Lawyering or Munchkinism. Some do it by sleeping with the GM! The Emotional Blackmailer, however, attempts to guilt-trip the other players into doing everything their way, usually by threatening to sabotage the campaign.

GM: So are you going up river or down river?
TOM: My Ranger votes we go up river.
DICK: My Cleric also votes we go up river.
HARRY: My Paladin votes we go down river. And if you don’t, then my character is going to leave the party and stay in Camelot forever. You are all remembering, of course, that I have the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, without which you cannot defeat the Dark Lord. So if my paladin leaves, the game will collapse, and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT. Hah!

THE MARY-SUE
All RPG characters are, to a certain extent, wish fulfilment. They are usually stronger, braver and more heroic than the player portraying them – that’s kind of the point. But a Mary-Sue takes wish fulfilment to Olympic Gold Medal winning levels, and regards their character as perfect in every way: charming, witty, an irresistible magnet for the opposite sex, genius level intelligence, a world expert in their field, loved and admired by everyone they meet... They often come with an angsty background and some 'cool' disadvantages to top it all off – such as a non-disfiguring facial scar. This paragon of perfection incarnate is, of course, entirely divorced from any statistics written on the character sheet, and often exists without any actual sign of roleplaying any of these characteristics. The GM and the rest of the players are somehow instinctively meant to know that they are charming, witty, etc, etc. And the Mary-Sue player will out sulk a whole nursery school full of toddlers if their character’s true magnificence is not appreciated!

If you want to check if your characters are Mary-Sues, then try this handy test. It’s designed for writers, but works well for RPG characters too. Apart from the 'how will you die?' bit! here's the link

GM: Okay, why don’t you all introduce your characters to each other?
JANET: My character is an elf called Loreal. He’s middle aged, quite good looking, and is a fur trapper by trade.
JOHN: My character is a healer called Mabeline. She’s a young human, rather plump with long brown hair in braids, and chatters incessantly.
MARY-SUE: I am Pantene Pro V – rightful heir to the kingdom of Sha’m-poo, but deprived of the throne by my evil uncle. I’m regally beautiful and all eyes turn to me as I enter the room. I exude charm. Children and forest animals instinctively like me, and you can feel a shimmering aura of magic about me. You’ll have heard of my stunning talent in playing the harp, and my fighting abilities are the talk of the army.
JANET: Bloody hell! How did you afford all that lot on 100 character points? I could barely scrape together enough for ‘quite good looking’.
JOHN: Yeah, and healing magic ate all of mine. I couldn’t afford that 'aura of magic' one at all.
MARY-SUE: [pouts] Well... um... I didn’t actually spend any on looks or auras... The game system is sooo unfair in character creation!

Top Ten Bad GMs

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:22:55 GMT

The names have been changed to protect the guilty…

1) THE RAILROADER - schools of whales, mysterious currents, enraged grizzly bears and freak lightning storms drove the characters back in the direction of the plot whenever they strayed from it by more than 3 cm. If all that didn't work, then the PCs would fall asleep and upon awakening discover that they had been mysteriously teleported to the location of the next encounter. Or in one case, to another reality entirely.

2) THE CARTOGRAPHER - ran the famous "mapping" game, which is still spoken of in hushed tones at Bristol Uni Gamesoc. Approximately 8 hours of game time (one and a half sessions) was spent mapping an underground complex, with not one living thing in it. The bad guys turned out to be at a different underground complex in the next valley.

3) THE DEVOTED BOYFRIEND – famed for giving out all the best goodies to his girlfriend and telling her bits of the plot out of character, so she'd always be right in-character. The rest of us were expected to believe her every word of wisdom, even when she defected to the enemy side in a war. Just to be sure we got the point, he told us that the enemy had promoted her to Major and he then made her invulnerable to guns, nuclear weapons and the common cold.

4) THE SECRET IDENTITY – runs games where the little old man/other NPC who hired the PCs and who has been useless for 3 or 4 sessions suddenly transforms into a super powerful wizard, or dragon, or superhero, or brother-in-law of the dark Lord, and then proceeds to defeat great Cthulhu in hand to hand combat. Meanwhile the PCs just hang about and watch as they haven't got any skills or spells appropriate to the fight in question (e.g. it is being conducted on another plane of existence).

5) THE STUBBORN BASTARD - a GM so bloody minded that when he accidentally said it was Saturday instead of Sunday and the players queried it, he said "Yes, that's right. It's been Saturday 2 days in a row. It's very mysterious - the whole town is talking about it" and expected them to accept that.

6) THE DICE FIEND – Dice must be rolled for everything and the results of the dice rule utterly, regardless if that is inappropriate (half the session taken up with tracking rolls because he doesn't WANT the players to catch up with the bad guy but they keep making the rolls he asks them for)... or preposterous (a failed Climbing roll means you can't get up a ladder even though you are a professional mountaineer)... or disastrous (half the party dies because he decides to make a spontaneous "will the bridge over the river of lava hold your weight?" roll)... or just plain silly ("On your 3rd day in the desert, you encounter - a stonemason's chisel!"). Also fond of set piece fights between ultra high level NPCs, for which he DOES ALL THE DICE ROLLS THERE AND THEN, while the players slowly fall into a coma due to boredom.

7) THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR – He relies almost entirely on random encounters to fill game time, and doesn't understand why players get bored and frustrated by these, particularly when the plot has a definite goal (e.g. find out who sabotaged the crashed aircraft), and/or when the random encounters are impossible to avoid, simply because they are random (e.g. if you encounter a scripted group of stormtroopers in the woods, you can take precautions to avoid them, but if it is a random group, they just kind of teleport into your path and no amount of scouting, camouflage or stealth will prevent that encounter from happening).

8) THE XP COLLECTOR – who used his high level D&D characters as NPCs in his games, then had them butcher the low level PCs, collect all their magic items and reward himself the experience points for killing them! So he’d turn up to play in someone else’s game with the loot added to his character sheet and gone up a level from the tons of xp he'd given himself...

9) THE PLAYWRIGHT – runs whole sessions where there is not only a rigid script, but it is a script for the NPCs alone, and the PCs may as well have not been there. All the PCs get to do is applaud politely at the actions of all his marvellous NPCs and have the results of their dice rolls ignored if they are inconvenient enough to contradict what he has written in his play... er, plot.

10) THE KIDNAPPER – presents the characters with a scenario that no-one in their right mind would attempt to do (e.g. Attack across the minefield under cover of daylight, paddle over the Pacific in a teaspoon, or take on the Death Star armed only with a small fruit knife). Then, when they refuse, one of them will get kidnapped by the bad guys, thus forcing the others to attack across the minefield, etc etc, in order to rescue the kidnapped character.

NOTE: Although there are 10 in this list, some GMs I know qualify for several categories!

Women in Combat - Special Wargames Rules

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:18:09 GMT

Various people harp on about how women are unsuited for combat positions in the military. Various reasons are given, including: (1) Women are physically smaller and weaker than men; (2) All men are filled with a burning need to protect women, so having women in a unit will cause chaos and (3) Captured women soldiers may be raped by the enemy (who apparently haven't received the memo informing them of reason 2), so best not to put them in harm's way.

Now there are lots of lovely female soldier minis out there these days, such as Copplestone Castings' 'female troopers' or Shadowforge Miniatures 'marine special ops troopers', so it seems a terrible shame that people can't use them in their wargames. I have therefore composed a few special rules and suggestions (based on the above reasoning) to accurately simulate the presence of women soldiers on the battlefield.

1) Physically Smaller. This one is dead easy. Everyone whinges about scale creep – why not take advantage of it? Select you women from a true 25mm scale and your men from a heroic 28mm scale. See how much bigger and more manly your male troopers now look? Makes you feel proud, doesn't it? If that hasn't boosted your ego enough, then give the women soldiers a smaller value of dice to roll in hand to hand combat – say they get to roll d6 whilst their male counterparts get to roll d8. Of course, it makes no difference if they are firing small arms, artillery, etc.

2) All Men Will Protect All Women. You can devastate your enemy by taking advantage of this simple fact. First form an all female unit of special ops soldiers – Stronty Girl's 3rd Handbag and Eyeshadow Brigade. You don't even need miniatures of female troopers – in fact it is better if you don't have any. What you really want is women in flowing floral dresses, women in bikinis to show off their curves, and even a few that are topless or nude, just to prove to onlookers that they are really, really women. After all, you wouldn't want the enemy to mistake them for men in drag! Remember to paint some sort of unit patch or insignia on their handbags or bikini briefs, to show that these are military women, not civilians.

Send your unit of women marching... sorry, skipping gaily… towards the enemy. Broad daylight and bright coloured clothing are essential – these women need to be SEEN. Now, because men want to protect women, the enemy won't dare shoot at them. Should the opposing player be callous enough to break this rule of nature, then he rolls 1d6:

Result 1-3 = The soldier who fired immediately fails a morale check and breaks down weeping with remorse.
Result 4-6 = The other soldiers in his unit are aghast and their protective instincts make them physically rip him to pieces on the spot.
While this is going on, your all-female unit can choose a spot from which they can call back likely looking targets to your artillery or airforce, or can advance to drape themselves decorously over machine-gun nests, perch on the edges of foxholes, sit in the paths of tanks, etc and thus prevent the enemy successfully countering your advancing all-male attack force. A sure-fire winner every time!

3) The Power of the Media. Another useful addition to your combat strength is the 101st Stage Lighting Technicians, Cinema Projectionists and Actors Guild (Mechanised). A unit of these should be positioned a little way behind your front lines. Depending on the weather and time of day, they will need to either erect a huge outdoor cinema screen that can be seen from miles away, or be prepared to project film images onto passing clouds the way Commissioner Gordon does with the Bat Signal.

Whenever the enemy gets within visual distance of the screen/cloud, then a pre-prepared film made by the Actors Guild part of the battalion will be projected. This will be a very realistic and brutal depiction of a male enemy soldier being raped by several of your own male soldiers. As the merest suggestion that women may get raped is enough to block them from being combat troops, when news of this movie reaches the enemy HQ, they will immediately relegate all their male troopers to non-combatant status and you will win by default.