And yes, we actually did that once. Fail a SAN roll, remove an article of clothing. :)
Friday, May 29, 2015
In which I am made (in)famous
Leeman Kessler at Ask Lovecraft answers one of my questions.
And yes, we actually did that once. Fail a SAN roll, remove an article of clothing. :)
And yes, we actually did that once. Fail a SAN roll, remove an article of clothing. :)
Monday, May 25, 2015
On writing
One of the reasons I started this blog was an attempt to get into the habit of writing something every days. As you can tell, that's not happening. Though I am pleased that I am posting more than once in a while.
What I really want to do is write science fiction and/or fantasy fiction. My brain is full of ideas. The problem has always been getting them out of my brain and down on paper. Or electrons as the case may be. So by getting into the habit of blogging I am hoping it will carry over into the habit of writing fiction.
My main problem with fiction writing is that while I am very good at characterization and world building I stink at coming up with an original plot. My characters and backgrounds are lush and realistic and full of detail. My plots, however come across as boring and derivative. Sure I understand there are so many basic plot ideas out there but I can never seem to come up with that twist to make mine unique.
I am wondering if working with some sort of writing collaborator, ideally one good at plots but iffy on characters/backgrounds, may be a good solutions.
What I really want to do is write science fiction and/or fantasy fiction. My brain is full of ideas. The problem has always been getting them out of my brain and down on paper. Or electrons as the case may be. So by getting into the habit of blogging I am hoping it will carry over into the habit of writing fiction.
My main problem with fiction writing is that while I am very good at characterization and world building I stink at coming up with an original plot. My characters and backgrounds are lush and realistic and full of detail. My plots, however come across as boring and derivative. Sure I understand there are so many basic plot ideas out there but I can never seem to come up with that twist to make mine unique.
I am wondering if working with some sort of writing collaborator, ideally one good at plots but iffy on characters/backgrounds, may be a good solutions.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Gaming and PDFs (or what happened to my bank account?)
Last month there was a discussion on the Yog-Sothoth.com Breakfast Club podcast about how PDF files are used in role-playing games. The general opinion is that they are rapidly replacing dead tree versions of rulebooks and, especially, supplements as they are cheaper and take up less space. It was also pointed out that a great many people nowadays buy gaming materials not necessarily to actually play the game but to read the books for entertainment purposes.
Yesterday, I purchased the Shadowrun 4e Bundle of Holding. The month before I bought the Ars Magica 5e Bundle of Holding. For those not familiar with the Bundle of Holding, it is a website that sells bundles of various role-playing gaming materials at very low prices and even then a portion of what you pay goes to support a charity chosen by the game designer/company. For Shadowrun it was the Electronic Frontier Foundation and for Ars Magica it was Gutenberg.org, though the charities don't necessarily match so nicely to the games as they do in these cases. You can pay more than the minimum if you like and the extra all goes to the charity. It's a great deal, you get cheap gaming materials and support charity.
Now I haven't played Shadowrun since the FASA first edition came out back in the mists of time and I have no plans to in the immediate future. I've never played Ars Magica though I have always thought it was a very well designed game. And these are just a couple of the bundles I have bought in recent months. Like the Yoggies posited above, I got them as reading/entertainment material and a large part of the reason I did so was that it was convenient to do so. I have neither the space nor the money to get hard copies of all the gaming stuff I have bought this way.
It's not just through Bundle of Holding too. I've got an account on DriveThruRPG and I am often on the site looking for deals. I recently grabbed some 6mm Napoleonic miniatures* rules through their sister site Wargame Vault at half off the regular PDF price.
If it wasn't for the technology of the PDF format and the tablet e-reader I would not be able to enjoy these hobbies as fully. And yes, just reading the rules for entertainment is part of enjoying the hobby. I joked in the title about how this has hurt my bank account but in truth it barely makes a dent in it. If I bought all of these rules the old way as dead tree books it truly would have caused financial distress.
Which raises the question on the flip-side, would I have bought them at all then? To a certain extent many of these were impulse buys. I get an email from one of the websites with their latest offerings and think to myself "What a deal!" and break out the credit card. I doubt I would buy a whole bunch of Shadowrun or Ars Magica books if I was just browsing at the friend local gaming store. For a gamer I can be depressingly financially responsible.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes a chicken and the egg problem. So I've decided to stop worrying about it. I am happy, the game companies and e-gaming websites are happy and where applicable the charities are happy. Wins for everybody.
* Yes, 6mm. I really like that scale for historical wargaming. You can actually get the whole sweep of a large battle for a comparatively small sum of money. Plus I enjoy the challenge of painting minis that small. What can I say? I'm weird.
Yesterday, I purchased the Shadowrun 4e Bundle of Holding. The month before I bought the Ars Magica 5e Bundle of Holding. For those not familiar with the Bundle of Holding, it is a website that sells bundles of various role-playing gaming materials at very low prices and even then a portion of what you pay goes to support a charity chosen by the game designer/company. For Shadowrun it was the Electronic Frontier Foundation and for Ars Magica it was Gutenberg.org, though the charities don't necessarily match so nicely to the games as they do in these cases. You can pay more than the minimum if you like and the extra all goes to the charity. It's a great deal, you get cheap gaming materials and support charity.
Now I haven't played Shadowrun since the FASA first edition came out back in the mists of time and I have no plans to in the immediate future. I've never played Ars Magica though I have always thought it was a very well designed game. And these are just a couple of the bundles I have bought in recent months. Like the Yoggies posited above, I got them as reading/entertainment material and a large part of the reason I did so was that it was convenient to do so. I have neither the space nor the money to get hard copies of all the gaming stuff I have bought this way.
It's not just through Bundle of Holding too. I've got an account on DriveThruRPG and I am often on the site looking for deals. I recently grabbed some 6mm Napoleonic miniatures* rules through their sister site Wargame Vault at half off the regular PDF price.
If it wasn't for the technology of the PDF format and the tablet e-reader I would not be able to enjoy these hobbies as fully. And yes, just reading the rules for entertainment is part of enjoying the hobby. I joked in the title about how this has hurt my bank account but in truth it barely makes a dent in it. If I bought all of these rules the old way as dead tree books it truly would have caused financial distress.
Which raises the question on the flip-side, would I have bought them at all then? To a certain extent many of these were impulse buys. I get an email from one of the websites with their latest offerings and think to myself "What a deal!" and break out the credit card. I doubt I would buy a whole bunch of Shadowrun or Ars Magica books if I was just browsing at the friend local gaming store. For a gamer I can be depressingly financially responsible.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes a chicken and the egg problem. So I've decided to stop worrying about it. I am happy, the game companies and e-gaming websites are happy and where applicable the charities are happy. Wins for everybody.
* Yes, 6mm. I really like that scale for historical wargaming. You can actually get the whole sweep of a large battle for a comparatively small sum of money. Plus I enjoy the challenge of painting minis that small. What can I say? I'm weird.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Quote of the Day
"After all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite." --Winston Churchill
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Axioms of Administration
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Petty power corrupts all out of proportion to actual power.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Petty power corrupts all out of proportion to actual power.
Eric Flint strikes again
I really don't have anything to add so I am just going to post a link to Eric Flint's exquisite rant about the alleged Social Justice Warrior control of science fiction & fantasy publishing and fandom.
I've been a fan of Flint's fiction for quite a while (Please write more Joe's World books, Eric!) and am rapidly becoming a huge fan of his blogging. This post and his first one on the Hugos are enough that I plan on nominating for Best Fan Writer next year.
I've been a fan of Flint's fiction for quite a while (Please write more Joe's World books, Eric!) and am rapidly becoming a huge fan of his blogging. This post and his first one on the Hugos are enough that I plan on nominating for Best Fan Writer next year.
Civilization and its discontents
(With apologies to Sigmund Freud.)
I've been a big fan of the PC computer game Civilization ever since the original version way back in 1991. I think I've played just about every version that has come out since and while there have obviously been improvements over the intervening 24 years some editions were better than others, and to my mind Civ5 was the pinnacle of the series.
So when the science fiction version Civilization: Beyond Earth came out and it was based on the Civ5 engine I was originally very pumped. Then I got a copy.
There are some definite improvements there. I like the tech web rather the old tech tree which helps make every game different. And I like the idea of affinities where by the decisions you make in game and technologies you learn have an effect on your units and what you can and cannot build. And I liked that you had control of how your colony starts out by being able to decide on the load out of your space ship. Various types of satellites as units is also a good addition for a science fiction game.
But in many ways I felt it was something of a step back. The fact that there are only eight playable factions compared to the 30 or so of Civ5 limits game play choices at the start. Not to mention it gets redundant seeing the same faces over and over again among the computer opponents.
The stations of C:BE are supposed to be the equivalent of Civ5's city-states but they are much less interesting. Unlike the city-states which have territory and units and do things the stations just sort of sit there and wait for you to either trade with them or attack them.
And while I like the tech tree and affinities as I said earlier, it also became fairly easy to exploit the system to get the biggest advantages towards winning by ignoring techs that favor affinities you aren't interested in in favor of those that you are.
Plus while the diplomacy AI in C:BE is definitely improved over Civ5 it's still a bit...quirky. In my most recent game I was twice condemned by Polystrilia even though they had a friendly attitude towards me. Cynics could say something about realpolitik at this point but it just struck me as odd.
And the less said about the dark grey on black mini-map the better.
In short, I've been getting bored with the game.
Then yesterday 2K and Firaxis announced the first expansion called Rising Tides and I perked up. Don't get me wrong. I doubt this is a panacea. But it sounds like a good first step. They are adding more factions (though only four?) and added new units and rules for the oceans and new terrain types, all of which can only add to the game's enjoyment. Rules to make gathering alien artifacts more important seem to me a great way to exploit one of the uniquely SFnal aspects of the game. And I very much like the idea of new units that exploit having a wider base of affinities rather than homing in on one as is the tendency now.
True, there is nothing in the press release addressing my complaints about the stations but I can hope and that complaint is really rather minor I must admit. But overall this expansion looks like a big step in the right direction and when it comes out in the fall I hope it will re-ignite my enjoyment of the game.
****************************************
One final note about the game play of C:BE that I find a bit irritating, namely that unless you choose a satellite in your initial load out you have to completely explore every aspect of the physical geography of the new world. In the earlier science fiction attempt at Civ, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri this made sense in the games back story as everyone had to make an emergency landing on the planet to a shipboard disaster before they could scan the world. But in a controlled colonization situation it seems to me that the various colonists would take the time to orbit and scan the world before landing, if for no other reason than to help pick a site. I get that discovering the geography of the world is part of the fun of the game but realistically any future space colonists would at least know where the shorelines and major mountains of a new world is.
Yes, I know I'm over-thinking it.
I've been a big fan of the PC computer game Civilization ever since the original version way back in 1991. I think I've played just about every version that has come out since and while there have obviously been improvements over the intervening 24 years some editions were better than others, and to my mind Civ5 was the pinnacle of the series.
So when the science fiction version Civilization: Beyond Earth came out and it was based on the Civ5 engine I was originally very pumped. Then I got a copy.
There are some definite improvements there. I like the tech web rather the old tech tree which helps make every game different. And I like the idea of affinities where by the decisions you make in game and technologies you learn have an effect on your units and what you can and cannot build. And I liked that you had control of how your colony starts out by being able to decide on the load out of your space ship. Various types of satellites as units is also a good addition for a science fiction game.
But in many ways I felt it was something of a step back. The fact that there are only eight playable factions compared to the 30 or so of Civ5 limits game play choices at the start. Not to mention it gets redundant seeing the same faces over and over again among the computer opponents.
The stations of C:BE are supposed to be the equivalent of Civ5's city-states but they are much less interesting. Unlike the city-states which have territory and units and do things the stations just sort of sit there and wait for you to either trade with them or attack them.
And while I like the tech tree and affinities as I said earlier, it also became fairly easy to exploit the system to get the biggest advantages towards winning by ignoring techs that favor affinities you aren't interested in in favor of those that you are.
Plus while the diplomacy AI in C:BE is definitely improved over Civ5 it's still a bit...quirky. In my most recent game I was twice condemned by Polystrilia even though they had a friendly attitude towards me. Cynics could say something about realpolitik at this point but it just struck me as odd.
And the less said about the dark grey on black mini-map the better.
In short, I've been getting bored with the game.
Then yesterday 2K and Firaxis announced the first expansion called Rising Tides and I perked up. Don't get me wrong. I doubt this is a panacea. But it sounds like a good first step. They are adding more factions (though only four?) and added new units and rules for the oceans and new terrain types, all of which can only add to the game's enjoyment. Rules to make gathering alien artifacts more important seem to me a great way to exploit one of the uniquely SFnal aspects of the game. And I very much like the idea of new units that exploit having a wider base of affinities rather than homing in on one as is the tendency now.
True, there is nothing in the press release addressing my complaints about the stations but I can hope and that complaint is really rather minor I must admit. But overall this expansion looks like a big step in the right direction and when it comes out in the fall I hope it will re-ignite my enjoyment of the game.
****************************************
One final note about the game play of C:BE that I find a bit irritating, namely that unless you choose a satellite in your initial load out you have to completely explore every aspect of the physical geography of the new world. In the earlier science fiction attempt at Civ, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri this made sense in the games back story as everyone had to make an emergency landing on the planet to a shipboard disaster before they could scan the world. But in a controlled colonization situation it seems to me that the various colonists would take the time to orbit and scan the world before landing, if for no other reason than to help pick a site. I get that discovering the geography of the world is part of the fun of the game but realistically any future space colonists would at least know where the shorelines and major mountains of a new world is.
Yes, I know I'm over-thinking it.
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