| Weekends, Big Bangs and Vampires |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|09:03 am] |
We had quite a nice weekend. On Saturday we went in to town to see the Chinese exhibition in the Herbert Art Gallery. I didn't know the place existed, it's gorgeous. Unfortunately it's not of much interest to pre-schoolers, as you might guess, so we managed to see most of the Chinese exhibition and nothing else before the little folk decided they had had enough and would rather charge around screaming at the top of their voices.
Also, before we got to the gallery we coincidentally arrived just in time to see the Godiva carnival procession on it's way to the Godiva festival at the Memorial park - which was nice and very samba-ey.
Then on Sunday, whilst Elin and the kids were in church, I finally got my arse up the road to the Transport Museum to see the Doctor WHO exhibition that's been there for months. It was quite impressive. As big as the permanent display in Cardiff Bay and just as interesting. Most impressive was the full size animatronic Racnos rig and the Daleks firing real lasers. Very cool.
This last week, against my better judgement, I've been getting in to two new TV series. I say 'against my better judgement' because I've been enjoying the fact that TV has been a bit poor recently and I find myself enjoying not sitting in front of the idiot's lantern and doing other things instead.
Never mind, I've heard a lot of folks online mention True Blood and two colleagues were waxing lyrical about the Big Bang Theory the other day. So I thought I'd give them a go.
( True Blood )
( Big Bang Theory )
Wayne |
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| Oh 1977, how I miss thee... |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|08:56 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | star wars | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Leamington | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | David Mitchell's Soap Box - podcast | ] |
I've been watching the original Star Wars movies recently, trying to get into the zone for our SAGA game on Tuesday.
I know nostalgia plays a big part in it, but 1977 seems so far away now. Watching Luke stare into the twin suns of Tatooine, it's hard to imagine that this is the same universe that once contained Count Dooku, General Grievous, Darth Maul, Battledroids, Darth Revan, Admiral Thrawn... the list is seemingly endless. It all seemed so simpler then, slower and more tactile.
I find the prequels largely unwatchable these days. Elin was laughing at me the other night because despite all my whining, I still put one on occaisionally, just to see if it's, you know, changed. It feels different, even from the opening shot of the Phantom Menace, so it's a precarious beast to straddle anyway, but as soon as Jar-Jar opens his mouth, Or Anakin, or Watto, or the Podracing commentator or even C3PO, I just fall out of it completely and start pining for the simplicity of the originals.
The prequels are gorgeous looking films and I always joke that I'd love them if you could isolate and turn off the dialogue track. Just have the visuals, sound effects and music and they'd be great films. I mean, it's not like you'd miss the story. Maybe I should get a copy of the French or Japanese dubs :)
But even then, there's something wrong. They're just too slick, too polished and soulless. The originals, particularly the first one, were nailed together on a shoestring budget using what was to hand. It gave the universe a genuine, battered, lived-in feel. There was some liberal interpretation of the designs too, on the part of the props department. If you look at McQuarrie's concept art, it's all very Flash-Gordoney. The props built from it were less so and that, I think helped a great deal. With the prequels, everything was exactly by design. In the original, Luke's landspeeder looked like it'd be knocking about the desert for years. It looked like it had genuinely had the shit kicked out of it. In the prequels, the weathering, scratches and dents appeared to be carefully and lovingly reproduced exactly from the officially approved concept art.
There are things I like about the prequels. Indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed the Clone Wars TV shows - Cartoon and 3D - but as I told several of my friends who watched it, I find it easier to completely disassociate it from the orignal movies rather than give myself a headache trying to reconcile them. I think of it as a reboot with Anakin Skywalker instead of Luke. The future is unwritten. The prequel movies don't exist. I find I can enjoy it much more.
Wayne |
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| Top 50 Sci-Fi big shots. |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|09:04 am] |
SFX magazine just ran a list of what they percieve as the top 50 biggest movers and shakers in sci-fi either currently or in the forseeable future.
This list includes only six women (all but one of which are actresses) and not one single non-white face.
Wow! Just.... wow!
Wayne |
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| Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|03:21 pm] |
Last night, I put Ennio Morricone's Hamlet soundtrack on the stereo, poured a glass of red wine, curled up on the sofa and started reading the World of Darkness rulebook.
...and totally creeped myself out! :)
Last night I also watched Beowulf with Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie.
I seem to remember at the time much fuss was made over the fact that it was not much of a story but very impressive CGI work.
I actually found it to be the opposite. As a story and as entertainment, it was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Technically, though it was a bit of a furry fish. Too realistic to be interesting, but nowhere near realistic enough to be convincing, which leaves me wondering what the point was.
The character models were mostly impressive but a long way from being convincing as the real thing. Occaisionally in the right light, when they were virtually still, a character would look impressively realistic. Wiglaf was the best for this. The illusion broke almost immediately that they started to move, though. The animation was jerky and weightless in places too, reminding me of the humans in Shrek.
Impressive, just not that impressive.
meh. |
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| Fighting, fighting and more bloody fighting. |
[May. 27th, 2009|09:02 am] |
I'm sick of fighting.
I love D&D 4. It's a terrific, fun game. But all we ever do is fight. It's just a bloody squad level miniatures war game.
I listen to the D&D podcast and all they talk about is new monsters to kill and new powers to kill them with. They go on at length about how they've tried to make the killing more interesting and tactical. They talk about how they try to build story using story hooks... for use when you're killing things.
I listen to the Radio Free Hommlet podcast and all they ever talk about is how to build a more effective character for killing things.
I want to do something other than kill things. Is that really too much to ask?
Sigh. |
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| A long update... |
[May. 20th, 2009|02:03 pm] |
Wow! It's been ages since I felt the need to vent in public. I've been kind of busy.
One of my Tuesday Night regulars recently posted on FaceBook that he'd like to play Mouse Guard. This reminded me that I'd also like to play Mouse Guard.
I've had a flick through both Burning Wheel and Burning Empires and the sheer volume of it just gives me the horrors. Fear the Boot's Luke summed it up when he said, 'It's not a complex game. There's just a heck of a lot to it.' I couldn't understand why I would want to fill valuable areas of my brain with a millionty rules and subrules when I can just play D&D or Serenity or Savage Worlds.
But Mouse Guard looked interesting and, as my mate has both the comic (collected into book form) and the RPG, I borrowed them and had a read.
I was totally blown away! It's like nothing I've ever read before and I've looked through dozens and dozens of RPG core books over the last thirty years.
Here is a game that removes fighting and killing as the central focus and means of gaining reward. It utilises mechanics that reward you for playing in character and moving the story forward. It uses mechanics that help the players and GM develop the plot and story together. It uses the same system of conflict resolution for everything. Wether you are fighting, chasing, addressing a crowd, arguing, leading whole armies into war or engaging in an ale brewing competition, it's equally tactical, unpredictable and exciting. In some ways it's as abstract as a board game, but at the same time, much more of a roleplaying game than an awful lot of it's peers.
Mouse Guard is apparently 'Burning Wheel light' and whilst the volume of Burning Wheel still makes me apprehensive, if it equally pivots on plot and character like this, then I'm seriously tempted to give it a try.
I've now dropped hard cash for both the RPG and the correctly titled 'Autumn 1152' trade hardback.
MG has also made me take a second look at Burning Empire and whilst I can take or leave the Iron Empire comics (nice, if uneven art and meh story) - the actual games mechanics sound like they're just as unconventional as Mouse Guard. You create your world as a group at the start of a campaign!!!
---
I mentioned a while back that I was reading Jack Vance's Lyonesse book 1: Suldrun's Garden.
It was great fun. It took ages to get going (chapter nine, I think) but when it did, it sort of exploded in a flurry of trolls, ogres, fairies and all manner of gubbins. It felt like quite an uneven read. In parts like a two-fisted pulp adventure in the vein of RE Howard and then in other parts like an Aesop fable or a Grimm fairy tale and then in others like a medieval history textbook.
I understand that Vance was one of the inspirations for the original D&D and reading it, it's easy to see. Though I now feel that it would be easier to run a Lyonesse game using Mouse Guard than it would D&D4!
Terrific fun though , and I want to read the other two now.
---
( Long and tedious cistern nightmare )
Wayne |
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| Organised chaos! |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|10:04 pm] |
I can't help feeling I've asked this before but...
In Warhammer, right... why do the feral Skaven and the endless Demonic forces of "Chaos" line up in neat rows and regiments? Surely they should all be demented, slavering skirmishers!
Hmmmmmmmmm..... |
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| Ring of Red, Lyoness and Storyteller |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|09:50 am] |
I'm still playing Ring of Red and I'm starting to really get into it. I've figured out how to use troops now that I've lost most of them and I've figured out the strengths and weaknesses of each of my AFWs. Trouble is I'm well into the campaign now and I really should start again. I just can't be arsed with all that pointless bloody dialogue!!!
I've been reading Lyonesse by Jack Vance, from my pile of swag from Haye on Wye last year. Long exalted as one of the inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons and considerd by many as one of the Fantasy greats. So far it's been pretty bloody slow. It's been a fairly interesting low-fantasy story of pre-Arthurian political intrigue with hints of the fantastical but not really gripping. I've put it down a couple of times to read other things.
Suddenly last night in chapter 9 (chapter bloody 9, mind), everything kicks off! We finally meet the book's protagonist. There are Wizards and fighting and adventure and daring escapes - and suddenly I can't put it down. Total reversal. From being semi-interested to wanting to read the trilogy!! Go, Jack!
I finally got round to watching the Storyteller DVDs that my friend, Tim lent me a while back and I was quite impressed. The narratives were a bit scattershot. 'Forget everything that's happened in the first half of the story, it's irrelevant, because now she runs off to a faraway land and turns into a pig" etc etc - still, they're based on ancient, obscure folk tales which aren't renowned for balanced narratives, pace and character development really.
The thing that really struck me was the visuals. Made by Henson's Creature Workshop at the top of their game, every single square inch of every single frame just drips with texture. The creatures, the costumes, the lighting, the photography, the animation, the puppetry, the bluescreen, the compositing - it's all utterly masterful. For all it's faults, I think the 80's did screen fantasy much better than now. For example, I'd put The Dark Crystal against any high fantasy movie of the last twenty years! There's just something less sterile and more tangible about it.
I had a reasonably undulating Easter Weekend. Saturday was spent doing manly things in the bathroom with my father and a power-chisel. Sunday night was spent being continually sick into the toilet - the two are not connect, other than by location - Monday was spent largely in bed. |
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| Cheese it, you Martian Wallahs! |
[Apr. 2nd, 2009|10:13 pm] |
In a second coincidence following on from yesterday's post. I finally have a really good reason to run Savage Worlds for my group. Pinnacle have just announced SPACE 1889: Red Sands - basically a Space: 1889 campaign for the Savage Worlds rules. Awesome! Sadly I have to wait until September but there's plenty to be getting on with in the meantime - namely a CthulhuTech/Old Kingdom mashup for BESM!
Wayne |
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| Is it too much to ask? |
[Apr. 1st, 2009|09:07 pm] |
I've discovered CthulhuTech. It's an RPG in which the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft's imagination are met head-on with cyber-technology and bloody great mecha. Lovecraft would be spinning in his grave but it looks frickin' sweet!
I'd love to run it for my group, but this means yet another 300 page rule system and setting for me to first learn and then teach my players. I like the look of Jovian Chronicles too but same problem. Ditto Star Trek, Serenity, Jadeclaw, Vampire, Fading Suns, Robotech, Exalted... The list is really, very long.
My players are now very familiar with D&D 4.0 and I'd feel comfortable running Star Wars SAGA for them as it's pretty much the same system. But sometimes I want something other than those two and my attention span doesn't stretch to reading and learning a whole new system and setting every few weeks.
I really wish there was a genuine universal system that I actually liked, that was fast and simple but not too simple and that could handle just about anything I threw at it. I really don't like GURPS. Fudge and Risus are too simple. The two best systems I've encountered so far are firstly, Savage Worlds but it's an inelegant system that doesn't seem as simple or as versatile as it thinks it is. And secondly BESM, which isn't bad but it's more of a character generator than a roleplaying game and I can't totally seperate it from it's anime intentions either.
Sigh! I dunno.
[EDIT]
Wow! By sheer and utter coincidence Gnome Stew has addressed this exact problem in today's post... |
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| My ring is red! |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|05:41 pm] |
I finished Robotech: Invasion. Both alternate endings too. That was great! I admittedly used Invincibility on the last few levels simply because I reach a point where I want to see the outcome of the story and I don't want to develop godlike reflexes in button bashing to do it.
I'm now playing Ring of Red for the PS2 which came out a few years back. I thought it was supposed to be World War II fought with mecha. Despite looking like WWII, it's actually set in 1964 in a Japan divided into North, South and Russian Occupied North Island. The three factions look like WWII Russian, German and Japanese.
None of this is relevant, except for the fact that it looks frickin' sweet :)
It's a turn-based strategy game which is easier on my thumbs too.
I'm still listening to the Robotech Podcasts but I think I have to give it up now. Two of them appear to have died and the third, 'Robotech Fan', well, I've deleted it. The host was quite entertaining as he arrogantly treated anyone involved with the production of the children's saturday morning cartoon with hateful, vitriolic contempt. I was happily laughing at him (not with him, mind) until he finally crossed a line. Whilst discussing a black character in the show, he went out of his way to avoid saying or implying anything racist, whilst in the exact same sentences, casually referred to women as 'bitches'.
Bye bye.
Not to worry I've now discovered Stephen Fry's Podlets and David Mitchell's Soap Box.
Huzzah!
Wayne |
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| Palladium Games and the fear of progress! |
[Mar. 16th, 2009|10:20 am] |
The other day I flicked through Palladium games' recent Robotech effort, Shadow Chronicles (based on the 'new' movie) and I was amazed. Amazed at how stagnant Palladium seem to be. Not only has the Palladium rule system apparently not changed in over twenty years, neither has their layout and presentation.
In this day and age of desktop publishing, PDFs and lovely lovely, easy to read, easy to reference layouts, Palladium games are still using the two columns, typewriter on toiletpaper presentation. Also, far from the full colour artwork and stills from the show/movie I was expecting, they're still using Siembieda and Long's artwork from twenty years ago too. The art from the original printings!!
Strewth! Someone needs to tell Siembieda it's the 21st century now. |
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| Totally Unreal! |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|02:13 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gaming | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Leamington | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Star Wars Action News Podcast | ] |
I splurged on some second-hand, used video gaming goodness last week. In one fell swoop, I Amazoned Unreal III (PC DVD), Robotech: Invasion (PS2) and Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (Game Cube).
Unreal III arrived first on Monday and I promptly installed it, ran it and... it rebooted my machine. I tried again, and again it went bang. I checked the minimum requirements and it appeared that whilst I had more than enough processor and more than enough memory, my video card was under par and that was all there was to it (I can't very well ask for a top-range video card in work so that I can play games - well, okay, I can but it's a bit cheeky).
So I gave a sigh and decided to wait until my machine in work is updated and considered updating my machine at home - hence the confusion over video cards in my last post.
So, yesterday Robotech:Invasion arrived. I considered it a consolation and hired a PS2 from the office library and spent a joyous couple of hours last night slaughtering Invid.
This game appeared a few years back without any fanfayre and promptly ended up in the Asda bargain bin for a tenner and I finally bought my copy second-hand from Amazon for about £1.50. Needless to say, I was expecting it to be utter pants. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it scored a 7.5 on IGN and having played a couple of hours of it last night, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a pretty forgiving, lively and colourful game and I'm looking forward to playing a few more hours tonight. My only complaint really, is that I want some vast, open, clutter-free spaces to ride my cyclone. So far, I only get to ride it at half throttle for a couple of hundred yards before I either need to get off again or I hit something :(
Then Rebel Strike arrived this morning. No idea if this one is any good. I loved the original on the PC and was gutted that it would only work with Direct X 5 and was rendered obsolete. I'll have a go once I get bored with Robotech.
Meanwhile, having asked about video cards on the office message forum, it was recommended that I install the latest drivers for my graphics card. I hadn't thought of this, promptly did it, and now Unreal III runs sweet as a nut. I just spent a happy lunch hour fragging the crap out of some bots. That'll do though, because what I really want to do is use the editor!
Fun! Fun! Fun.
Wayne |
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| Can someone advise me on graphics cards? |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|08:53 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Leamington | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  confused | ] |
I'm so confused! I just don't understand graphics cards atall.
I'm after a graphics/video (I assume they're the same thing) card that is at least equal to either an NVidia 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+
I've looked on Overclockers.co.uk and they list neither of them. Infact the cards they list are in the 200's range for NVidia and the 3000's range for ATI, but some of them are in the £400 range so I'm assuming that they are much better than the two I've listed even though they are much lower numbers.
I don't understand. How do I tell if a card is any good? How do I rate and compare them? What the hell is a GeForce, etc?
Any help would be greatly appreciated so that I can shop with confidence!
Wayne |
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| Almost famous... |
[Mar. 10th, 2009|10:34 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Leamington | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
Who's mug is this I see in the top corner of a page in my latest SFX magazine?
Mr Stewart?
:) |
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| Qui Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? |
[Mar. 10th, 2009|10:09 am] |
So the Watchmen movie is actually out.
And I'm still not excited.
I'm not sure, but I think there are a number of reasons. First and foremost is the fact that I'm not excited about the Watchmen anymore. As a teenager I was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with Rorschach. I read it again three or four years ago and found it a bit dissapointing really. (also I discovered that Rorschach was a homophobic fascist. How did I miss that when I was eighteen?). It just didn't have the same impact that it did when I was eighteen. It's probably unfair to expect it too. Either way, the result was that I no longer regarded it as the masterwork I once did.
Then they finally make the film and I find it hard to care. Twenty years ago I'd have been forst in line. Now I don't really see the point. It reminds me of the remake of Psycho from a few years back. A guy remade the movie in colour shot for shot duplicated from the original. it was the ultimate acto of masturbating over Hitchcock. It provided absolutely no use save to give the director a public soap box to declare his love for the old filmmaker. Watchmen strikes me as being the same. We don't need a movie. We know what the characters and the costumes and the settings look like. The comic already did it and with much more depth and complexity than a movie ever could. It might be worth doing the film if it updated the characters and the story (as they've done again and again to varying degrees of success with Batman, Hulk, IronMan and Superman etc) but god knows I'd be just as furious about that as the next fan - so I'm left wondering what the point is.
Wayne |
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| "...All systems nominal." |
[Mar. 10th, 2009|09:53 am] |
my attention has meandered, butterfly-like over to Battletech again recently.
There are two things for which love seems to be universal amongst my colleagues and, indeed geeks in general. First is Zombies (a genre I, personally couldn't care less about) and the second seems to be Giant Robots - in this, I must include myself, though I'm a little too old for Transformers (they appeared in that interim teenage period when I was too 'cool' for kids stuff) and, whilst I've been aware of it since the 80's, I only recently got to see Robotech (and hated it with a passion). Battletech, however has always been there, since the late 80's really and - like Robotech - whilst I love the idea of Battletech, I hate the implementation.
I'm going to set aside the engineering and tactical criticisms against 90 foot tall walking tanks. I don't care about that, it's science fiction, the only thing that matters here is that Giant Robots are freakin' awesomely kewl!
But they aren't and that's one of my problems with Battletech. The Mechs look like they were designed and drawn by a 6 year-old. Nowhere is this highlighted better than in the Japanese version of the game. The Japanese illustrations have style, they have scale, they have an aesthetic theme and continuity. They look like 90 foot tall warmachines. The originals are an awkward assortment of boxes and cylinders that look more like a bloke in a battle-mech cosplay costume made from cardboard boxes and tubes.
I remember snorting derisively at the designs that did literally look like a man in a costume. Where, I wondered, was the scale? I remember, even in my teens thinking that a mech wielding an axe was a totally goofy idea. I still do.
Some of the mechs weren't bad, in fact they were actually quite cool looking. The Marauder, The Locust, the Warhammer and Rifleman, for example. Turns out they were stolen wholesale from Macross and Crusher Joe. I mean, it's an obscure Japanese cartoon. Who's ever going to see it?
Oh well, at least it's a game about giant robots ruling the battlefield. Except that it's not about that either. I, again remember quite early on thinking that if you had tanks and infantry and fighters, the Mechs become somewhat shunted aside. They become just another vehicle on the battlefield (much like in Warmachine but that's a different gripe) and for a game about giant robots that just seems wrong, somehow.
Then there's the history and the setting. Pages and pages and pages of history. None of which has anything to do with the Mechs or the game. Just war after war after war and really, honestly, when you have your figures on the table, do you really care which planet it's on and for which cause? I found myself thinking that as made up histories go, it wasn't bad. Complex enough to be interesting but not so detailed that it's tedious, but as a setting it's a fairly passable war-torn sci-fi backdrop but one in which the Mechs - supposedly the stars of the show - feature incidentally. It all seems a bit pointless when all you're really interested in is where the enemy mech is and how many wounds he has left.
I guess the rules are okay. Not too complicated, not too abstracted - but I've definately seen better and more fun rules.
I think Battletech stripped back to before the Clans arrive when it's just the initial five factions in the inner sphere based on the USA, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China and Japan (got to have katanas!). If you then gave them a half a dozen Mechs each of varying sizes in their own distinctive styles with their own distinctive fighting styles (reflected in the rules) and designed by concept artists with at least a tiny bit of artistic talent - then it might actually be quite cool.
...and I'd also like the moon on a stick, please.
Wayne |
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