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. :)

On Thursday, I took the bus up to Noosa to spend a couple of days with my sister and her fiance. En route, I ploughed my way through Bad Monkeys, which had an interesting premise and a sparkling beginning, but to my mind went off the rails in the last 50 pages or so.

While in Noosa, I introduced my sister to Dexter, which she seemed to like, even though she kept covering her eyes. :)

On the way home, I read Dead Air, which like many novels by Iain Banks is more about the characters and their reactions to the situations of their lives than being heavily plot-driven. This one suffers a bit from the protaganist's voice often sounding too much like Banks's own (Banks is a well-known leftie, and so is the central character of this book). Still, it has plenty of Banks's dry wit, and a reasonably upbeat if somewhat disreputable tone, so I enjoyed it.

Saturday night, I went out to dinner at Grub Street Cafe, with bens_manifesto, novaness, and others. It was my second visit to the restaurant, and on both occasions the food has been excellent. It's available for private bookings of 10+ people, with a 4-course meal and coffee running to about $80, and it's certainly worth a look.

In other news, I purchased Fallout 3. And then a video card so I could run it. I foresee many lost hours in my future :)

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.