Been playing a fair bit of Doom 2 lately (I blame Kikoskia's Doom 3 Let's Play on Youtube). Have even dusted off the old level-making skills.

Glad to say that they seem to have held up OK :)

Up Jumped the Devil is a "neo-gothic musical" based on the songs of Nick Cave.

It'll be running at the Cremorne in late October.

Anyone interested?

An unusually abbreviated con report:

Went to Canberra for Phenomenon 2009. Con seemed well-organised. Plenty of restaurants, shops and accommodation nearby. Canteen at the con was limited to junk food, but looked reasonably priced, and the large numbers of nearby food places and a supermarket made this a minor issue, at best.

Played 8 games. The stand-out was "Poppa", a game of sibling rivalry in the mob. Much fun. Several others were 80-90% of the way to being solid games, but possessed significant flaws of one kind or another, particularly in their endings (too many "find the magic bullet" scenarios), and in their characters (I played in one game where, after delivering some exposition at the start, my character possessed no useful function for the rest of the three hours. In "outcome oriented" games, as most of these were, that's a major flaw.

Despite this, I had a good time, and will be attending Pheno again next year (hopefully with a full team, instead of a partial one).

So I'm watching Zombies: The Beginning, and the movie starts with a woman, the sole survivor of the transport ship "Dark Star", being discovered adrift at sea and taken to hospital. There, she has a terrible dream about turning into a zombie. Then she appears before the senior execs of the company for whom she works, who demand to know why the "Dark Star" made an unscheduled stop at a deserted island, and why she subsequently destroyed the ship. The woman spins a tale of zombie mayhem, and the execs are not impressed. However, several months later, they approach her: it seems contact has been lost with a research facility that was looking into the island, and they want her to go with a crack team of mercenaries to find out what happened ...

... is this sounding familiar to anyone else? :)





(half the dialog in the boardroom scene is word for word identical. 'tis funny as heck to watch)

Eurovision final this weekend. Get your Eurotrash fix for the year!

'nuff said, really.

Starfleet
(arrangement by Brian Frickin' May, no less)

Send a message out across the sky
Alien raiders just past Gemini
Who will come and save us now?
Who can defend us from their power?

Starfleet Starfleet
Starfleet Starfleet

Tell the people back at Earth control
Send Starfleet legions to save our souls
Always daring and courageous
Ooh Only they can save us

Starfleet Starfleet
Starfleet Starfleet
Starfleet

Starfleet Starfleet Starfleet Starfleet

Send a message back to Earth control
Send Starfleet legions to save our souls
Always daring and courageous
Only you only you can save us

Starfleet Starfleet
Starfleet Starfleet
Starfleet

The closing theme of the awesometastic Japanese puppet-based SF opus "Star Fleet: X-Bomber". See and hear the full glory here.

The world needs more shows with interstellar sailing ships, bad-guys who have talking, mask-like symbiotes (and half their brain exposed), and puppets who look like a clean-cut Che Guevara.

Taking your episode about meat pies, and making it themed around Sweeney Todd? Genius.

Saturday afternoon I caught up with mobdrazhar, who was visiting Brisbane. We had lunch, and I introduced him to Ring of Honor.

Saturday night was the Deus sandpit game. We fought zombies, mostly, with a dash of bickering amongst ourselves to break things up. Elite zombies are a tad tiresome to fight. Spectres that cause our Necromancer to nearly drown himself, on the other hand, are quite amusing :)

Sunday afternoon was the Pathfinder game. To my utter lack of surprise, half the players forgot to show up. We played anyway. There was a fight with Dire Rats (a 1st level Rite of Passage, so I was pleased) and some fun creepiness as we explored a farm where things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. I've set up a wiki for the campaign.

The rest of the weekend, I caught up with or checked out TV shows: Primeval had a so-so start to season 3, I thought, but has really raised the ante in the last two episodes. Castle is an amusing murder mystery / comedy series starring Nathan Fillion. Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire is an awesomely silly fantasy spoof ... far more satisfying than the recent Red Dwarf not-so-special. The Unusuals, on which spyscribe worked, is a cop show drama/comedy with some fun characters and entertaining writing. Good stuff, all of them. In particular, I encourage people to check out The Unusuals, since spyscribe is awesome-on-toast. Definitely not just ordinary toast, either, but the good stuff, like Turkish bread or ciabatta.

Brisbane Powerhouse presents
The Restaged Histories Project: The Greater Plague
Wed 22 Apr - Sat 2 May 09 (no shows on Mondays or Tuesdays)

Experience a nasty new twist to vintage storytelling.

Pop karaoke, puerile silliness, dress ups, fat suits, and the well choreographed dance of the undead, send imaginations into the riotous world of The Greater Plague. It’s 17th Century London.

Theophilia is quarantined and waiting for death. Pregnant, half mad, and hindered at every step by her young sister, she remains prisoner for 40 days at the mercy of a pair of gruesome gatekeepers.

------------------------------

Tickets are $29. Anyone interested in going?

Sure, everyone else is already linking to Susan Boyle's performance in Britain's Got Talent.

But man, there's a good reason for that.

I went to Melbourne for Conquest – the Easter Games Convention. Much fun (and some pain) ensued.

( Don't read behind the cut if you don't want spoilers, or if you ran one of the games and don't like criticism. We didn't enjoy everything we played, and I'm not going to pretend we did. Also, this is LONG. You have been warned. )

All in all, it was a great weekend. Looking forward to Pheno in June!

I think I might need to buy a copy of Stalin vs Martians when it comes out.

Wow ... they dropped the ball completely.

Sometimes, when you revisit something you loved as a child, it doesn't hold up that well. Beloved memories can be tarnished by the realisation that something you enjoyed as a kid actually isn't all that good.

But sometimes, you read it or watch it and you're ten years old, again.

Swallows and Amazons forever!

You know, given the plethora of "Let's Play" videos on Youtube that are insightful and/or entertaining examinations of their subject game, I may never need to actually play a computer game again. :)

To all writers and producers of Zombie movies, shows, books and graphic novels.

I'd just like to bring it to your attention that when I seek out a Zombie product, I do so not because I want a rumination on how the real monsters are we humans.

I do so because I want to see some frickin' zombies, ripping someone's frickin' face off.


(James Farr gets it. Everyone else, not so much.)

Intended as a "impromptu" or "pick-up" game, when other plans fall through. Examples below are for a fantasy setting, but could be used for SF, horror, supers, etc.

Universal Mechanic: Only PCs roll dice. Whenever a PC wants to achieve something, or avoid something bad happening to them, the player rolls a GM-specified number of d6. As long as the player doesn't roll any 1s, they succeed.

Standard Checks
No roll - Routine – no significant change of failure.
1d6 - Easy – straightforward, but a measurable chance of failure exists
3d6 - Challenging - chances of success and failure are roughly equal
6d6 - Difficult – only a trained practitioner is likely to succeed
10d6 - Spectacular – only one of the best in the world could succeed
15d6 - Crazy – you want to do what?


PCs
Have a Role: describes how they do things (a 'wizard' uses magic, for example). PCs should describe their actions in a suitable manner for their Role.
Have multiple Traits: PCs start with 5 points of traits. They can have multiple points in a trait (e.g. "Berserk Rage 2"). You can 'spend' a trait after a failed check, so long as the trait seems relevant to the test (GM's call). Each point in a trait lets you re-roll one die that came up with a '1'. However, you have to use all your points in a trait at once (so if you rolled only one '1', and spent a 3 point trait, 2 of those points would be 'lost'). You can only use one trait per check.
Traits reset after each session. You can also reset a trait by good role-playing, or by introducing a cool complication for the PCs. (GM's call)
PCs generally earn 1 extra trait point per session.
All traits are subject to GM approval.


Monsters
Have 4 stats:
Attack – number of dice PC must roll not to be hurt, methods of attack
Defence – number of dice PC must roll to hurt it, defence methods
Hits – how many successful attacks are needed to defeat it
Specials – special attack options in place of normal attack

Example monsters:

Goblin
Attack – 1 (crude weapon)
Defence – 2 (shield, armor scraps, nimble)
Hits – 1
Specials – none

Dragon
Attack – 6 (teeth, claws, tail)
Defence – 8 (scales, size)
Hits – 10
Specials – breathe fire: Attack 4, affects 1d6 targets

Traps are effectively monsters that attack once and then vanish.

Pit Trap
Attack - 3 (fall)
Specials - affects every PC in the front row of the party


Other Challenges
PCs go first, in clockwise order, starting from the GM's chair.
Monsters then go, in descending order of Attack score.


Other Challenges
The GM assigns the difficulty to overcome the task (in terms of dice).
e.g. "Getting past the locked door is a 3d6 check".
PCs then describe a Role-appropriate means of accomplishing the task.
A "Thief" might pick the lock.
A "Barbarian" might smash the door.
A "Wizard" might turn into gas and seep through the crack at the bottom of the door, then open it from the other side.


Damage to PCs
If a PC fails a check against a monster's attack, they suffer 1 point of damage for every '1' they rolled.
The PC must then make a choice: they can collapse unconscious, in which case they are out of this fight but not in danger of dying, or they can try to remain fighting.
If the PC chooses the latter option, they must roll a number of d6 equal to their current damage level. If they succeed, they continue to fight, unimpaired. If they fail (roll any 1s), they are dying and collapse unconscious immediately. They must make the same roll again each round thereafter. If they fail, they die.
Another PC can stabilise a dying PC by spending their action to tend the injured character and making a successful test using the same number of d6 as the dying character's wound level. A stabilised PC need
e.g. Boffit the Fighter rolls three 1s on a defence roll. He had already suffered 1 damage, so this brings his damage to 4. He must roll a 4d6 test to keep fighting. If he fails, he is dying, and must roll a successful 4d6 check each round to stay alive. Anyone trying to stabilise Boffit must make a successful 4d6 check to do so.
All unconscious (but not dead) characters regain consciousness at the end of the fight.


Healing
Rate of healing depends on the tone of the game and the genre being played. "Whatever seems appropriate", in other words. Yes, that's vague, but this is supposed to be a pick-up game anyway :)

Pointed out to me by Eastern Standard.

From the always-awesome Fauxcon.