It's strange the conversations you have on rpg.net.  This was the result of one recent one.

(Obviously, the Fraggly ones aren't mine. No infringement intended, yada yada.)


Pick a Silly Creature
When you're playing Fraggle Rock, most people get to be Fraggles.  As everyone knows, Fraggles are the best.  Unfortunately, someone has to play all the other things in the world.  That's just the way it is.  That poor individual is the "Silly Creature".

Defining Your Fragglishness
Write down a very brief description of your Fraggle's basic personality or archetype.  This should be just a couple of words ("idealistic dreamer", "hyperactive and competitive", "the smallest Fraggle", "a devoted friend"). This is your Fragglishness.

Using Your Fragglishness
Whenever you want to do something (see Playing and Singing below), and you can convince the Silly Creature that your Fragglishness would help you do it, you get to roll an extra six-sided die (this is called "the Fraggle die").

Example
Silly Creature: "Junior Gorg tries to grab you! It's going to be Hard to dodge!"
Splork the Fraggle: "Ah, but I'm 'the smallest fraggle', so I can wriggle between his big, bulky fingers and escape!"
Silly Creature: "Sure, add a Fraggle die to your roll."

It's Nice to Have Friends
If you're trying to do something, and the Silly Creature thinks that it is a situation where your friends can help you, then - if they have a useful Fragglishness - you can get Fraggle dice for them, too.  Provided they are willing to help you, of course.  It's Nice to Have Friends!

Even if your friends don't have an appropriate Fragglishness for a task, you can still get a Fraggle die for them if they all agree to help you.  It really is Nice to Have Friends!

Playing and Singing
Whenever a Fraggle wants to do something (or avoid having something happen to them), the Silly Creature decides how hard it will be.

The Fraggle then rolls a number of six-sided diceo, based on how hard the Silly Person decided the task was. Don't forget to roll any bonus dice, such as from Fragglishness, or Friends, as well!

Easy - four dice
Medium - three dice
Hard - two dice
Impossible! - one die

If two or more of the dice come up with the same number, the Fraggle succeeds.  Yay!

Fraggle Adventures
Fraggles are always having adventures.  Whether it be exploring new caves, collecting radishes from the Gorg's garden, visiting the All-Knowing Trash Heap, or even (gulp!) going into Outer Space!  It's the Silly Creature's job to come up with the exciting things that happen on your adventure, but don't forget that it is your job as Fraggles to think of adventurous stuff to do!  Nobody likes a boring Fraggle, after all.

Learning Lessons
The adventures that a Fraggle gets up to teaches them lots of things.  Sometimes these lessons are simple ("Gorgs are mean"),a nd sometimes they aren't ("never assume your own values apply to other people").  When the Silly Creature decides that an adventure is over, they will ask you to write down a lesson that your Fraggle learned.  In future adventures, you can use these lessons to help you do things.  If you come up against a situation where this lesson could help you, you can ask the Silly Creature if it will let you roll an extra die, just like your Fragglishness (you might even get a die for your Fragglishness at the same time!). However, unlike your Fragglishness, which you can use as much as the Silly Creature will let you, you can only use each lesson you have learned once per adventure.

I know True Blood isn't to all tastes - there's one person at least reading this who hates it - but I've found the mix of schlocky modern horror and way over-the-top soap opera to be good fun.

But this?

"sources confirm that actress Brit Morgan — best known from ABC Family’s short-lived drama The Middleman — has scored the pivotal role of Debbie Pelt, the psycho ex girlfriend of werewolf Alcide."

Is awesome news: Brit Morgan was one of the best things on the wonderful Middleman, and it should be great fun to see the zany but loveable Lacey re-cast as a crazy True Blood villain.

(also: Debbie Pelt as a werewolf's lover? That's some comic-book levels of goofy, right there)

Played two more games on the final day of the convention.

( Final Spoilers )

I had a good time, though this Arcanacon definitely lacked a "wow" game, for me. There were several good games (and several not-good ones) but nothing that I'll still be talking about in years to come.

Only played two games this time. Spent the evening session watching zombie movies and eating tasty food.

( Possible Spoilers )

Played three more games.

( More spoilers )

Flight down was uneventful, though delayed twenty minutes. Accommodation this year was a bit of a last minute thing and so is further from the con and a lot more basic than usual. On the other hand, two of us are sharing a room for $80 a night so you can't really complain about the price.

Arcanacon is at its usual location, though there is construction going on there that has changed the layout a bit. Rego went smoothly. Canteen seems to be working well too. The pies this year are a cut above the usual convention fare.

Played three games:

( Spoilers! )

I gotta admit, first impressions of Left 4 Dead is that it is pretty darn awesome.

Have to see how the gameplay holds up, but this is the first pure-FPS since Doom 2 that I've really been excited about.

Just managed to get a copy of Space: 1889 for $10 plus postage.

Jolly good show, what?

I spent a lot of time on the weekend watching DVDs (most of them pretty terrible, to be honest), and some of what I watched got me thinking about shows that have a "core mystery".

I don't mean shows like CSI, which are about solving the crime of the week, or even like Veronica Mars, where a single mystery links a season arc.  I mean shows that are built on a fundamental question: stuff like Lost ("WTF is with this island?"), The 4400 ("why did seven decades of missing persons suddenly reappear?"), or The Prisoner ("who is behind the village, and what do they want from number six?").

It occurs to me that there are basically two things that such shows need to do:

1.  present a sufficiently intriguing core mystery that people initially tune in
2.  provide a sufficient sense of progress and purpose that people keep tuning in, without blowing your mystery completely or descending into random plot twists for the sake of it

The second point is the harder one to get right, of course.  To my mind, none of the three shows I mentioned above succeeded in this task (and the 2009 remake of "The Prisoner" manages to screw up #1, as well).

Anyone got a show they feel has successfully pulled off this kind of thing?  Not a movie or mini-series, since that's a lot easier, but a full-on TV series?

Yahoo7 'news' is reporting on Hulk Hogan getting assaulted by Ric Flair at a press conference. "Is it real or is it fake?" They ask.

A better question might be "What does Hogan know, that he managed to get this into 'real' media?".

Gotta give the guy his due: he knows how to get attention.

Enjoy Stupid Comics.

If you liked the Starship Troopers movie, then check out Starship Troopers 3: Marauder. Same gonzo news sequences, same godawful military tactics, same "Yay! Fascism!" subtext/maintext (now with a creamy fundamentalist centre!), same wooden Casper Van Dien acting skills.

Sheer awesomeness. All of it.

Arrowflight character creation steps ...

1. Choose race.
2. Point buy attributes.
3. Randomly roll your social class (which can do anything from triple or halve your starting gold), whether you're from a rural or urban environment, and what your apprenticeship was. This will determine your background skills.

Huh.

Fortunately, step 4 gives you discretionary points to assign to your skills, so if you want to play say a stalwart fighter-type, then you don't have to worry too much about rolling a background as domestic help ... but wow, nice way to undermine the level playing field of point buy, folks.

And let's not forget the poor player who had this awesome idea for a knightly character, only to discover that his lot in life is as a scullion. I mean, sure, a case can be made that these rolls might inspire some cool character ideas as you struggle to match your idea of a knight with your background as a potato-peeling indentured servant, but I'd argue that that ought to be something a player chooses to explore, rather than having it thrust upon them, when really what they wanted to do was play Sir Shiny McMetalpants, blue-blooded courtly knight.

(Haven't got to the meat of the actual system, yet, but am also very bemused that the "evil" country that is the bane of the PCs homeland is not actually on the setting map in the book.)

Edit: just noticed that there is an option for the GM to choose the character's social class, and the player to choose their environment and apprenticeship. Which is a big improvement, though it still doesn't answer the question of why characters with a noble background get 3 more skills and 6 times the gold as those from an indentured background. I'd want to alter that, myself, if I were running the game.

You know, having got to page 56, I tend to think that Spawn of Fashan has been somewhat maligned.

I mean sure, it's a jumble of inconsistent subsystems, liberally sprinkled with acronyms and replete with fiddly over-complications. And it has some crazy terminology and wacky character generation tables.

But that just makes it like 90% of the other RPGs published in 1981, really. And no worse than say Fringeworthy, which is much more recent.

There are actually some good ideas in here, from time to time. The core attack roll mechanics are relatively interesting, if rather arbitrary in places. And there are some "I can see what you were going for, but ..." moments, too (the damage roll is hysterically over-engineered, for instance).

But where Spawn really falls down is in the presentation and organisation stakes: it's a massive, dense wall of text, which intergrated systems split over several different sections of the document, important definitions buried in the middle of paragraphs (despite there actually being a definitions section) and an earnestly self-important tone that has you alternately giggling and rolling your eyes.

Oh, and the example of play. Oh man, the example of play ...

I finally made a start on reading my copy.

We really need to do a 'Weird Game Wednesday' of this, some time, even if only so I can make people flip out at the screamingly sexist gender-based stat modifications. And because I want to make people calculate their "Cling to Life SR". And their "A/A Modifier" (not, apparently, anything to do with aerial opponents). And to force them to abbreviate "Armor Class" as "AMC" instead of "AC", because that proves that we're totally not ripping off AD&D, even if our system works the same way.

To be fair, some of the things the game gets criticised for are a function of it being intended as a toolbox, not a complete game-with-setting ... on the other hand, more than once I've thought "OK, you say this is setting-specific, but would it have killed you to include an example?". And some of the criticisms - such as the woeful organisation - are entirely justified.

But yeah, this could be even more fun than Fringeworthy was. And we all know special that experience proved to be.

Look, I get that the Gencon Oz scheduling/rego system is different to that of standard Australian cons. But you know what? It's really not that difficult. In fact, some ridiculous number of people manage to use exactly the same system, with something on the order of a hundred times as many events to look at, every year for Gencon Indy.

There are sound reasons on the con-org side why this is the way Gencon Oz does rego. It's very unlikely to change. Spend a few minutes learning the system and you'll find it works perfectly well.

The RPG: Age of Ruin
What it is: A pretty gonzo, small press, post-apocalyptic RPG published in 1990
What I saw: A race of psionic bad guys whose advanced mental mutation has caused the frontal lobes of their brains to grow, such that (and I quote) "their forehead looks like a butt".
And yes, they are listed in the game's bestiary under the title "Buttheads".

Went to Sydney for 5 days last week. Caught up with my sister, and with lotusvine. Also saw G.I.Joe, which was exactly what I expected it to be (loud, dumb, fun) and the stage show Avenue Q.

While "The Internet is for Porn" is the part of the show that has most penetrated the online zeitgeist, Avenue Q has a bit more to offer than that single (admittedly amusing) ditty.

It's often funny, regularly obscene, and definitely worth a look. But then, any musical that can work in a song about "Schadenfreude" is OK by me :)

I also tried reading the first of the Dresden Files novel. I may lose my geek credentials for this, but I gave up halfway through. Pedestrian plot, and a pervasive "hur hur hur boobies!" kind of sexuality that drove me up the wall. I much preferred the TV show, which felt less like it was written by a 16-year old.

Conversely, on the train to work this morning I started Blood Price, by Tanya Huff (on which the uneven but entertaining Blood Ties TV show was based). It's what I'd hoped Dresden would be: a light, noir-and-supernatural-tinged tale with fun characters.

There are books which are just not very good ... they have wonky characterisation, or lack internal consistency, or just aren't evry interesting. And that's annoying (especially if you paid the exoirbatant Australian retail price for them). But ultimately, you shrug and move on.

And then there are books which are good ... they have solid characterisation, an interesting story, well-constructed prose ... which suddenly turn around and throw up a scene or plot point which takes all that goodness you've been enjoying, tears it to pieces, and urinates all over the remains. And it's far, far worse than a book that was just never very good to begin with, because you were invested in what was happening. You've actually lost something that, until that point, you had gained.

In other words, it's the kind of thing to make you write obscure, nerdragey LJ posts at 7:30 in the morning. Damn you, Kate Elliott and your novel The Law of Becoming, for giving me the literary equivalent of a punch to the nuts.

We came to Australia 23 years ago, but I'd never been to the Northern Territory or to South Australia. I've now eliminated the first of these two omissions (the second will hopefully be eliminated later this year), by coming to Darwin.

Now, I'm here on what the tour company calls a five day tour, but really it's three, since the first day has very little scheduled on it - just a meal at a local restaurant, really - and the last has nothing at all. However, the second through fourth days will all I think be pretty full-on: certainly they all start early enough, with the latest departure time being 7:20am.

I'm typing this on the evening of the first day, having flown out to Darwin on the 9am flight. It takes about 4 hours to get here. Wasn't a bad flight at all, and because it is dry season here, there was almost no cloud for most of it, which meant that you could see the whole countryside out of the windows of the plane.

I had a brief wander around Darwin this afternoon, after arriving ... just seems a pretty standard small city/large town, really. But then, I'm not here for Darwin itself, but for the destinations of the next three days: Katherine Gorge, Kakadu, and Litchfield. Should be fun. I plan at the moment to record each day as I go, though that may change depending on how exhausted I am each evening!

Photos for all of the below are here.


Katherine Gorge
Well, the first day of touring is over, and as I suspected, it was a long one ... about 14 hours between departure and return. We set off in the pre-dawn, heading south to Katherine, which is about 3 hours drive. That was the longest stint of driving for the day until the ride home, but it was a big day on the bus, since most of the stops were over half an hour apart. In this case, we pretty much just drove straight through to the gorge, with only one half-hour stop for breakfast. I bought groceries from the local Woolies yesterday, so my breakfast was a couple of cheese and salami sandwiches (this was also my lunch, and my dinner, though I livened dinner up a bit by also having a cup-a-soup). We had a two-hour cruise in the Gorge, which was pretty cool, and certainly an opportunity for lots of photos. I bet it is even more spectacular just after the wet is over, but it is pretty lush even in the middle of the dry, like we are now.

After the gorge tour, we had a lunch break, then drove for about an hour to Edith Falls for a swim, though only about half the people actually went swimming. The rest of just sought out some shade and relaxed. Then it was on to a quick pub stop (for the drinkers, since none of the other places we'd been to were licensed), followed by the Adelaide River War Cemetery, and then back to the hotel.


Kakadu
Another long day, though not quite as long as the one before, and with a slightly higher proportion of time spent off the bus, to boot. Start was very early once more, since Kakadu is also a roughly three hour drive from Darwin. We were taken first to Nourlangie Rock to see Aboriginal rock art. I'm the first to admit that I don't find this art very appealing as art, but as a form of cultural communication, it's pretty interesting - so it's good to see this kind of thing with a guide, who can explain what it is you are looking at. Information like 'evil figures are always drawn with only four fingers', and 'evil figures always have inhuman heads so they won't look like anyone in the tribe' are kind of important things to understand when viewing what's been painted.

After the rock art, we took a walk up to the lookout, which had some good views, then headed on to the aboriginal cultural centre. I'd hoped to find a book there on edible and medicinal plants (useful for gaming!) but there wasn't anything at a price point I was willing to pay.

After lunch, we headed up to Yellow Billabong for a wildlife cruise. We saw lots of crocs, and many kinds of birds. It was pretty cool. We even saw two crocodiles have a brief tussle, though alas it was over before anyone could have snapped a photo of it.

Then it was time for the long haul home again (though at least this time our hotel wasn't the very last one on the list!). All in all, a good day.


Litchfield
My last 'real' day in Darwin began at the comparatively decadent hour of 7:20am. We set out southwards once more, to Adelaide River, where - for the first and only time in these three days - the tour included an 'optional' activity. Since the options were to do the activity, or sit in a coffee shop and wait for an hour, I chose to fork over my $26 for the 'jumping crocodiles' cruise.

I'm glad I did. Although the premise of the tour is a little gimmicky (they hang chops out on the end of a fishing pole and coax crocs to 'jump' out of the water at them), it does allow you to see these beasts much closer, and much more vividly, than if they are just swimming near the boat you're on, as was the case yesterday.

After that, we headed up to view some termite mounds - including one that was 5 storeys high - and then spent some time at three waterfalls. The first waterfall was only a viewing, but at the second and third there was the option of swimming, if you wanted. Instead, I did some bushwalking at the first, and read a book at the second. Then it was back to Darwin itself, arriving at the relatively early hour of 6:30pm. I gotta say, after the last two days, the more relaxed schedule of this excursion was a very welcome change.


And now I'm posting this from home, having flown back this afternoon and spent the last hour or so getting the photos in order. :)