Impotent Rants

Packaging

2010-03-10T14:07:00.000Z

DVDs, CDs and games come in boxes. These boxes are wrapped in plastic. Sometimes there is a thin strip of this plastic, around the middle of the box, which is thicker or something, and one can grab the end of this strip, pull, and thus remove all the plastic.

That thin strip should be mandatory.

That is all.

In which geometry gives up

2009-10-24T19:03:00.002+01:00

Well I'm on a train and had a couple of pretty fun games this week, so may even get two posts done today! Being the awful tease that I am, I'll probably save the Scion post and actually put it up tomorrow. I'll decide in a bit, but for now, Mage! After the break, Daniel will attempt to explain the rather confusing finale of the first Story in the campaign.

After a night of rest, we decided to first deal with the immediate problem - a Master Magus was raining havoc upon downtown Glasgow. We piled into Christine's souped-up supercar and headed toward the town centre. On our way there, however, we ran into a spot of trouble. It seemed that Archemorus had set up some sort of ward, and the car came thudding to a halt just before coming off of a bridge before Central Station.

((I'll be honest, I wasn't giving 100% of my attention to the game at this point - I think I was working on something for Scion. In any case, there was definitely a bridge and we definitely left it a bit later to get into central station. However, my glaswegian friend who is not the ST says there are no bridges anywhere near the station. I can only assume this was nefarious Correspondence magic at work.))

While attempting to ascertain the nature of our obstacle, another car came speeding towards Persephone and Kase. Taking the initiative, I dived before the careening vehicle to save them, succeeding but seeing an unconscious woman inside the car as well. The chassis crashed through the railings at the side of the bridge, and balanced precariously between the two axles. I would not allow this damsel in distress to fall into the raging waters of the Clyde below!

Calling Matthias and Darius to my aid, I leapt upon the back of the car and trusted in their combined weight to keep it on the bridge. Flipping onto the roof, I leant over to open the door and quickly pulled the lady from the driver's seat before somersaulting back onto the bridge. Leaving her on the back of Christine's car to recover, I then went to pull the car back onto the bridge with the help of the other men.

Then a pair of completely inconspicuous cars arrived. Naturally, two men in suits came out of them. Technocrats. Our hands flew to our weapons, but these men raised their hands for parlay. Being a man of honour, I allowed them this right. It turned out the woman I had just saved was their boss Kirsten, one of the Technocrats called Statisticians - readers and manipulators of probability. It was agreed that we would go together to fight the Master, and as thanks for saving her life, Kirsten would let we "Reality Deviants" go free afterwards without reporting our presence. A refreshing show of honour from the famously relentless Order of Reason.

And so we headed into the madness together. There was an invisible boundary, and crossing it took us into a bizarre mindscape indeed. At first we were in the forest outside Seattle where Archemorus' friends had been killed. On seeing the Master kneeling oblivious before us, I took the opportunity to shoot. Then the illusion broke.

We were in Glasgow's Central Station, the pavements covered in car husks and civilian corpses. In addition to the other cabal and the three Technocrats we had just met, two men in massive, robotic suits of armour stood fighting Archemorus with guns firing invisible lasers. The mad mage took care of the two Sleepers in short order, causing one to rip himself apart with the simple act of taking a step, and the other to cower and faint in fear. It was then that I noticed that there were many copies of the master, many images scattered around the station, with no indication of which was real. Persephone sent a spike of rock summoned from the ground flying towards one of him, but this had no visible effect upon the others. I then went to strike one, but instead my sword landed upon the hard armour of one of the Technocratic Marines, causing no injuries but harsh words. Realising that simply striking this image again would serve no purpose, I followed through on my strike in order to grab a hold of this marine, leapfrogging over him to stab another image - and promptly injured Serena, who had transformed herself into a great tiger and roared with rage at my attack.

At this point one of the marines shot at Archemorus, and I think that the blow struck his friend and caused his suit to overload with Paradox Energy - called the "Paradox Effect" by these so-called scientists - and kill him. It's rather unclear, the perversions in the geometry of this place were starting to confuse me by this point. As if to help with this, we were suddenly taken far into the air, where we stood upside down, the ground a great distance below us. Or above us. Or both. And also to all sides. Persephone attempted to strike Archemorus with a lightning bolt, but he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. At this point, I decided to give up with aiming.

With Kirsten's assistance, I cast reason to the wind and made a random decision using dice and my lucky coin. My rapier flashed forward when she told me my dice were most probable to lead to success, and I sent lightning crackling along the blade. The metal and energy flew around the place, bending and looping in a completely alien way, until they collided with the mage's chest. Brain-melting runes flashed before him, and he dispelled the lightning, but could not ward away my steel. As his chest was impaled...

We were on top of a skyscraper. Archemorus was quite lucid, and showed us a scene. A Nephandus mage whose image flickered stood before his younger self explaining that his schemes had been set back. Archemorus slew the mage, and the image stopped flickering. The man fell forward, leaving behind the other whose features he had been showing. At this Archemorus went crazy, as the figure cursed him. The master turned to us and explained that this had been the insight that had granted him mastery of magic.

Then I was on a ship. I recognised this ship, somehow. A hooded figure stood at the helm - my helm, I realised in a way. Looking overboard, I saw on the port side calm blue sea, and on the starboard raging black ocean. The figure beckoned me to the helm, and I took the wheel with relish. Then a figure I somehow knew to be the source of my magic appeared. A man wearing clothing similar to mine, his flesh and bones replaced by briny seawater filled with fish and weeds and wearing a tricorne hat. I stood with my hands upon the wheel, these two figures to my sides. They asked me about what I would do with my life, why I wanted power. I looked out at the sea, open on all sides even as its mood rapidly changed. And I replied that I saw no reason to restrain myself now to just one path. The spirits were pleased, and I felt myself well with energy. Then we were all in an alley in Glasgow, Archemorus bloody before us. He called down an angel, just as he had when we first met. But this time, the spirit merely shook its head in disapproval and left. Then Archemorus was shot to death. Kirsten bid us farewell and let us know that we had ten minutes. I determined to remember her name and we all went away back to the Chantry.

When we reached the Chantry, we met a strange woman. She had the form of a young girl, but showed signs of having lived for many years, possibly centuries. I was reminded of my first mentor's clinging to youth, but this degree of it could only be held by an Archmage. She said something about the master and the chantry, then went away. The Chantry's guardian returned then, a were-panther who told Matthias that he was now in charge before taking him away to the Spirit Realm.

---

Daniel levelled up! As did the rest of his Cabal. Two years of game-time will pass before the next session, during which Daniel will widen his repertoire of magical spheres. Time to get off the train now, so I'll probably type up the Scion game tomorrow on the return journey.

You gave it a what?

2009-10-20T18:47:00.001+01:00

Scion! Would have been earlier but my weekend activities tired me out more than I'd expected. Anyway, on Thursday the Scion campaign started for proper, and a right good time we had too. Keep reading after the break for the first chapter in the Legend of Vincent Jones.

And so the young Vincent Jones was sent away from his hometown of Cardiff where he had grown, and made his way by foot and thumb to London Town. On the way, he did receive a note, which he saw to be of divine providence, telling him instead to go to the small village of Graveside. So Vincent went to Graveside, where he did feel a force pulling him toward the local inn, wherein did lie five other mighty heroes, whom Vincent did know to be his companions for the coming journey.

There was solitary Samantha, daughter of Artemis and invisible to the mortal eye. She did skulk in the shadows in order to be best informed. Then there was Logan Grimnar the mighty, son of Thor and a blacksmith whose fury in battle was fearsome. There too was wise Krahon, son of the Atlantean god Kuros, who was a scholar and a marksman. With them also was wily Johnny Wong, son of the Chinese monkey god Sun Wukong, who like his father was a trickster and acrobatic fighter, wielding a mighty oriental sword. And finally there was Sean the unclean, son of the Irish Dagda and a formidable brawler, accompanied by his porcine companion Ham.

((There is another PC, but (a) the player might be leaving the game and (b) I honestly cannot remember a single thing about him. He maybe has guns? Anyway))

After meeting with these other heroes they were taken outside, where did appear a great pillar of earth and stone which rose unto the sky. And wise Krahon did see that there was lore of many societies carved upon its side, and Vincent did summon his Sprites of the Perfect Lotus to reveal what was on top of the spire. But before they could return to him, the pillar itself did fall with great speed back into the Earth, taking with it a blur of monochrome, the nature of which the Sprites could not confirm.

Within scant moments though, the Earth did burst open once more, and four soldiers of clay were revealed upon a small plinth that rose from the ground, ready to do battle. And indeed battle was joined! Mighty Logan did smash one soldier asunder with his great smithing hammer, and wily Johnny did cleave another in twain with his dao. Soon only dust and shards lay at the feet of the group of heroes, but the fight was not over yet.

Instead, the remains of those four soldiers came together, forming into a singular hulking form with no head and glowing sockets on its wide soldiers. It did charge at Vincent, who stopped it in its tracks with his feet on the ground and Logan at the brute's knee. Johnny stabbed the creature and Sean did carve deep into its shell, but the beast did not seem affected until a shot from Krahon's rifle shattered through it. It recovered however, and Vincent was given cause to raise his sword again. Once more did Johnny cut into it, scoring a gash between its legs, while Samantha scaled the side of the nearby inn.

Then did Logan and Vincent act in concert, hitting and slicing at its knees as one after the other they dashed between its knees and away to its side. As it was cripple the golem was toppled by a flying kick from Artemis' child, and prevented from rising by its loss of one leg, and Vincent's sword over it. Then Johnny did leap upon the blocking blade, springing up to fall heavily with his sword onto the beast. And the final blow was then dealt by wise Krahon, whose rifle shot right inside the beast through the entrance created by the monkey-like fighter.

In the aftermath of this, some remains were collected from the beast, and more drinks and food were had. And a stranger appeared, calling himself Daniel Yorubim son of the Voodoo god Shango and wearing a matching black glove and shoulder pad adorned with eyes and with evil demeanours. This unpunctual and unsettled man did join the heroes however, and they all made their way to London under instruction from Shango. Once there, Vincent did take charge, directing the group to Buckingham Palace, seat of the royal power in England.

With Johnny providing a distracting spectacle and Logan incapacitating a guard, the heroes did head into the Palace, where much chaos occured, a madness seeming to come over all as the Crown Prince appeared in a dress rather than the true Queen, and the heroes started wreaking havoc. Only Vincent had the strength of virtue to bring Order to the situation, and control was levied upon the group.

To be continued....

((I may or may not keep up this style. Depends (a) if people like it, (b) if I can be bothered.))

Of Minds and Men

2009-10-16T15:17:00.000+01:00

Mage happened about a week ago now, but I was busy procrastinating on my Scion post. Tune in after the break for one of my most brain-melting experiences in gaming, and the rest of the most recent adventures of Daniel White-Heart, Swashbuckler Extraordinaire!

When last we left our hero (by which I mean me), he (I) and his (my) friends were facing down a large dodecahedron in the spirit realm. The Padre Julius annihilated it with holy energy. Alanju and I brought the group a boon of haste, and we headed away from Glasgow. Unfortunately, we overshot a little.

Falling somehow out of the Umbra, we found ourselves in a sheltered alley, whose bricks identified it as being part of Seattle. Making to leave the alley, we ran into the crazy Master Archemorus, and two friends of his. All three of them were teenagers, whereas we knew the Master to be an old man and his companions to be dead. A quick taste of the rain and slowing of hormones informed me that we were in 1974 ((There was a fair bit of time-travel in this game. I might well get some of the dates wrong)). After a quick consultation and Ebaylou's discovery of the absence of Paradox spirits, we proceeded with caution, discovering that the men - Archemorus, an Eastern monk and a peace-preaching hippy - were doing nothing of import save running into us and pointing out rather unecessarily that we should be careful.

Knowing that we had no reliable way of returning to our own time yet, we set out to the shopping district for time-appropriate clothing. Unfortunately the trip was cancelled as we ll suddenly found ourselves in a nearby forest, nine years later. Archemorus came crashing through the forest, expending the last of his energies on attacking us before his friends arrived. We heard gunshots and the sounds of men chasing these three, and as the padre went to revive the Master, the gunslinger and I shot at these pursuers. Archemorus informed us that his cabal had been going to apprehend a Nephandus, that most evil kind of mage, who was using an artifact to ignore Paradox Energies. Unfortunately, as we could surmise, the mission had not been a success. As the madmen crashed into sight and a magic shield was thrown up, we were whisked once more away.

Now we stood in a graveyard near Glasgow, and it was 1993. Archemorus was there, standing in front of two graves - those of his companions. He lamented their loss, then informed us that our entire experience of the day had been within his mind. He told us that he was losing lucidity, and that we should kill him before he caused more damage - a plan we already had, though it was nice to receive permission as it were. He also told us of a secret door hidden in a bookshelf in his office before dropping us off in our own time in the same graveyard. It was a day before we had left, at a time shortly after he had defeated the Technocrat and sent us back to the chantry. Matthias called, having no knowledge of Lanky or myself as, apparently, we had not yet been introduced - showing us that he had not shared our time-warping visions.

Resolving to return to the chantry as soon as possible, we requisitioned a car and a hearse. Unfortunately the owner of the car, the graveyard's curator, took issue at this, and while trying to persuade him to let us borrow his vehicle, I was hit heavily by Paradox Energy. My eyes filled with smoke that reduced all I saw to mere blobs of colour and light, and the sound of my breath and blood was amplified into my ears so that I was deaf. My skin retreated into itself, refusing to register any sense of feeling, and my tongue swelled such that I could not even taste the air. I made my way in the direction of the hearse, yelling hopelessly and flailing like a maniac. I was helped into a seat, and we set off.

((Daniel tried to silence the curator. He botched the roll, however, and instead the man spat out a gob of fire onto Ivanku. While Daniel stumbled and shouted "LET'S GO", Ivanku threw the man through the air, bruising his ribs against a tree and the ground. Someone (I forget who - either Kase or Persephone I think?) asked him kindly not to mention this as Ivanku crushed his phone, and then we drove off. Daniel shouted "ARE WE THERE YET?" at every stop, be it traffic light or jam, and eventually we reached the chantry, where Ivanku lifted him out of the car while Matthias was filled in. It was at about this point that Daniel regained sensibility))

When I found the use of my senses returned to me, we were at the chantry, and I had to reintroduce myself to all of the other cabal. After discussing what had happened, and finding from Darius though his raven that the chauffeur had crashed his car, I concluded that the flash of Seattle we saw the last version of that day was the point at which we entered Archemorus' mindscape. After healing, we headed to his study to discover the secret passage behind the book case. I led both cabals down a spiral staircase lit by flourescent tubes, and to a mundane but mighty door with a dragon's head design.

Attempts to scry inside the room revealed a book and a large gem, but no traps. We entered, and despite my protest for caution the greek woman dashed forward to read this book. This activated an image within the crystal of the Master, who informed us of the artifact he had been chasing when his companions died. I turned out that the Nephandus had not had it, and were merely being directed by some extra-normal being who did. The artifact had last been seen about a century ago in the hands of a Hollow One who, before he was executed by the Hermetic Order for crimes not divulged, sent it "From whence it came," or some such spell. It had disappeared but apparently remained active.

We split up with this new information to find links to this Hollower of Lore, who it arose took the name of Gillis deRay and was survived by one of his artifacts, a self-wielding dagger that tied his ghost to this world. This dagger had been used by many Hollow Ones to contact DeRay but none had done so more than once due to dying soon after that first occassion. After a little more research we found that the dagger now rests in a museum in Edinburgh, though there are no nearby Hollowers that Darius could obtain contact with.

After this research was complete, we repeated some of our actions of the previous night which were now invalidated before going to bed. I for one am eager to see what tomorrow holds.

---

An addendum: It isn't entirely clear from Daniel's telling, but it was the deaths of his two cabal-mates and lovers that sent Archemorus on the path to insanity. Daniel managed to completely miss that the men were actually any more than friends, thinking that Archemorus was attaching additional post-mortem sentiment to their friendship due to the insanity. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed though, and I think everyone else picked up (some through use of the Mind Sphere) that the three were in love.

First Scion session story will be up either later today or late Sunday, depending on whether or not I have time before I head down to England without my laptop for a couple of days.

Vincent Jones

2009-10-15T01:55:00.001+01:00

Scion! The game happened Thursday, but not much happened in it, and then over the weekend IRC went down and I bought pokemon platinum... yeah. Anyway, we didn't do much actual *game* last week, and so I will meld what we did do into this week's story. But the Storyteller asked for some fluff and so after the break is the history and description of my Scion, Vincent Jones, and his Birthrights.

In order to understand any Scion, one must first understand their heritage. This is just as true of Vincent Jones, and though tales of his Divine Father Vishnu are plentiful and elaborate, here I will tell the short story of his mother, the mortal Lily Jones.

Lily Jones was born in the late 60s, to mother Anne and an unkown father of Indian descent. Anne was a hippy and never denied that she slept with many men in those years, and Lily had a lazy upbringing full of joy and friendship in Cardiff. She stayed in the city to study literature at university, and only at the age of 24 did she go out to see the world. Her tour took her around all of Asia, finishing in February at the Indian city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal lies. In the shadow of that legendary building she met a man calling himself Arcav, a very handsome, pale-skinned man with whom she spent a wild night of passion. In the morning, he was gone.

Vincent Jones, son of Lily and grandson of Anne, was born in the Welsh countryside on the 14th of November 1989. He was brought up by two women, and was taught to always be aware of people and their emotions. Perhaps in rebellion at this matriarchal upbringing, at school he always favoured PE and sports, coming to excel at athletics and at rugby. Playing the position of scrum half, he was captain of his school and local rugby teams by the time he entered his teenage years. Puberty changed him from a cherubic boy into a handsome man, and a line of broken-hearted girls soon trailed in his wake.

Vincent left school at age 16 with GCSEs in only English, Politics and PE. He continued playing for his local team in the hopes of attracting the eye of a wandering talent scout while he worked a number of jobs as a barman, waiter and at one point personal trainer. Then came the fateful night. He was working as a waiter when a busload of foreign dignitaries came into the pub where he worked due to a flat tyre. He was well-liked and his tips were significant, and at the end of his shift he felt like the luckiest man in Cardiff. Then he met his step-mother.

Lakshmi is renowned for her beauty among the Devas, and Vincent can't help but agree. He was entranced as she led him away out of the city into the woods and told him what he was. As he came to grips with the fact that his father was Vishnu and he needed to fight monsters, Lakshmi presented him with two gifts. On behalf of his father, Vincent received a great sword, and from his step-mother a small bulb. He didn't even bother to hand in his notice or inform his rugby club, only leaving a note for his mother Lily before starting on the road to England.

---

Vincent Jones is a tall, well-built man, measuring in at 1.9m tall and with clearly defined yet light muscles all over his body. Naturally dark of hair, Vincent keeps his domed head cleanly shaven so that only the bushy eyebrows over his dark brown eyes give away this fact. Vincent's preferred attire is a pair of worn blue jeans that are loose enough to run in, and a short-sleeved rugby shirt in his national colours of red with white flanks. He also shows his nationality with bright green trainers that would match his team's socks, though he wears none. Over the crest on his shirt, Vincent has crudely sewn on a white breast pocket, inside of which can be seen an odd lump that is in fact his step-mother's lotus bulb. Hanging from his belt are a pair of sharpened chakram which Vincent took from his mother's travel collection.

---

Lakshmi's gift to her husband's son was a Bulb of the Perfect Lotus (Relic 2: Channels Health and a Follower). This white bulb, taken from the lotus flower in which the Goddess herself was once reborn, holds the power of potential life. It also holds a number of sentient spirits, which Vincent may awaken by whispering a summoning command over the bulb.

These Lotus Sprites (Followers 1) are the spirits of petals of the Lotus Flower, and take the physical form of large petals folded into the shapes of angels. There are five of them, each with a different colour and personality. Kaalaa is black and lazy, while Safed is white and vain and Niila is blue and lecherous. Haraa the green is demanding and ravenous, while Laal the red is quick to anger and fond of jealousy. While none of them enjoy fighting, they can be motivated to violence, and above all they are each fiercely loyal to Vincent.

---

Vishnu was filled with sorrow when he found that he would not be able to give his son his Visitation personally, and so set about finding him the finest weapon he could. He went to a scion of Surya the Sun God, a famous blacksmith among the Devas, to ask for this boon. In his incarnation as Rama, Vishnu had saved this smith's life, and so the Sword of the Radiant Protector (Relic 4: Channels Guardian, Sun, War. Katana template with the Piercing tag) was forged immediately and with pleasure and love. The Sword is a khanda, a traditional Indian broadsword with a long blade and a flat end. This one varies from the norm in that it has a triangular cross-section, giving one razor-sharp cutting edge and one flat, resilient edge for guarding with. This flat edge is further hardened by an overlaid layer of glimmering gold forged from Sunlight. This guarding edge shines just the same in any light as it does in that of the noonday Sun, and will never dull even though Vincent uses it to push against so as to deliver more forceful blows.

No sheath can fit the Sword, and so instead Vincent has two leather straps on his back between which is suspended a long L-shaped bladeguard. It is these straps which hold the sword to his back when not in use, and this metal sheet which stops the mighty Sword from merely slicing through its restraints. It takes merely a moment, however, for Vincent to grab the hilt over his shoulder and bring the khanda to bear.

Aha! My Effects!

2009-10-06T01:18:00.001+01:00

Mage game tonight, which was plenty of fun and progress and such. A summary of the story so far as told by my character, Daniel - who has only been present for two sessions because I used to have a different one (this is the same campaign as Susumu before Summer) follows the break.

Two years ago, shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I applied to join the Royal Navy, but was not accepted. On the night I received my rejection, my life changed. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday the feeling as I fought those muggers, sweat drenching my skin as I tried to save that poor woman. My mind shrank away to a more focused place where the only thing that mattered was the fight. I felt my body more clearly than ever before, perceived the flow of time and the forces of blows as though they were being drawn in front of me. Then it was over. I later discovered that I had Awakened that night, that I was now a mage.

Taken in by the Hollow Ones, I was taught of the world I now inhabited. The Traditions, old masters of wizardry who fought for the old ways and for freedom, and the Technocracy, new geniuses of science who fought for clarity, logic and a well-behaved world. I learnt to summon and control powerful magicks, by many methods. I learnt to use pentagrams, the tarot, simple tricks of luck and even to manipulate biology at an advanced level. I was a goth for a while, then a neo-pagan wizard dressed in stereotype and cliche. After a night spent watching MTV I became a New Romantic, with daubed face and frilly clothes. Finally, at the last New Year, I found my true calling. It came to me in a dream, that ripped my skin from my body to reveal the true self beneath.

When I threw aside my old identity to become Daniel White-Heart, Swashbuckler Extrordinaire, my unhindered sight gave me greater insight into my magicks as well. I realised the need to be in contact with water for all my magics, either in its purest form or as part of shed blood or sweat. I also realised the gift I had for the magic of Life, which I had previously ignored. Finally, I heard on the Hollow Railroad that help was needed in Glasgow.

((This is the point at which Daniel joined the campaign. The above was his abridged background, paired with a slight explanation of his world. As a point of clarity the Dreamspeaker (shaman) is called Ivanku, but Daniel can't remember this foreign name.))

When I arrived in the foulest corner of fair Caledonia, I immediately found myself set upon. Waking up groggily I realised I was no longer on the coach I had been riding, but rather in some sort of dark cell. Nearby was a giant of a man, name of something like Ivan or Vanku or such. Russian I think, clearly a shaman of some kind judging by the bones and drums and skins. Having challenged each other and come to the realisation that neither of us was to blame for the other's incarceration, we began looking for a way out, whereupon we were verbally abused by some Technocrat who took "samples" from our very flesh.

It was quite a bit later when we heard footsteps above, and then were released by a group of mages from the Traditions. There was a silent man I later found to be called John Preston, an assassin with a hi-tech pistol from the stuffy Hermetic Order. Also from the Order, specifically the House of... Solifcatty I think? Anyway, the more obviously wizardish lady who carried a book with all her spells in was called Persephone. They had a Virtual Adept with them, a hacker and computer whiz by the name of Kase, which I am led to believe is short for Kassandra. Finally, there was a quiet padre called Julius, no doubt from the priestly order of mages called the Celestial Chorus. Introductions were made and they helped me find my effects, which had been hidden from me by the foul Technocrat.

Shortly afterward, we found this same evil scientist in his lair, where he attacked us with some sort of debilitating virus and grenades. We pushed the attack, but he seemed to be able to ignore even the most grievous of blows, including both my own special attack Lightning Strike and a crushing slam from Ivenco. Just as all seem lost though, the roof burst open and an angel sent from Heaven appeared to blow us all away. I will confess I lost consciousness at this point, but I am told - and have no reason to doubt - that the angel eviscerated the Scientist and then disappeared, as directed by a powerful mage who appeared. The man was clearly deranged, as he woke me from my injury but then went on to talk about how he was simultaneously, here, several other major cities and - and he seemed to place stress on this - in Seattle.

After he had left, we quickly made our way back to our new friends' Chantry (a sort of secret base for mages) in a car driven by a rather inept man who clearly had found no better job than as a chauffeur despite a lack of talent. On the way, we were all visited by the same vision of an instant's flash of skyscrapers among the Glaswegian warehouses. Once we got there I found my fellow Hollower Darius, along with his teammates: A Euthanatos death-dealer called Matthias, a mad physicist and engineer called Christine who identified herself as a Son of Ether, and a pagan priestess called Serena who I took to be a Verbena. I was informed of the situation as the seneschal Gordons took my trunk to a spare room. Apparently the crazy man who saved us had been the master of this Chantry, but now had gone crazy, falling into a state we call "Marauder", wherein he is so insane that the very world dares not contradict him, rather taking out its frustration upon others nearby. A most dangerous man indeed this Archimorus, and it was up to us to get rid of the threat he posed. However, taking on a Master of Space, Forces and perhaps the Spirits would be no mean task, and so we retired to prepare.

Kase took me to her room, where I aided her in scrying an event she had learnt of that happened a few days past. After setting up the ritual to include her holographic projectors and ability to see through space, I learnt that the local Police Chief had been caught by MI5 fraternising with a well-known cyber-terrorist, as well as having child pornography on his personal computer. The Officers from MI5, after tearing a confession from him, proceeded to brutalise the man, screwing his dignity away before hanging him in his own office. A sad sight indeed, but after ensuring these agents were not Technocrats, Kase assured me that she posed no danger to the chantry. In return for my acceptance of this, she offered me a spare computer that I might browse some files she had on the basics of Spacial Magicks.

The next day, we discussed the previous day's vision of skyscrapers, and concluded that Archimorus must have somehow brought Seattle to Glasgow for a moment. Matthias also showed us an album of photographs showing a younger Archimorus with his college friends and some of his wizarding colleagues. This provided some small insight, and it was decided that we six junior mages would go through the Spiritual Umbra to the heavenly Chantry called Horizon, while the other five pursued more mundane investigation. Uranka instructed us on basic spiritual etiquette - which I felt seemed to consist of an unfair amount of specifically my being silent - and as I loaded my pistol in preparation, he took us through the Gauntlet into the world beyond.

The Umbra is a strange land. Even underground as we were, the Sun's pale yellow light suffused the area, and around us in the distance we could see, clear yet unfocused, massive spiders' webs of grey dust silk. Among this webbing crawled spiders of regular form, and we were informed that these were manifestations of Static magicks or energies. Obongo summoned a bear that he said was his totem, and it informed him in a language we did not understand that we must leave Glasgow before we could journey through the more abstract parts of the Umbra to Horizon. After Ilanki fed a rabbit some vodka, we set off, and I instructed him to play us a marching tune on his tribal drums that would gift us all with prodigious speed. Unfortunately this drew the attention of the "Pattern Spiders", who apparently don't like magic, and eventually an even greater, more irritable threat: A man-sized ball of twelve sides, coloured blue and demanding in a robotic voice that we stop being "deviant". Used to hearing this sort of language from Technocrats and thus expecting no quarter, we lept to battle!

...To be continued

---

Yeah, ended on a cliffhanger there. Ooooh etc. I may have got some character names wrong (spelling being rather hard to pick up on in a verbal game) and will change them if I'm corrected - Except Ivanku of course, those were on purpose. Here's hoping we survive, and Daniel lives to see another day!

I Am Beating It

2009-10-04T23:32:00.008+01:00

See, that's a dead horse. I used a title that you may have thought suggestive, but in actuality referred to a proverb (Wikipedia calls it something different, but meh). That's a literary device or something. Ahem. Anyway, I wanted to put a proper blog post up today, but had no original ideas. Thus, I'm falling back on a topic noone cares about any more. Well, noone who matters anyway. Hardcore vs Casual gamers! It's like the internet's equivalent of the existence of God(ess)(e)(s)! And it's now [EDIT] after the break!

As the info to the right doesn't fully say but the post below hints at, I am currently at university learning how to make video games. Thus, it would seem a good idea to have a healthy interest in the topic area, and so I tuned into Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe (link behind the picture above) on the iPlayer earlier in the week (is that tuning in? Does it matter? No to both). It was an interesting, fairly amusing, vaguely informative programme about the basics of video games, presented in a rare positive light rather than the usual media scaremongering. A "beginner's guide", if you will, but a good one. During the show, various celebrities popped in for vox pops about why games are good/bad. One of these was one of the writers of Father Ted lamenting storytelling, and another was Dara O'Briain informing us that he is rubbish at games. Or, as some might say, "what is wrong with games." You see, Dara is what we might call a "Casual".

The definitions are hazy, mostly because they are used for varying means, but basically a Casual is a person who is bad at games, new to gaming, or who plays easy/popular games. A "Hardcore", on the other hand, is (generally speaking) someone who has been gaming for a while, who is good at games and plays harder, possibly more obscure games. And, going by the "loudest voices" principle of the internet, they hate each other. Hardcores consider Casuals to be ruining games by making them too easy, and Casuals think Hardcores are just elitist jerks. Most people actually don't care, but that just makes us hard to label and therefore nonexistant.

Where do I stand? Well, I'm planning to go into the industry. The more consumers, the better, so I say let all the Wii-playing kids on in! No old people though, the remote would get smelly (DISCLAIMER: that was sarcasm). Getting back to the most recent example, Dara Casual compared games to older media such as books and albums. His examples were mostly erroneous of course, most attempts to compare wildly different media are - but just imagine if, upon the release of a new book by Richard Dawkins, a whole wave of new people realised that they had seen the light (or not, as the case might well be) and become Atheists. But all the people who had been Atheists before said that these new, "Casual Atheists" were ruining Dawkins' writing, making him too easy to understand... This is, partially on purpose, an egregious metaphor, but showcases the bizarrity (that is a word now) of the situation nicely. People who were used to being different, being outcast, now find themselves part of the flock and do not like it.

I wasn't wildly popular at school, I only ever had a couple of friends at a time until I was about sixteen. Part of this was because I was shy and withdrawn, and would rather read, and part of that was because I didn't have friends to easily socialise with. Depressing cycles, bla bla bla. Early computer games such as Doom or Duke Nukem (I refuse to link those, you should know) were played mainly as a way to interact with my very geeky Dad, because it was something we both enjoyed - not that we were complete strangers otherwise, but I'm veering off-topic. These games led me to others, and eventually games like Pokemon and Golden Sun replaced books as an escape mechanism. I doubt I'm alone in this approach to video games as something done on the outskirts of society, which also kept me there, but I never had the self-esteem to think of myself, a geek, as "above" the "popular" crowd.

It is perhaps a reflection of simple optimism vs pessimism that some geeks consider themselves intellectually above the masses while others consider themselves socially below, but it seems odd to me that this would reverse itself. The Hardcores, as I see it, having elevated themselves in their own minds, now find their uniqueness compromised and seek to dispel this. I would not hasten to speak for any others, but having considered myself at most an equal to the "grunting jocks", I can't help but feel that there is no reason not to welcome them over to my field of expertise.

It is not an unheard of situation, I am sure, that as teenagers progress from (if you'll pardon the Americanisms) elementary to high school, those physically or socially "better" people start to appreciate what the mentally "better" have to offer. While I was in a clique of geeks in Sixth Form, some of whom looked down on the "Sports morons", I had no problem with the increased acceptance that came from being recognised as able to help with maths problems (a cynical view, to be sure - an equal part in the reduction of my being shunned was a general mellowing out that came to many of these people as we approached university). It is this same attitude that I take now.

So while the Elitist Hardcore shell themselves away in pixellated fortresses of skill and curse down upon the Mythical Casual, I'll be down at the gate, welcoming them in with open arms, saying "glad you like it" and "try this out". This is, I think, moreorless Nintendo's attitude when they talk of the Wii attracting people who have never played games before. And hey, it's working pretty well for them.

PS: Firstly, ironically enough, I've just noticed on the clock that this post didn't quite make Sunday like I wanted it to anyway. Secondly, Blogger's automatic spellchecker doesn't recognise "blog" as a word and I find that hilarious. And thirdly, sorry for dredging up such an old topic, but I really wanted to get writing again.

PPS: Now I've worked out how to insert screenbreaks, I've gone back and put them into my most recent four posts (this one included). Going forward I'll be formatting all my posts sensibly like this, and will enable viewing of more posts on the front page because of it :).

Huburrr

2009-10-03T02:09:00.005+01:00

Ok, so. I had a break over Summer. Only at the end of Summer, I locked myself out of my googlemail account, which is the same account as this blog... yeah. Anyway, back now, changed the locks and keys, put some spares in a few places, everything is hunky-dory. [TL;DR of what follows after the break: I didn't do much over Summer except be an idiot. I am now a busy moth. Stay tuned for more.]
Over the Summer, I ran an Exalted campaign. I would report the events here now, but someone is in the process of turning the complete logs into a pdf. Possibly a pdf novella, in fact (yeah it might take a while, especially given I'll want to proof-read probably several times....). But! Once that's finished, I'll be linking it here. And yes, I'll post a tl;dr version alongside it.

Mage picked up again (well, one session). Susumu wandered off and got lost, and I've replaced him with Daniel White-Heart, Swashbuckler Extraordinare! (That last part started as his Concept, but appears to have become his title). Daniel has a rapier, an ego, a flintlock pistol and a mish-mash of spells that don't match much because he is a Hollow One, which is to say a Mage not taken in by any tradition at all and who decides to do things their own way. Daniel has been through a couple of different "own way"s before, but has settled on being a Swashbuckler who is "just that fit". But he also knows how to use pentagrams and sympathy.

So Daniel and the other new character (Jenna Side got bored of Britain and went to the mainland, to be replaced by Ivanku the bear... shaman) woke up locked in a cell, being experimented upon. The remaining members of the Cabal went to investigate an office building, which turned out to contain our cell. After much confusion involving other people seeing through walls and Daniel not being able to ("Aha, my effects!" is now likely to become a catchphrase), we found a powerful biowizard who incapacitated us before being blown up by a loony archmage who healed us up and turned out to be our old boss. Then we finished, and haven't had another game since due to illnesses and schedule clashes and such.

In the aftermath of my Exalted campaign (and the run-up to the sequel campaign I'm planning) Anathema (who I don't have a website for off the top of my head, but he was The Slut in Exalted) is running a chronicle of Vampire the Requiem (this is the newer version of Vampire - Sheriti was in Vampire the Masquerade, the old version. There is much internet feuding between old and new World of Darkness) in which I will be playing Kelly Bechdel, a Gym teacher (it's in America) who likes kickboxing but recently got fired because she's a lesbian and was accused of molesting her students (she didn't - but parents wanted rid of her because political commentary). She then got bitten by a strange man under weird circumstances and is now a Gangrel - the most feral and violent kind of Vampire, as signified by her newfound ability to grow deadly claws.

I passed first year at Uni! Only took me two years, go me =P. Now enjoying Second Year, plenty of cool stuff in lectures. Maths is maths but I like maths. Pathfinding is an interesting topic being taught by an awesome lecturer - my only regret is that we only get one semester of it. Graphics is being taught by an even more awesome lecturer (Seriously, I don't think anyone is going to top an offer to have the class fight to the death for Starcraft 2 beta keys) in which I've almost already learnt how to make a basic virus. We're working with PS2s this year, which is groovy. And finally, I'm starting to learn Japanese (again. But with classes this time, so it should last longer than a week).

I moved house, but that is boring and too near to identifying me so hush. I no longer have a job, but I really want to concentrate on studying this year so that's cool. My brother is now also a university student, studying something deep somewhere cold. I have started sketching out details of one of the two games I have to make by January.

Computer Game Mods and the Issues Surrounding Them.

2009-06-06T12:13:00.004+01:00

No picture for this one, this is an essay I wrote as part of the last year's coursework, and figured I'd put up here now it's been handed in (ie finished). Fun fact: this was the first essay I'd written in almost 2 years. It's also shorter than my last blog post ^^; [EDIT And now it's after the break!]

In this essay I intend to examine the controversies surrounding the issue of computer game mods. In order to do this, I will firstly look at mods themselves, what they are, and their good and bad sides. I will then look at the positive role they can play in computer game development, and the negative role they play in the development of games for consoles over PCs.

The first thing we must do is to decide exactly what we mean when by a “mod” in the context of computer games. Wikipedia says that:

“Mods are made by the general public or a developer... are not standalone software and require the user to have the original release in order to run. They can include new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, textures, levels, story lines, music, and game modes.”[1]

So then, a mod is a piece of software that modifies an existing game in some way, hence the name. What is bad about this? The most major problems with the idea occur in multi-player games.

The first problem is that mods can, potentially, be used to break End User License Agreements (EULAs) or Terms of Service (ToS), which can lead to users being banned from playing the game, in a parallel to the case of WoW Glider[2], which was not a mod due to being a separate piece of software, but raises similar issues of allowing players to do something against the ToS.

The second is similar, in that it is possible for mods to be used to give one player an edge against others. For instance, there are mods for FPS games to change enemies' skins to make them more visible (such as a mod for Team Fortress 2 which makes a small pet follow anyone playing a Pyro[3]).

However, overall, I would consider mods to be a good thing in spite of these multi-player foibles. After all, a lot of mods can enhance a game's lifespan by a significant amount, which is to say, players who find the mod keep playing for longer than those who do not. The best examples of these are custom maps, mods which allow the normal game to be played in new locales, often with different units, weapons and even game-play types. One game that is still played today, thanks in part to its map mods, is Warcraft 3. Maps such as Defense of the Ancients[4] made using the official map creator of the original game mean that the game is played today even by people who have long since stopped playing the game in its original form.

An issue that is bad in multi-player games, that mods can make a game easier, can be good in single-player games, or the single-player parts of multi-player games. So long as making the game easier for one person does not make it harder for another, mods doing this are an excellent way to help less able players get into a game that they might otherwise be reluctant to play. For instance, the World of Warcraft mod QuestHelper[5] helps new players know where to go for quests, but as there is no competition over levelling inherent to the game, this mod has no averse affect on players without it.

In addition, mods can help a mostly good game escape those aspects which are bad about it. For instance, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is a game that was released with many bugs, a lot of which were never fixed by an official patch due to developers Troika Games closing down shortly after release[6]. However, fans of the game continued to produce mods to fix these bugs, so that the game could be played and appreciated despite its development issues[7].

Quite a few popular games over the last few years have launched with official mod tools or map making utilities. Examples include 2002's Warcraft 3[8], 2004's World of Warcraft[9], 2006's Elder Scrolls: Oblivion[10] and 2008's Fallout 3[11]. In all four of these cases, the map editor or mod creation tools have been advertised features, and in the case of Oblivion, is a Unique Selling Point (USP) of the game.

These mod creation tools are very good because they do a good job, as is their intention, of allowing amateur developers with good ideas but low resources to make their games in the media of existing games. In this way, talent flourishes which might otherwise go unnoticed due to lack of resources to put into developing a full game. A prime example of this is the game Counter-Strike, originally a mod for Half Life, which has grown into a series of published games in its own right[12].

However, there is also the issue of the often opposed areas of PC gaming and console gaming. While the majority of this issue often boils down to preference of control scheme, mods play a key part in it. Mods exist predominantly, almost entirely in fact, for PC games. For instance, the mod tools of Oblivion and Fallout 3 mentioned above are only for the PC versions, and do not exist for their Xbox 360 counterparts.

As an example of this discrepancy, one of the first pieces of paid downloadable content for Oblivion on the Xbox 360 was a small patch allowing horses to wear armour, something which Xbox users had to pay for despite the same patch being free for PC users[13].

The issue, however, is that at the end of the day, the flexibility and infinite potential of mods means that, in cases of games such as these existing on both console and PC, the PC version will be definably better due to having mods while the console version does not.

There are signs, though, that this is changing. Halo 3, the latest in Bungie's best-selling FPS line for Xbox 360, came with a feature called Forge, a multi-player mode incorporating a map editor[14]. In addition, at their conference at this year's E3, Nintendo spoke about the Dsi, and numerous games for it such as Wario Ware DiY which focused on user-generated, shareable content[15]. While not mods in the strictest sense, these cases show that mods for console games are becoming a possibility, and perhaps in the next generation of consoles we will see them truly catching up to PCs.

So, in conclusion, I'm optimistic for, and in favour of, mods. The problems in multiplayer games and current edge of PCs over consoles are more than outweighed, in my mind at least, by the single-player improvements and the potential for showcasing developer skill.

Inside what?

2009-06-01T03:40:00.004+01:00

So... I've kinda mostly stopped blogging, at least over summer. I'll post summaries of the last sessions of Mage and Naruto over the next week or so, but the Exalted game is being compiled into its own logs (which I'll go over at the end of the campaign and put somewhere then) and I'm not playing any other RPGs. Still playing WoW, and might post occassionally about that. [EDIT Wall-o-text rant after the break]

Like now, for instance. That I'm here indicates there's some stuff on my chest and I want to vent. That's what I got this blog for, after all - to rant when noone cares. First though, a WoW update:
-I'm in Why So Serious, a good 10-man raiding guild on Quel'Thalas, which is putting its first feet into 25-man raiding. Unfortunately, the internet, and WoW in particular, is full of dicks, so it's not going as well as could be helped. Still, rules are being strictened and recruitment is ongoingish, and we're up to Yogg-Saron (the 2nd last boss) on 10-man so s'all good.
-I levelled Jewelcrafting in place of Tailoring, because 1) it has better bonuses and 2) it has its own daily quests, which Tailoring doesn't. I'm hoping it's also better for making gold through trading, but we'll see.

Anyway, right. Firstly, WoW Insider. Sorry, Wow-dot-com. For all I know, WoW Insider was at some stage "just a fan-site", but for as long as I read it, it was owned (and paid for) by AOL. This bugs me.

See, the large majority of WoW fansites out there are run and written for by people who, y'know, like the game. Bloggers like Pike, Euripedes or Gevlon were having enough fun playing this game that they decided to share with others. So too were BRK and Skeleton Jack, though for the latter 3 it's no longer the case. However, what all 6 have in common is that they wrote good, informative and/or entertaining blogs about aspects they enjoyed within a game they enjoyed. Half of them still do. And none of them (afaik) did it for money. Some of them asked for donations, though not even all of those were for themselves. None of them were writing for a corporation. None of them had to produce content every week, no matter what - if they had nothing good to write, nothing was written. And other sweeping generalisations about these people who are better than me, which I'm sure might prove to be untrue. But hey, edit button, right?

Anyway, WoW Insider. It had good posts. However, the main reason I read it was to get linked to other places. Aside from news posts which linked away to other sites (usually Blizzard's own, or mmo-champion), they had regular columns. Of these, I read: Arcane Brilliance: one bad mage tauting his bad views about things, saying bad things about the class and having a hardon for warlocks for no discernable reason. Bad. The Queue: A column dedicated to answering the questions of the stupid. Ask a Lore Nerd: The Queue, but for people who care about the in-game story. Slightly more of a point than the Queue, but still easily subsidised by WoW Wiki. Now, this could be said about the internet in general. It's all cyclical, right? No truly original content. Except that, y'know, there is. People who bother to edit WoW Wiki (those who edit it to be right, that is) put in a lot of work. The people at MMO-Champion put in a lot of work trawling through blue posts or patch files. The people at WoW Insider put in a lot of work... reading other websites.

And what's more, they get paid to do something that many would do for free. It is the former generation's perception of what the internet should be used for, rather than the internet generation's actual use of it. Needless to say, I agree 100% with Euripedes' opinion about pirating. And to take a tangent from that same rant: We (my generation) do things we like because we like them. If we like them, and think other people will like them, we will give these things to other people. Radiohead is the example 'Rip used, and it fits perfectly here. They made music, because it's what they enjoy doing. They gave that music to other people, because they thought said other people would enjoy listening to it. Those other people then proceeded to give Radiohead lots of money. They needn't have given any. I got distracted again. Get used to it.

WoW Insider was, and (sorta) is, incredibly corporate. As discussed above, its employees (contributor makes it seem too voluntary) don't even put out content that's better than that of those who started writing and then later started being given money for it, almost by accident. Of the 3 current blogs I mentioned above: I couldn't find any donate button on 'Rip's site, though he has G-ads (or similar) up to cover costs; Pike is accepting donations to help her live, but in the form of art commissions; Gevlon I'm pretty sure would be violently opposed to the idea of asking for donations. Of the 2 dead ones: SJ accepted donations to help a friend's daughter get surgery to prevent her death - and even that was in the form of a raffle; BRK sold t-shirts and stuff. All of these people put out good content, and none are getting a wage for it.

The last straw, for me, was WoW Insider's recent makeover. You see, AOL have had the catchy www-dot-wow-dot-com for a while, since before World of Warcraft came about. And recently (well, a couple of weeks ago), they decided to move WoW Insider there. This is a perfectly logical decision. BUT. I don't like it. Call me paranoid, or a stick-in-the-mud, but it seems underhanded. A good number of people out there only know of the game as WoW, and while I've been on the internet long enough to know that google's a better option, I do remember the days when searching for anything on the internet was a matter of typing "www-dot-anything-dot-com" (hint: this was my way of avoiding a search engine. I don't *actually* remember a time before search engines). So someone's interested in this "Wow" they've been hearing about, this fun game, and they go to wow-dot-com, because hey, bound to be the official website. Instead they find a "fan"-site (at this point I think I'm coming off as bitter, but I can live with that) that either a) they'll get confused by and give up or b) they'll turn to using as their primary source of information about the game, which is frankly a bad idea.
Just as a test, I decided to try to do a few things at wow-dot-com that a newcomer might. Firstly, get a link to worldofwarcraft.com - the *actual* official site. Nope. Secondly, find out about the game. Nope, only able to find out about this website. Look for information about mages. I find mostly links to recent articles from Arcane Brilliance, from which I gather that all mages hate warlocks (though I'm not sure why), Blizzard are wrong, I should be PvPing as three different types of mage, and I should have professions. Get some advice for people new to the game. Yes, though all of it is assuming I already am playing. Which I'm not if I still haven't found the official site, but hey.
Anyway, I no longer peruse that site, and would discourage it (though I realise I might well have just increased their traffic by, like, 1 person - good thing I'm not popular). However, back when I did there was a little story happening...

Last month, Charlie Brooker did a series called Newswipe, in which he took a satirical look at the behind-the-scenes working of news. It was pointed out repeatedly that a lot of the news consists of "This happened" "A lot of people are bothered that this happened" "A lot of people are angry that this happened" "Yet more details on this controversy". The news often directs the public's opinion, rather than reveal it. If we are told that we are bothered about things, clearly we are. Also during April, WoW Insider reported that a player had been given an item by a Blizzard employee that let said player cheat. Said player then used this item to kill all the hardest bosses in the game, some of them before anyone else in the world had managed it. By the time I was aware of the story, I found it as follows "What's your opinion on this scandal that has rocked the WoW community to it's core?" Odd, I have no idea what you're talking about... "Man cheats, it's outrageous" Sure is, I guess, how'd he do it? "Player cheats using item given to him by Blizzard employee" Oh. Well, that's Blizzard's own fault then really isn't it? Wait, I'm supposed to be outraged, aren't I? Oops.
A fansite of a game, no matter how poopular, should not be using the same tropes as international news networks. That's just ridiculous. Noone I've talked to ever gave even an impression of being upset about it, in fact most found it hilarious. So yeah, stop being bad, stop snaring newcomers, and stop having delusions of grandeur.

-----

More ranting! There was this blog about paladins, which was run by a female WoW player, who put up pictures of herself and occassionally posted off-topic stuff. Only it turned out that the pictures were of someone else completely. And all the off-topic stuff was stolen from another website (I *think* the website of the girl whose pictures were posted - not 100% clear). The WoW player girl then claimed to be 7 different people, some of whom were men. But it's ok that she was using someone else's pictures (I don't think the picture girl was any of the people WoW player was/is) because the paladin stuff was good.

I haven't read the paladin stuff, I don't plan to. Plagiarism is bad though, especially when it borders on identity theft. Simple rules folks - if it's not your own work, say whose it is. My main issue with the WoW blogger was that, upon it being found out that she wasn't her (or something), she shut down her website for a few days, then came back with an apology post so convoluted (Seriously. 7 people? 6 of whom were plagiarising just because the 1st had done? WTF) one almost missed the fact that it ended with self-congratulation. "Sorry I was bad, here's a bad reason why. But hey, I'm still awesome, right?" Wrong. You're (I have no idea whether that you was singular or plural, so I'm glad it's one word) not awesome, you're a liar and a thief. Which wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have your head so far up your own arse(s). I hadn't heard of Ferraro before this, and I hope I don't again. At the very least, not positively.

Wall of Text enrages, and hits you for 999,999 damage to the entire raid (especially if reading that took over 15 minutes). Come back with better deeps next time.

I think we should call it your grave!

2009-05-15T04:17:00.003+01:00

Not sure how well the above screenshot shows it, but I'm in a new guild! I wasn't raiding enough in my old one (which wasn't really their fault, and I'm not going over it here), so now I'm in one with some old friends from IRC. In a week and a bit, after I leave my job, I'll be a proper hardcore MC Raider! In Ulduar, though.

Anyway, Mage. So last week, we were told that we'd brought the attention of some bad guys called Technocrats to the area, and should go fix that. We headed out into the nearby town/suburb, and after Kase (our Virtual Adept) hacked into the local police station's network and planted a wild goose chase for the Technocrats' Agents to follow, we chased them down. While the rest of the cabal argued about whether or not to enter the shop we'd led/followed them to, I headed in anyway. They didn't actually notice me until Jenna (the rock chick Ecstatic) came in to drag me out, at which point they recognised me as the guy who'd exploded their pal in the last session, and scarpered.

After we (the Agents and I) got into their car - Did I mention that I have an absurdly high stealth roll thanks to my magical subtlety? Yeah - I unsuccessfully attempted to put them to sleep, then successfully made them angry at each other. Meanwhile, the rest of the cabal had noticed I was in the car too, and managed to stop it by puncturing the tyres. Anyway, thanks to some magical help from me, the driver reacted to his car stopping by punching his passenger, knocking the man unconscious and almost putting his head through the window.

A brawl ensued with some locals, and I escaped with the unconscious man to a local park where we all met up to interrogate him. I kept watch for people following us from the kid's roundabout in the park while they talked to the man. I didn't hear any of that, in character because I was elsewhere, out of character because I was reading Wolverine: Origins. The only thing I know is that there was a mobile involved, because I was told it was in front of me but had no reason to care, and then after a while it disappeared because one of the guys summoned it.

Anyway, after a while we were all compelled by our Avatars (the things that fuel our magic, kinda like souls) to walk into a cave that had just appeared in the woods, and once inside the cave to drown ourselves in a lake inside. We all fell unconscious, and when we woke up we were back outside, the cave was gone and we were all more powerful. Susumu can now stop bullets and give himself super-speed.

Anyway, this week, we were told to go and take out the chief Technocrat in the area (presumably based on last week's interrogation - shut up, it was a good comic) and so we traced him to a nearby farm where he was threatening a farmer's family for no explained reason. He saw us coming, shot tear gas at us, then got shot by John (the Hermetic gunslinger)'s bullets and Julius (the priest)'s holy light laser pulse thing. I ran out of the gas at super-speed, only to find he'd already been killed while I was gaining super-speed, and jumped through the window anyway to land in front of the rather surprised family. Kase stopped his gun exploding by exploiting the world's RNG, and apparently there'll be a conclusion next week.

Seriously guys, wtf?

2009-05-13T23:57:00.003+01:00

This totally counts as Wednesday.

So yeah, Exalted. The campaign I'm running, that is. When last we left our heroes, they were about to decide whether or not to fight a Solar Exalt that had just appeared inside their ship. Well, they raced downstairs, and a stalemate ensued. Guns were aimed, swords were brandished, it was all very unpleasant. The Solar, who turned out to be Roja the cabin boy (think about it), was very confused as he'd just found out that in a previous life he'd created the very ship he was now the lowest-ranked person on. The band were very confused, as despite his rippling muscles and white glow, the person in front of them was clearly just a boy in his early-mid teens. After a while of shouting at each other about how they wouldn't put their weapons down because of how they'd probably get killed, the party whore, Lucrezia (for whom it took about a session to gain the nickname Lucy) slinked up to him, flashed a bit of skin, and abducted him to her cabin.

See, this is the great thing about RPGs. The players will almost never do what you expect them to. If they'd tried to kill the guy, he was weak enough in combat stats they probably could have done, but I also forgot to give him good social defenses, and so now he's the party mascot. Well, that and Lucy's booty call, which I'm determined to avoid as much as possible because yeah, cybering? Not really my thing. But in any case, I accidentally ended up with a GMPC (GM's player character, ie an NPC who's as powerful as or more powerful than the PCs and in their party) rather than a corpse. I'm keeping him around rather than railroading him out of here for a couple of reasons, the main one being he's damn useful for exposition.

After seducing him to their side, Roja revealed to the band that in a previous life he'd been a Twilight caste Solar Exalt, who'd made this ship. He also said that it wasn't at its full power, and that they should go and find a powerful hearthstone in the Western Ocean to power it. Then there was more commotion downstairs, and a sharkman jumped on board. Now, I went to look up the stats for the sharkman (a standard beastman) and accidentally started using the stats for a siaki-man (a minor deity). So after almost killing one of the band in the first session, I positioned the enemy near a window and when Zasz hit him with a large ball of wind essence (think air-zooka, but magicker) he flew out of said window (which I'm sure has a special name on a ship, but what the hey) and didn't come back.

A week of RL time passed, and the next session picked up that night at dinner, with noone really caring that they'd just fought a sharkman, and Roja being very tired out thanks to an afternoon spent with Lucy (off-screen). Later that night, a Peleps (a house from whom Zasz had stolen the ship, head of the dragon-blooded navy) boat was spotted coming toward them. Naval combat rules were learnt as chase was given, and after Lucy blew up the boat's sail the band closed in on the boat to loot and plunder.

Unfortunately, the boat slipped around the back of the Strange Mountain, and a lovely couple appeared ready to get butchered. The man was shot off the back of the ship by Zasz and left unconscious in the ocean, and the woman was killed with a single slice from Revvie's sword. Then their two friends appeared, a large armoured fighter with a greataxe, and an Immaculate Monk (who are Exalted's equivalent of my Mage) with claws. Fong, Alindre and Alindre's bear Grumbles all charged straight at the monk, who redirected Fong's attack the the axe-wielder (who blocked it easily, just as Fire Emblem taught me) and Alindre's and the bear's to Zasz. Alindre did a bit of damage to Zasz, and then I left it on a cliffhanger.

Next session should see a conclusion to this combat (hopefully quickly, as the monk's used enough of his mystical energy that he's surrounded in an aura of lethal water.) and some NPCs who's template I'll get right.

Thousands wouldn't

2009-05-13T00:13:00.002+01:00

A fact about me you may not know: I'm terrible at time-keeping. I just have a terrible internal clock, at least when it comes to estimating how much time has passed between two events. I cannot estimate journey times except for in relation to other journeys, and even then only by estimating the distances. "Well, it takes me 20 minutes to get to work, but uni's nearer to work, so... under 20 minutes?" (actually somewhere between 5 and 10).

This sometimes means I struggle to find the time for doing things, this blog being a prime example, that aren't on a fixed schedule. It hardly helps that I had a reasonably active last week. In addition to work, I:

-Ran another two sessions of Exalted (the second of which finished just before I typed this)

-Played a session of Mage

-Hunted down more pets in WoW and started getting reputation with some of the factions from the Burning Crusade who sell pets.

-Handed in my notice at work (come on, 23rd May)

-Applied for a new WoW guild run by some friends of friends in IRC

-Saw Star Trek, which was awesome (though I can't help but feel I missed a lot by not bein a Trekkie myself)

-Had my end-of-year interview at uni, which went alright. I think I'm going to have to redo an essay over the next month or so, and possibly polish up another couple bits of coursework, if I want to pass through into the next year.

Anyway, yeah, busy, albeit some of that stuff's frivolous, but hey, so am I =P

Coming soon: a summary of the first two proper episodes (full sessions) of the Exalted game, a summary of last week's Mage (probably on Thursday along with a summary of this week's), some WoW stuff, and a GMing rant about GMPCs (which I managed to miss last time round). One a day at least is my plan, but we'll see how it goes. Feel free to harass me if nothing appears on Wednesday proper.

It is a silly place

2009-05-03T02:36:00.003+01:00

It can be hard picking the right title and picture for a blog post. Today I am going to write about WoW's 3.1 patch and the Argent Tournament, and - cliche that I am - I figured a picture of Camelot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be apt. But google image search failed me (also I realised I should cut down on the cliche, I hear it's high in saturated fats) so you get a paladin's horse.

So, patch 3.1. Yes, it was a while back, but bear with me. Firstly, the class changes that affected me:

-Molten Armour now scales with Spirit instead of being a fixed value.

Ok, with that out of the way, why am I playing my mage so much nowadays? Because these past few weeks have been some of the best for "Casual" players in a very long time. The Argent Tournament, a small area in the far north of Icecrown, is a hub of daily quests, mostly revolving around getting on a horse, equipping a lance and hitting other people on horses with lances. There is a basic progression which goes as follows:

-For the first 3 days, you kill 10 undead nearby, go out to find swords, and fight with practice targets. For the right to fight in the tournament.

-For the next 5 days, you kill 10 undead nearby, a bunch of mounted lieutenants and their minions a bit further away, go out to find swords, and fight with easy-mode AI NPCs. For your city!

-For the next forever days, you kill 15 undead nearby, a larger bunch of mounted lieutenants and their bosses a bit further away, go out to kill a dragon that (debatedly) requires a group to kill, and fight with hard-mode AI NPCs. For gold! Also for a special currency used for awesome minipets!

-For the first 19 of those forever days, you repeat the previous 5 days (actually 4 on the last time round due to an amusing bug) for some other city. After that you are a champion of your faction, and this doesn't actually get you any more gold or currency, just a nice title.

Now, this sounds monotonous, and it sort of is, except that, being WoW, it's one of the most enjoyable bits of monotony out there. I have so far become a champion of two cities, am nearing my 3rd, and have got a very nice dagger (worth 1/2 a minpet) that was a weapon upgrade for me.

After the Argent Tournament was around long enough for us to get used to it, Noblegarden (WoW's denomination-free version of Easter) came along, inviting us all to run around finding eggs in our low-level villages, throw bunny ears onto female characters (only if they're over 18 though!) and plant flowers in deserts. Which was fun, and I got another new minipet (a cute bunny that hops after me) and a new version of my polymorph spell: bunny rabbit. This inspired me to go and hunt down the other two versions of polymorph available to me (I already had sheep and penguin): cat and pig. There's also turtle, but I was tired by this point and a raid boss drops it. Admittedly, a level 60 20-man boss, but still.

And just as Noblegarden was drawing to an end, everyone's favourite WoW holiday (mainly because it's nothing to do with any real holiday), Children's Week! That's right, time to pop down to the orphanages, grab a cute little kiddywink, and drag him/her around Azeroth showing her/him the sights. There are two orphans: A human who's very dull and gets laughed at by his heroine, and a draenei who, having been made a couple years later, is much more interesting, and has ominous foreshadowing covering her. After taking the little draenei girl through a few achievements with me (exposing her to the harshness of war, teleporting home leaving her behind, and showing her the grind that her future life would be), I turned both in and got another pair of minipets. And then decided I wanted even more minipets, so set about flying about buying and questing for all the easy ones. I'm 12 away from a free skunk, and starting to worry about how much I like this game >.>

Never thought I'd see the day...

2009-05-02T06:27:00.002+01:00

So, Exalted. I promised a friend this post would be about the campaign I recently started running, complete with the above picture/link (NSFW, though I'm sure you can find a clean version if you youtube search "I'm on a boat").

So, I hang out in an IRC channel with a group of friends who were enthusiastic about WAR a while before it came out and decided to make a guild for it. Needless to say, when it did finally come out, most of us left it for WoW about a month later, but by that point the channel wasn't really about that any more anyway. But I digress, a couple weeks back someone started asking, as he often does, if anyone wanted to run an Exalted campaign over IRC. Now, as Scion had recently finished, I said yes.

After a bit of brainstorming, we recruited some other people in the channel into the game and decided on the setting: a Dragonblooded campaign set on the high seas, a group of adventurers sailing about beating up bad guys, that sort of thing. Since then, it was decided that the boat they were on would be an artefact made of Jade, so that it wasn't flammable. And in fact, despite it being a possibility, none of the PCs were aspected with Water, indeed most of them chose Fire. The ship's captain is aspected with Earth "so I can use the crew as armour" (yes Exalted works that way), and there's an Air-aspect there as well. The other 3 are Fire.

The PCs in more detail:

-Cynis Lucrezia: Fire-Aspected daughter of a house renowned for its hedonism, this sorceress and demon-summoner has decided to go out and experience the world before coming back to the Isle and proving her family's credibility.

-Mnemon Zasz: Despite being an Earth-Aspected son of a house renowned for its powerful sorcerers and nobles, Zasz is a brutish fighter obsessed with big guns and the ocean. After being outcast by his family, he found a ship and has taken to the seas to claim the Isle's navy as his own.

-Alindre, Found Egg: Daughter of servants, noone expected Alindre to Exalt, but her family were the servants of a noble house, and so she was more prepared for the life of a Fire-Aspected Exalt than most "Lost Eggs" are. Now she's decided to head out into the Western Ocean to find her brother, a soldier in the army.

-Tepet Revvie Edalalaika: Favourite daughter of a proud military house, Revvie lost an arm and a hand in an assassination attempt about a year ago. She was taken in and cared for by peasants until she was well, and during this time her family's armies were decimated. Now calling herself "Tarnished Orchid," she goes out to take on the world with her swordsmanship, and track down the source of her would-be assassins.

-Sesus Fong: Originally a Lost Egg, Fong Exalted into the Fire Aspect early and was adopted into a house of cut-throat politicians. However, his humble beginnings meant that the world of politics never suited Fong, and now he's stowed away on a ship heading west to escape it all, even for a while.

The ship on which they sail is the Strange Mountain, a small battleship which can fold itself down to the size of a suitcase, and which needs no crew to sail it but a skilled captain. Zasz has armed it with a pair of Essence cannons and a pair of seige ballistae, and they were about to set sail when golden light and the sound of screams spilled out from downstairs. Apparently a Solar Exalt, or "Anathema" has appeared. As Dynasts of the Realm, the band should slay this person, but they tend to be rather powerful and 2 of the 5 of them lean toward the social aspect of the game... it's going to be an interesting 2nd session.

Ludicrous Kill!

2009-05-01T22:31:00.002+01:00

Mage last night was pretty cool. We'd just broken into a warehouse in the middlish of Glasgow, and found it to be full of educational textbooks, that most evil of products! Ok, so we later discovered they were full of subliminal messages that supressed magic in the minds of the young and so really were evil(ish), but still. Books. Anyway, the security guardwent for a piss as we were discussing how to deal with him, so we locked him in there through some nifty magic by one of the Hermetics.

Inside the security guard's office, we found nothing except for a tracking device (which none of us identified as such, and were about to leave when the Technocracy burst in! Snipers shot one of us unconscious immediately, and everyone dived for cover. Then Susumu realised they were all cowards with guns instead of real weapons, so ran out into the shelves to fight them properly. He surprised one of them and hit him so hard, his head disappeared into his torso and his legs crumpled. Which was cool. Also, it scared away the rest of them, so we were free to burn down the warehouse and escape to get our downed comrade healed up. There were some latin mutterings about god from the group's priest-mage, some ominous mutterings about karma from one of our superiors, and then we discovered just how evil those books were, and also that the fire we'd started in that one warehouse had spread to burn down the whole warehouse district. Oops.

Stay. Enjoy Your Final Moments

2009-04-30T02:46:00.002+01:00

Wooh, been a while. I blame that Easter thing, didn't have enough games on, so my week's only had structure at the weekends, when work keeps me busy/asleep.

Things that have happened since that last post:

-A variety of stuff in narutexalted. The 3-session fight ended, we got owned in the face by a couple of awesome super-ninja guys, and our debriefing when we got back home was carried out by an interrogator (one skilled in illusions -which Toshi wants). We then spent a session working on a bit of in-character downtime and relationships with NPCs and stuff. And most recently, we tracked down a Ninja of Sound (creepy ones) who'd abducted some merchants into a forest rather like a snowy version of the Lost Woods. Toshi had some fun torturing him and realised that he should learn to heal faster than he currently does.

-First session of Mage consisted of character intros and the Cabal being sent off to investigate some warehouses in centralish glasgow for signs of Technocrats. My character narrowed down which warehouse to investigate by tripping over an empty bottle of Buckfast, and proceeded to fail to smash through the door's lock with his bo.

-I started an Exalted campaign with some friends I know over the interwebs. We're playing over IRC (which meant I got to play around with owning a registered channel, yay) and the game is a naval-based Dynastic Dragonblood campaign. More details in a later post.

-WoW Patch 3.1 hit, affecting Jastanka only by way of a goldsink, and affecting Jielanka massively. Jori'd barely been logged onto >_<. Jiel's now a level 73 Blood(dps)/Blood(tank) DK who's still endlessly frustrated at how much her companion Nebri attracts the negative attentions of Shoveltusks. Jast is still Mono-spec, Arcane cookie cutterish (it's one of those cheap, slightly flexible ones you get from poundland).

-My 20th birthday happened. I got a bunch of cool stuff, including vouchers I haven't spent yet, a new watch, a new pencil and a G13. The last of those was just in time for patch 3.1 bringing Mac compatability for its LCD display of WoW stats.

-Finally, I discovered the joys of putting soundclips into WoW macros. Now, whenever Jast summons her A-Team, she also yells out (only to me) "There's plenty of me to go around!" in the voice of a Northrend boss.

Gods of the Internet willing, tomorrow I'll play Mage and then blog about it. I might also post something about either WoW 3.1 or my new exalted campaign, depending on how much free daytime I find myself with tomorrow.

And I Feel Fine

2009-04-10T03:36:00.003+01:00

Tonight was a very fun finale to the Scion Story/Chronicle/Whatever. Realising that the Band were on his tail and about to catch up, Hitler took the initiative and started the confrontation. In under a second:

-Hitler took on his mighty War Form, a huge mass of bubbling black ooze with white lightning-hair (including the moustache) and golden clocks for eyes, then attacked Leon with no damage ensuing.

-2 Scions and 9 skeletons attacked Hitler fruitlessly, then another 2 Scions grazed him a bit.

-2 Scions got ready for their first attacks.

In the next few seconds, which took a couple hours of real-time (It's almost enough to make one understand why anime episodes spend so long covering so little time), there were some more blows exchanged and nerfs applied before Sazirk, electronic genius and demigod of Atlantis, declared he was ready. Olfus, big brutish son of Odin currently in his own War Form, was ready to act in concert, and the other 3 combat characters used a special power to become ready for this final attack.

-Sazirk shot Hitler in the chest with an explosive round from a railgun. He then used his powers of shielding and ice to freeze the blooming explosion before Hitler was ripped apart.

-Everyone else dived for this inflicted "weak spot" of Hitler, ignoring his massive armour value in order to deal (I think) 70 levels of damage, about 30 of which were to Hitler's soul itself. To put this in context, "poor" Adolf had only 21 total health levels.

-One of the attacks was an arrow made of solar energy from Daniel, adopted son of Bastet (formerly of Ra). One was a sword made of elemental Fire from Leon, son of Ares. One was Olfus (his War Form turned various of his body parts into melee weapons). One was just a strong kick from Val, russian daughter of Bastet. The introduction of Solar Energy and Elemental Fire into an explosion that had become an implosion created a Nuclear Fusion reaction. See picture above.

-Hitler was annihilated, and everyone else was blown out of the way by the masive concussive force (or teleported or flew their way out). Also blown away by the nuclear explosion was a section of the wall of Tartarus, prison of the Titans.

-Gods panicked, and the Band were sent into the World to rally the forces of the Gods there.

-"End of Book One"

Seriously, I couldn't have thought of anything even remotely that epic. Things just sort of... fell into place to make something awesome. It was the sort of thing that could only come out of a group of almost-like minds coming together and working toward one goal... that goal being Awesome.

And now Scion's over, Vampire's over and Mage hasn't *really* started yet. Naruto's tomorrow, but we were in a quiet lull between two stories when we last left off. It's kinda wierd not having myself built up to anything. Oh wait, it's Easter weekend tomorrow and I work in a kitchen. There goes that chillout >_<.

Bricks

2009-04-09T02:08:00.003+01:00

Yesterday, we created our characters and their home for the new campaign replacing Vampire, Mage (the Ascension). Everyone was a bit tired and the Chantry (mage-home) creation rules were a bit obtuse for a bunch of people that tired at that time of night, but we made our way through and are ready to start ^_^

I'll be playing Susumu, a mage of the Akashic Brotherhood, a group who are basically your classic oriental monks - martial arts, mystic chants, and "chi". He's not the sharpest katana in the box, but hits things very well, usually with a large blunt stick. He'll be joined by a virtual adept (they hack reality) called Kassandra, a rock chick from the cult of ecstasy (they take magic herbs, dude) called Jenna Side, a Celestial Chorister (they get their magic from God) called Julius, and two mages from the Order of Hermes (the nearest thing to the "classic" wizard, with magic languages and formulae and so forth): a gunslinger called John Preston and an almost stereotypical wizard(ess) called Persephone.

We all live in an underground castle hidden under a bunker near Glasgow, powered by a couple of magical "nodes" (sources) and protected by a magically-powered kitten. We all have servants, and are joined by a mysterious "master" mage and another group who are all from different magical traditions than us and will probably secretly turn out to be against us all along.

I played WoW earlier, did some quests in Howling Fjord with my brother on our DK-priest duo. We pilotted scrap-bots around evil robo-dorf mines, and shot falcons with hawks (might have been the other way round, actually). Was fun, if a little short-lived due to The Apprentice being on. My brother managed to get me interested last time round, and now I fear I'm forever going to be shouting at a bunch of ego-filled business-people to stop being idiots every Wednesday it's on.

Also, this week WoW's arena tournament's most recent (I think 3rd) phase ended, and with it the quest of my brother, my past flatmate and I to attain the in-game minipet prize - a baby murloc dressed in armour. We think we managed it, but won't find out for sure until the patch with that pet's model in it arrives in a week or two.

Arenae were cool, though the "grind" of having to do 200 matches in total got a bit tedious toward the end. Early on, however, it was fun playing the game in a way I hadn't before, getting to grips with the new playstyle alongside two of my friends (yes, I consider my brother a friend - not doing so would probably be a bad idea). Pitching my own skills against other players was exhilarating in a way I hadn't felt in a while from the game - the PvE content being universally agreed upon as the easiest endgame yet, the PvP challenge was a great one, especially when we found ourselves dropping low enough in the rankings that we could beat our opponents.

Now, off to level mining some more on my DK. She needs something she can make decent gold from, and for that to happen, she needs to max the skill.

No socks

2009-04-03T21:10:00.003+01:00

Had fun at Scion last night, took the band full loop back to Hades where Hitler had managed to escape Helheim and head off to the walls of Tartarus. After run-ins with some of Hades' minions (Cerberus and some rather lacklustre guardian giants) they beat up two of Niddhogg's kids, Goin and Moin. There were some cool stunts, and they're ready for the showdown next week. If it sounds like not much actually happened, that's because we started late, finished early, and spent most of the time in complicated combat.

I missed most of the fun of April Fool's day on Wednesday, due to a mixture of my normal slightly-off sleeping pattern and rushing to finish coursework for today - the last day of the second semester, something that hadn't entirely set in until mid-week. Time sure does fly. On which note, I finished writing up my new Purview for Scion, Time. Therefore I'm going to spend the rest of the post typing it up, for future review by my players and myself.

---

Time, Paradox & Linearity

Whenever someone is successfully targeted by any Time boon except for 1 and 10, they gain Paradox points equal to the rating of that boon. Paradox points represent a special type of Fatebinding - According to Fate, Time should be Linear, and those whose Timeline no longer fit this are a Paradox.

Every person has a maximum capacity for Paradox, which equals their Legend + Integrity. If anyone would ever be put above their Paradox Capacity, they are immediately Linearised until this is no longer the case (see below). If someone has 1 or less Legend, they instead are ignored by Paradox, as someone so insignificant cannot hope to unravel Time through lack of Linearity.

At any point, Fate (or a sufficiently powerful Scion) may Linearise a subject of Paradox, thus removing an amount of that person's Paradox but inflicting a suitable punishment. This punishment ranges mechanically from Bashing damage or loss of Legend Points, to having boons repeat or mirror themselves, to being removed from Time (and therefore existance) - this most extreme punishment only being possible if an amount of Paradox is being removed equal to the target's capacity.

It is possible, through the effect of Time 10 or the Avatar of Time, for someone to gain negative Paradox, referred to as Linearity, up to an amount equal to their normal Paradox capacity. Any Linearity over this capacity is ignored.

Time (animal: white rabbit)

Associated With: Atum-Re, Apollo, Tezcatlipoca

Time 1: Time Sense

Dice Pool: None, Cost: None

The first step on being able to manipulate Time is being able to perceive it. A Scion with this boon always knows exactly what time it is. They can also detect the use of any Time boon within Per+EPer+Time yards, rolling Per+Time to detect which one, and see the Paradox of anyone who doesn't have this boon. If two Scions with this boon meet each other, each will be able to see some indicator in the other's eyes that they are masters of Time.

Time 2: What If? (I)

Dice Pool: Man+Academics, Cost: 1L per dot moved

Nearly everyone alive sometimes wonders what life would be like if they'd made different decisions. This boon allows them to find out. The user chooses a target, then rolls Man+Academics. They may then move as many dots from the target's abilities to other abilities as they achieved successes on the roll, spending 1L for every dot moved in this way. Taking a dot out of a favoured ability, reducing an ability to 0 from 1 or putting a dot into an ability currently at 0 costs 2 successes and 2L. Reducing a favoured ability to 0 from 1 costs 3 successes and 3L. The effects of this boon last for 1 scene.

Time 3: Time Resistance

Dice Pool: Wit+Academics, Cost: 1WP+5L per extra tick

With increasing awareness of the flow of time, the Scion becomes able to gain or grant a limited ability to ignore - or be ignored by - its passage. This boon costs 1WP to activate. For the next (Wit+Academics) ticks, the target takes one tick for every 5L spent when the boon is activated. If only 5L are spent, the target instead takes only 1 tick for every 2 "normal" ticks that pass.

A Scion who knows Time 3 may use any of their Time boons, including 3, at-1 speed.

Time 4: Time Loop

Dice Pool: Wit+Academics, Cost: 5L per loop (1WP to be retroactive)

As a demigod, it is a simple trick to take a small part of Time and have it repeat. This boon is applied to one arm, head, torso or set of legs. For every 5L spent, the target area repeats the next 4 ticks once more afterward. So if 5L were spent, those 4 ticks would happen twice, if 10L were spent, three times, and so on. This can be used to make a speed 5 punch every 4 ticks, or to shoot a speed 4 gun multiple times without reloading. The target's DV refreshes whenever they take an action, but they cannot use the affected area to parry. If an attack has already happened, DVs being applied against it are increased by +1 for each time it has happened. After the Legend has been spent, the Scion makes a contested roll of (Wit+Academics) against the target's (Wit+Integrity). If the target wins, the Legend is still spent but nothing happens. If the Scion wins, they may spend 1WP to have the boon affect the previous 3 ticks rather than the next 4. If the roll is a draw, the target may spend 1WP to force a re-roll that they take the second result of, or allow the boon to resolve normally.

Time 5: Peer Through Time

Dice Pool: Per+Time, Cost: 1WP (5L to prepare an item)

With this boon, the Scion learns that not only is Time not a straight line, it is possible to take a hold of normally distant parts and have a look further along the thread. At the cost of 1WP, once per session the Scion may look up to (Per+Time) years into the future or past. They may search anywhere within this time period for the answers to a number of simple questions equal to her Legend. At a cost of 5L, one of those questions may inform her of a specific item that she will need in the future, thus enabling her to attain it. This use of the boon gives the user 1 more Paradox above the normal 5 incurred by using the boon.

Time 6: Time Immunity

Dice Pool: Wit+Academics, Cost: 2WP+10L per target.

After much practice, the Scion learns to ignore Time completely, and to remove people from it. Activating this boon for 2WP + 10L per target allows the Scion to prevent those targets from taking any action for (Wit+Academics) ticks, or to allow those targets to take (Wit+Academics) ticks without anyone else taking any. It is possible to reduce the cost of this boon by half, this grants those targets prevented from taking action complete immunity to anything, and renders those targets given additional ticks unable to have any physical effect on those still inside Time.

A Scion who knows Time 6 may use any of their single-target Time boons on any number of targets at once with no multiple-action penalty, provided they spend the requisite cost as many times as they have targets.

Time 7: Time Overlap

Dice Pool: Wit+Academics, Cost: 15L per loop (1 WP to be retroactive)

By the time they are nearly gods, Scions of Time have learnt sufficient control that they can not only cause loops in Time, but can in fact have those loops occur simultaneously rather than in sequence. Every 15L spent causes any damage taken or dealt by the target in the next 4 ticks to be applied an additional time. So if 15L were spent, the damage would be doubled, if 30 were spent, tripled, and so on. After the Legend has been spent, the Scion makes a contested roll of (Wit+Academics) against the target's (Wit+Integrity). If the target wins, the Legend is still spent but nothing happens. If the Scion wins, they may spend 1WP to have the boon affect the previous 3 ticks rather than the next 4. If the roll is a draw, the target may spend 1WP to force a re-roll that they take the second result of, or allow the boon to resolve normally.

Time 8: What If? (II)

Dice Pool: Man+Academics, Cost: 5L per dot moved

Some people sometimes wonder what life would be like if they'd been born differently. This boon allows them to find out. The user chooses a target, then makes a contested roll of Man+Academics against that target's Legend+Integrity. If they win the roll, they may then move as many dots from the target's attributes to other attributes as they achieved successes over the target's, spending 5L for every dot moved in this way. Taking a dot out of a favoured attribute costs 2 successes and 5L. The effects of this boon last for 1 scene.

Time 9: Time Travel

Dice Pool: Per+Time, Cost: 1WP+10L+5L per passenger

A master of Time needs no prophet or historian to know of different times, he simply strides off to experience them himselves. At the cost of 1WP+10L, the Scion may travel up to (Per+Time) decades into the past or future. They may take up to his Legend in additional passengers, spending 5L for each one. They may only travel through time once per session, though when doing so they may spend for this boon multiple times in order to "bounce" through times, making as many rolls as he spent for and taking the total. If anyone meets themself through the use of this boon, their current Paradox is added to both their own current total and to that of themself that they met. This boon usually takes 5 ticks of concentration to use, however this may be skipped if the user doesn't care when they are going to and leave it to Fate.

Time 10: Channel Paradox

Dice Pool: Man+Willpower, Cost: 1WP

A complete master of the purview of Time must also be a master of Paradox. Possessing this boon allows the Scion to see the Paradox of all people in sight, even those with Time 1. By spending a 5-tick Guard action examining one target, they can also gauge that target's Paradox Capacity. Finally, he can spend 1WP and make a roll of (Man+Willpower) with a difficulty of a target's current Paradox to affect that target's Paradox in one of the following ways. None of these uses of the boon can be used upon the Scion themselves:

-Linearise the target for a number of Paradox equal to that target's permanent Legend.

-Move a number of Paradox equal to the target's permanent WP to another target, for whom that much Paradox cannot be enough to meet their Paradox Capacity.

-Immediately remove 1 Paradox without Linearising.

-Immediately add 1 Paradox.

-Linearise all of the target's current Paradox, with the punishment being the physical manfiestation of as many imps as the target had Paradox. These imps have Legend equal to the target, and will immediately attack either the target or the Scion.

---

Phew, there we go. No details for the Avatar of Time, Avatars being basically systemless. Apologies for the walloftext-ness, just needed to get this typed up and online before I lost the ability to read my own handwritten copy ^^;

...Honest

2009-04-01T03:53:00.004+01:00

The Vampire game finished tonight. It was a pretty cool last session, makes me wish I hadn't missed the end of the Werewolf campaign last year (stupid work...). We went to go and "save" the Prince of Dundee, only to find he was now fully possessed by some sort of evil flamey shadow thing and had beaten up most of our rivals, a pack of the Sabbat. By this point, I had met in private with the Sabbat member who had infiltrated our Coterie, a Tzimisce (flesh-warping vampires with a penchant for being really creepy) called Laszlo, and arranged a deal - I'd support a Sabbat takeover of Dundee if they promised to let me do whatever I wanted. Turns out that was their plan anyway, but deal made.

On my way to the showdown with the Prince (now with Laszlo in tow) I picked up the Coterie's "punching bag", a Ravnos gypsy called Mickey (Ravnos are tricksters and all victims of their own vices - Mickey's being gambling) and persuaded him - through exploitation of his obsession with gambling and my own blood powers - to join the Sabbat and I in our takeover. After killing the Prince (we had to, honest!) and the thing possessing him, the Sabbat turned round and asked if we were going to fight them for the city. I was invisible at this point, having pretended to be killed by a fireball.

I slipped out of invisibility (not entirely on purpose) by saying that I would welcome them - and that I had the support of the city's Ravnos (all one of him), Malkavians (that clan's leader had earlier promised her support to the coterie in general on this matter, I was the first person to remember and claim it for the new guys), and my own clan, the Followers of Set. The Nosferatu (ugly sewer spies) leader then appeared at my shoulder to lend his own support. The Coterie was as followed:

-Me: Follower of Set, used to pretend to be a Ventrue, welcomes the new leadership but doesn't want to, strictly speaking, join the Sabbat - they have different religious views.

-Laszlo: Was with the Sabbat all along, also pretending to be a Ventrue.

-Mickey: Ravnos, was under magical compulsion from me to join the Sabbat, but thought it sounded like a good idea anyway.

-Richard: Lasombra Antitribu, had hated the Sabbat but now realised that he'd only dealt with the bad sides of it. Didn't join, but instead started working to weed out the weak among their ranks for them.

-Kristian: Malkavian, had his body taken over by a powerful Sabbat he ate and joined the Massive Malkavian Network - Is now making the already insane Malkavian clan super-violent too, by whispering orders to cut into every one of their heads. His body became Dundee's new Sheriff (only there's a special Sabbat name for it).

-Tony: "True" Brujah, thinks the Sabbat are stupid and so went to take over Perth. Is raising an army to come invade Dundee for the Camarilla later.

-Nina/Ezekiel: Less active players than the "core" 6, these two decided to stick with the majority of the Coterie and join the Sabbat.

Over the next year, Sheriti turned her ghoul Mandy into a vampire, and trained her to go infiltrate the Camarilla in Dundee, posing as a Malkavian. The cyclical thing is cool, also I like the idea that, now my character's an Elder in terms of power, she's willing to stay put, extend her influence over the Kine (vampirese for mortal) of Dundee, and send her Childe out to do some hard work bringing down the false society of the Aeons.

At some point over the Easter holidays, I intend to write up a "final" character sheet for Sheriti, and a starting one for Mandy (complete with a new name now she's a Setite vampire). These will likely serve no purpose, other than for me to gush about how awesome Sheriti is/was to future acquaintances, and possibly for Mandy to be a new character in a new game later on. The latter's not likely though, as the Vampire GM is going to be running a Wraith game over the 3rd semester and a Mage game next year (he'll be beaten if this changes).

A couple of off-topic notes: Firstly, one specifically to Dob: April Fools

Secondly, the shoe repair shop up the road needs better opening hours. Grr

Thirdly, time flies. The last two hours passed before I'd noticed, I meant to be in bed by now XD. To say nothing about how fast this semester passed.

Finally, a note to Scion players: Thursday 2nd April, the next session of Scion, will be the penultimate Episode of the Series. As such, I'll be trying to finish it a wee bit early so that everyone has time to work out how they'll spend their last bits of experience in such a way that they end up with little or no spare experience left - I'll not be rewarding any for the final Episode (on April 9th) of the Series. Characters taken to any later Series will not keep any leftover experience - and I'll mention this again at the beginning and end of both these remaining sessions.

Get off my lawn!

2009-03-27T16:25:00.002Z

For WoW players who are concerned about lack of raid content in Wrath of the Lich King, see above. WoW Vanilla (US launch being 1.1) started with only 3 raid dungeons: Onyxia, Molten Core and (Upper) Blackrock Spire.

More important than more raids back then were:

-Maraudon, holidays and being able to hide your helmet (1.2)

-Getting to MC without going through BRD (!), limitting dungeons to 10 people, Dire Maul and Meeting Stones v1.0 (1.3)

-The Honor System v1.0, Children's Week, the Arena in STV and elementals to grind in level 60 areas (1.4)

-The first two battlegrounds, WSG and AV (1.5)

Now my first main, my priest, wasn't 60 until a good half year or more after release, so I can't be certain, but I *think* that Naxx-10 is harder than BWL-15 was. Naxx-25 is certainly more interesting than MC was, and 2 single-target bosses are better than 1. More to the point, anyone else remember when UBRS was the entry-level raid? Screw Kara, Leeroy's the *real* old-school.

Anyway, I've been levelling mining on Jielanka, my DK alt. It's about 10 times easier than it used to be, for two reasons: Mainly the fact that all the minerals in a vein come tumbling out in one hit rather than 5, but also at some point that I'm going to assume to be 3.0, smelting ores started giving full mining "experience" the same as digging itself.

I also met up with my Father earlier, as he was up in Scotland for a day. S'always good to see family when you're living away, so long as it's still clear that you don't live with them anymore. I feel sorry for people whose families are further afield, ie people I know from school who went to study in the USA, or people I know now who came from mainland Europe or Africa. Still, at least we all have internet I guess.

Scion last night was eugh. The plot ended up taking longer to roll itself out than I'd hoped, essentially leading to the whole session being a long cutscene. Not something I like doing on purpose, this one sort of happened by accident: I had to take the band through the Egyptian Underworld of Duat, but really don't like it (it's a big angry desert which you walk through. Seriously. There are 10 gates with rewards for surviving more and more desert, that's it. Least interesting Underworld by far). Naturally, this meant I had them ride through it on Baron Samedi's raft, with the Baron pointing out the gates on the way, and saying hi to Osiris and Ra. Then Bastet showed up and took them to Yggdrassil, from where they went down to Helheim, where they've found they'll be fighting Hitler again. Also I had to spend some time helping people upgrade their characters to Legend 6 (which they reached this week) and explaining my new purview of Time to the people who've decided to use it (in character as Atum-Re being possessed by Atum-Re from the future and feeling rather loopy because of it).

My least favourite session in a while, but the coming week will have actual stuff to do, and there's a fight with this guy called Adolf coming up. Yay.

On vampires and alts

2009-03-25T05:10:00.002Z

Tonight's vampire game was interesting. After a long series of events, Sheriti and her coterie, favoured assistants of the Dundee Camarilla's Prince, rescued the Malkavian Primogen from torpor, and said primogen then led us to the site where all the city's Tremere had blown themselves up. While there, the coterie's "tank" Tony blew up his own sword and threw himself through one and a half walls by trying to break through a magical barrier. Clearly, Set did not wish for us to pass through it tonight. Instead, we've decided to go and confront the Prince himself over rumours we've heard, from the Sabbat bastards and from the Malkavian Primogen, that he's been possessed by a "Shard of Lilith", an artifact that the coterie's lore buff Richard thinks is properly called something else. Oh, and the coterie's Malkavian Kristian spotted Sheriti's forked tongue. Luckily, noone thought the loon knew what he was on about, because clearly I'm a Ventrue. Duh.

And now onto WoW. I originally meant to blog predominantly about this game, it just so happened that I started this blog at the same time as I've been playing WoW less and less. However, today I spent some time levelling my shaman alt, Jorianka.

Firstly, a note on my alts. In addition to my main character (main), Jastanka, I have a few alternate characters (alts): Jielanka the Death Knight (71), Jorianka the Shaman (23), and Sontanka the Priest (1, bank alt). When I get a chance, I'll start up Sarlanka the Paladin. The observant among you will notice a naming pattern there. That's on purpose. I am in a guild which consists of an awful lot of alts, none of whom I can ever remember the "real" identities of, and so I determined that my alts would all have some aspect of their name in common, specifically the last 4 letters "anka", and the name length being 8. All of my characters are female draenei. Draenei because they're my favourite alliance race, mainly for their starting area (it's newer and therefore better than the other 3) but also their racial power, a mana-free heal over time spell called Gift of the Naaru. Female because male draenei are ugly squid-faced meatcakes. :<

Anyway, I was playing Jorianka, the shaman, and running around in Ghost Wolf form (which I think of as Hoverdog form, in reference to the oWoD Werewolf game I played in last year) picking up flightpaths and doing killquests against orcs in Wetlands and skeletons in Duskwood. And really enjoying it, I guess just because there's a goal. Jielanka, the Death Knight, has no real reason to level higher, she's half a level behind my brother's priest, but because I'm a tank and he's a healer, I would like to just level those two characters together as much as possible. So while I might go and grind some xp to catch up to him occassionally, there's no *real* incentive to play Jiel. Jastanka has nothing to do except for the daily cooking quest when I remember, and enhancing some magical cloths every three days. She used to raid every week, but with the current arena tournament going on, I've stopped signing in order to grind out some fights for my £12 armoured baby murloc.

Jorianka, on the other hand, has a goal. She wants to be higher level. Specifically 30, for reasons I may spill later, but the point is that it's something I'm not yet. So that gives me a reason to play her, a reason to get on and do stuff. So yeah, I'm questing in Duskwood on her, and loving dropping totems and spamming shocks and all that. the playstyle is very different to both my mage and my DK, but isn't unenjoyable - if anything, I prefer it to my DK's playstyle of runic cooldowns and so forth.

For the time being then, it seems, I am the shaman king. Trying to be, at least.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

2009-03-23T02:08:00.003Z

Time for an introduction, of sorts...

I am Noelor, or Kirisu Noelor, and I spend most of my time on the internet. I spent a few months as Moth of Chaos, and still describe myself as such in some places.

I am Jastanka Ubramt, a character who has been reincarnated in several RPGs, mostly play-by-post forum RPs. A young girl from a rich family, I ran away to learn magic. Or train Pokemon, or whatever. The current incarnation of Jastanka is a level 80 arcane draenei mage in World of Warcraft.

I am Sheriti, alias Millicent O'Neill, a Follower of Set. A vampire who was only 8 when she was turned, I have a natural flair for using her blood to make other people do what she wants. I recently had an existential crisis which brought me closer to Set as I dedicated the rest of my unlife to the Path of Sutekh, the path taken by the most zealous priests of Set. I live in Dundee, and work for the Camarilla there under the pretense of being of the clan Ventrue, that most domineering of clans. I am struggling over whether or not to reveal my true nature to the other members of the Camarilla Prince's Investigation Squad.

I am Tanaka Toshi (Toshi Tanaka to westerners), a genin of the ninja village of hidden caves. I am an interrogator, specialising in torture and needle use. In combat, I throw my needles to paralyse opponents for questioning later. I hate death, especially when it is meaningless, and seek to prevent it wherever possible. Those who are alive are infinitely more useful for any number of reasons. I have an identical twin brother, Yasushi, who I compete with constantly. We practice our latest torure methods on each other when we have time off from missions.

CMS is an almost-20 English computer geek living in Eastern Scotland, studying Computer Games Technology at university. He plays World of Warcraft, Vampire: The Masquerade, Scion and Exalted (converted to a Naruto setting). He works in a kitchen at a pub-restaurant, but not as a chef. He is not active on facebook, myspace, nor any other social network site. Not even Twitter. He lives in a house with 3 other students, all male, and doesn't eat as varied a diet as his conscience insists he should.

I am not Ozymandias, King of Kings. But he's probably my favourite of the Watchmen (based purely on the movie, which I saw a couple weeks back).

Someone like that could never be a protagonist...

2009-03-22T01:24:00.006Z

Today, I read the most recent issue of Naruto (most recent in Japan, in fact). This means I'm up-to-date with the "big 3" of Naruto, Bleach and One Piece. That's triple the goodness of being given a small advance of plot followed by cliffhangers every week. Not that I'm cynical or anything.

Actually, on Friday night at the Naruto game, I was told that natural cynicism is what makes English comedians awesome. Naturally, this means I'm hilarious. Right?

On the subject of Naruto (the game), we're currently involved in a fight which is now rolling into its 3rd session. This is predominantly because we're all very easily distracted, so fighting does take a while, and I'm certainly not complaining, because it's a good fight. But on paper, it sounds awful.

A couple of GMing things I want to talk about related to that, and then I'll shut up about GMing for a while. Honest.

Firstly, how to break up sessions. As someone who got my first breaks into GMing from one-offs, I have an overwhelming compulsion to wrap up every session. I'll sometimes leave cliffhangers, but they'll be really obvious and introduced purely for that purpose. This means that I've learnt perfectly how much content to prepare for each session. *That* means that I'm screwed over by my group's once-in-a-blue-moon early starts. The GMs of both the games I'm running are more the type to be able to break off a session anywhere, including the middle of combat.

Ultimately, this is predominantly an issue for the players to decide. If they don't like having to remember what they were doing to the next week, it is up to you to try to help them not have to do so - remember, rule #1.5 of GMing is to listen to your players. (Rule #1, incidentally, is that everyone in the game should be having fun).

Secondly, missing players. All 3 games this week were missing one player, for different reasons none of which were bad - I've run Scion games with only half the players present before, which isn't something I'd like to do again. There are a few solutions to this, two of which are simply workarounds, and three of which are a source of true dilemma:

-The first workaround is to not run campaigns, and only do one-offs. As much as I like one-offs, campaigns are generally much better. That having been said, in future exam seasons I plan to suspend my Scion campaign and instead run (or let other people run) one-offs in its place.

-The second workaround is a bizarre thing that I call the "campaign of one-offs". Each session of a campaign is its own adventure, with a clear "return to base" at the end of each session. The most usual setting is some sort of (usually mercenary) "adventurers' guild" with a different mission each week, for which the characters of the players present are chosen. In this way, it is perfectly reasonable for the player's character (PC - can't remember if I've explained that one before) to not be present on certain weeks.

-The first true solution is to turn the missing player's character (MPC) into a NPC for those sessions for which the player isn't present. The GM controls that character, and has her take full part in the goings-on. This is the worst option, especially if it leads to character death, or if the GM doesn't understand the player's definitions of what would be "in-character".

-The second solution is to have the MPC take a back-seat, as it were. The character is there, and if there's a situation which desperately calls for her to act, the GM has her take that action, but describes it minimally. Otherwise, it is assumed - and sometimes explicitly mentioned - that she is performing some background activity such as keeping an eye out behind the party, or sniping from afar (kill an NPC at random occassionally, and attribute it to the absent PC). This is my preferred method, and worked especially well for Scion this week as the MPC was far, far slower in combat than the other PCs, and so wouldn't have had a chance to act anyway.

-The third solution, which is preferred by my Vampire GM, is to explain the PC's disappearance in-character. This is almost the same as a workaround, but more direct. Like a workover, if you will. It works with varying success, depending on what the situation was at the end of the last session - for instance, this week in vampire we were just about to start a combat (which never materialised anyway) when the MPC suddenly was called away into the sewers, and scuttled off. However, last year when I had to skip a week of the Werewolf game, it would have been somewhat more difficult to explain away my character's disapperance from the face of Mars.

All 5 solutions have their benefits and downsides, with the possible exception of the 3rd solution (1st "real" solution) - I can't think of any real benefits of that. It is up to the GM to decide (a) which they prefer, and (b) which best suits the current situation.

You there, check out that noise!

2009-03-20T03:54:00.003Z

Sorry WoW people, despite the above quote, I'm going to talk about Scion again. It was to be expected really, as I ran a rather fun session tonight. For the first time since the band became demigods, it was basically all combat, and rather easy combat at that (I messed up the numbers of early opponents, and cheesed the maths for the boss due to time constraints). Still, it's always nice to rip giant two-mouthed sharks in half and shoot tentacles with lasers.

Having crashed into an iceberg last session, the band patched up their ship and were then "rescued" by Agwe, the Loa of the Ocean, who took them down to the Voodoo Underworld of Guinee. Once there, they started heading to meet with Baron Samedi, but were interrupted by a bunch of tentacles reaching out of the darkness. The darkness, in this case, being the edges of the Titans' prison of Tartarus. They beat off the tentacles, which were replaced by 3 giant sharks' faces, which were similarly dispatched. A larger-than-life slave trader then appeared, and was beaten off by our time at the union almost being up. Leon, the group's element-wielding warrior, picked up a gold doubloon from it for using as a relic later. Then Baron Samedi turned up and took them to his house for rum and cigars.

I'm finally wheeling the plot around, slowly, to where I want it. The Story (Scion-speak for campaign) started with some blockbuster action in WW2, which quickly snowballed its way toward killing Hitler with some time-warping help from Khronos, Titan of Time. After killing Hitler, the Niddhogg, who had been summoned by poor Adolf's death-gasp, nommed them. They then started wandering throught the various Underworlds more-or-less at random, looking for a way back to life. However, this was all getting them to this point.

In the core books of Scion, the plot is as follows: The Titans have broken out of Tartarus some time recently, and the Scions have been called forward to deal with it in the World while the Gods are running around panicking in the Overworld. The Band of my Story are going to be present when the Titans break out, and see my idea for how it happened. There will be legendary nemeses, evil Scions corrupted by Titans, and of course the PCs might be involved themselves. I'm not saying any more, but needless to say I'll be rushing through or maybe skipping the Egyptian Underworld (it's boring anyway) and getting the Band to Helheim fast for the "conclusion" of this Story.

Due to the nature of the group (a university club), I might well have to call a hiatus at that point. It'll be annoying, but not quite as much as, say, the gap between my first conceiving the Story around this time last year and the game actually starting in September '08. However, if I can I'll continue the Story into the Band's return into the modern-day world, and some crazy goings-on with their dislodgement from Time.

In summary, I'm loving the Story of my Scion game, and hope my players do too (they've said so, but I'm going to presume they're sparing my feelings), and would very much like to extend it past the point that the calendar is about to make it conclude with.

PS When it comes to player feedback, I do the following: Take the negative onboard and use it to try to improve, and ignore the positive as sycophancy. This is pessimistic to be sure, but I'd rather be pessimistic than complacent. It's just who I am.

I aim to misbehave

2009-03-19T14:39:00.004Z

So the internet died last night, which was to say the least annoying. But hey, I watched Serenity and a bunch of Robot Chicken, so s'all good.

Tuesday was Vampire night, which I was going to write about yesterday. The campaign's been going for as long as the Scion one, which is to say since October '08. It's set in the city I live in, so naturally my character lives in the house next door to mine. She's also a very creepy vampire. She was an 8-year old girl when she died, and now she worships Set, who's a really powerful vampire and who she (along with the rest of her vampire clan) believes is an incarnation of the Egyptian God. She's a schemer, mainly, though she's recently gained a heavy religious streak which I'm enjoying playing out. Oh, and she's pretending to be a different type of vampire, and inspired half the rest of the group to do the same (to the extent that our "true brujah" is pretending to be a "brujah").

Recently, the group has inflated to 8 people, and we've all been sent off to beat up a mathuslei, which is a word I can't spell that means "really powerful vampire". Should be fun.

Now, time to talk about GMing a bit. Specifically, a GM's limit. Now, in basically anything, each person has their own individual limit as to what they can manage. A few things apply to the GM here:

-How many players are in your game?

-What is the product of your NPCs and their AI?

-How good are you at mental arithmetic?

These 3 things combine for your game of choice. For instance, I know through experimentation back in the days of Paranoia (a game I played online with some school friends and their web friends, which we played without any system) that I can run a game for 6 people, but not really 7 (though I might try 7 again someday soon, now I've GMed more). The GM of my Vampire game can, from my observations, cope well with 7, but starts to fall apart at 8.

A while back, I realised that I can't support much overall AI. I can run a whole bunch of "extra" NPCs, whose only decision is "I hit this person", but more complicated NPCs like Hitler, who had a whole bunch of different powers he could use, I was a bit swamped by. Needless to say, multiple complicated people I tend to lose track of easily (my players have occassionally had to remind me that one of the NPCs is missing, or has come back to life).

Mental Arithmetic plays the most into what game/system you use. Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, that classic of the PnP RPGs, the one which outsiders often think is the only one, is pretty maths-intensive. Less so in its newest, 4th edition, but certainly in previous editions there is at least a token amount of quick maths to do for everyone involved. Old World of Darkness games, on the other hand, have no maths more complicated than counting. New World of Darkness, Exalted and Scion, have a few specific static values in addition to the counting, but these don't often change.

Any maths done by the players, however, has to be done by the GM as well, more often in fact. In any game, for instance, any maths the player does for their character, the GM does for every NPC, and sometimes the PCs as well. In addition, the GM might have to do things like work out what's possible for players, what's challenging, etc. For instance, ensuring that if, say, an invisible NPC is meant to be "accidentally" discovered by the PCs, it is *actually* possible for at least one of them to pass the "see invisible bloke" test.

These 3 things are important, and if you're GMing, you should be aware of them. As a guideline to new GMs:

-Start with 4 players, and gradually increase if you're feeling that it's easy. If you're not sure about 1 more person, try and organise a one-off in which you can play with that many, and see how it goes. Every Paranoia game back in the day was a one-off, and that helped me out a lot.

-NPCs is a tough one, start with mob NPCs with simple choices (who to attack, not what attack to use) and individual bosses with more complicated choices, and try to work your way up to complicated groups.

-As for mental arithmetic, start with a simple system like DnD4, oWoD, or rules-free. Stick with one-offs at first when trying more complicated systems, and if possible be sure that you know that you can at least play in that system

-As you may have noticed, I like one-offs. In terms of "trying out" GMing, they're a wonderful thing and should be embraced. If you try to start a campaign and find out in the first session that you don't like it, that's potentially a lot worse than if noone was ever expecting more. So try for these as much as possible.

-Finally, *listen* to your players. After a game, set aside some time for asking people what they thought, and try to take it on board for next time. If they ask for something you don't think you can do, try to explain that and work out if there's a way the players can help you do more.

Anyway, talking of GMing, I have to go do some prep for my Scion game tonight, so that'll have to do for now. Will report on that later tonight!

...But I'm still going to kill you all

2009-03-14T03:00:00.002Z

Alternative titles: But I slept with your sister, But I'll invite you next time I promise.

Today I helped a friend with a project by starring in a fake (but professionally made) radio show. Hilarity ensued, naturally - as you won't be able to tell by the meme-licious "lyrics" above. Unfortunately, due to the time it was scheduled for, I am now so tired that I've forgotten how tired I am. It's been a while since I was at this point, but it's a fun place to be: I've actually become almost drunk upon tiredness.

I played in a Naruto game earlier tonight. To clarify on that point, this game is set in the same universe as the Naruto manga, but uses the system from Exalted, a truly epic game. It approaches Scion in terms of power level of PCs, and in this setting we're all ninja. It works quite well, but I think I'll save details for a future post (when I can think about it more).

Instead, I'm going to talk about WoW. I've played the game, with a few gaps of varying size, since its launch 4 years ago, and have passed through a few characters. My current, and longest-lasting character is my level 80 Mage, a lovely female Draenei (for the blissfully untouched, think sexy mind flayers with tails) who specialises in pure arcane magic. She's decked out in a decent set of gear, and joins 10-man raids every week for small upgrades to it. I love the playstyle of the arcane mage - a flexible system of being able to trade efficiency of mana for speed of damage at the drop of a cowl.

However, I'm also working on a couple of secondary characters. Both are the same race and gender (so that they can support and be supported by each other and the mage - gender isn't necessary for that, but male draenei are fugly), one is a mighty level 70 Death Knight while the other is a fledgling level 21 Shaman. The DK is being levelled slowly alongside my brother's healer, a priest. The Shaman is levelling alone.

WoW gets mixed reviews. Most people who play it love it to bits, most people who don't hate it more than Jews hate Hitler (or vice versa, whichever you feel is stronger). Myself, I think it's the best MMO game I've encountered for one reason only. This is that any MMO rises or falls based on the strength of the social ties between its players. What has always brought me back to WoW is the fact that my friends and family (well, my brother and father anyway - Mum's as technophobic as she can afford to be) play it, and it's a game that I can play with them. And of course, with a playerbase of over 11 million if you believe their statistics, WoW has that much more sticking power. If it weren't for my guild, my brother, my friends, or so on, I doubt I'd give it a second glance - It's not a good enough game to play for this long, by anyone's stretch of imagination.

So yeah, it's like alchohol or saturated fats. I know I shouldn't, but dammit I just can't stop.

P.S. Extremists (read: idiots) claim that MMOs are addictive. They are, but only because socialisation is the primary motivation of the human race as a whole - it is just as viable to say that MSN, phone lines or the pub are addictive. I know I'd be lost without the ability to IM people or go for drinks with them.

More popular than a Goddess' plums

2009-03-13T02:30:00.008Z

It's still early enough on Friday morning to be considered Thursday night, and for me that means I've been playing Scion. I say playing, there's much debate as to whether or not the "Storyteller" (or Dungeon/Game Master, if you prefer) is actually playing. In any case, that's my role in the game I'm in at my uni's roleplaying club. Every Thursday, I help 6 people pretend to be totally awesome for a few hours. And they at least tell me I do it well.

A bit of background on the Story so far: A bunch of British soldiers (two of whom were Englishmen, the rest being Scottish, Norwegian and a Kiwi) and one Russian woman in WWII found out they were the children of God(esse)s, and naturally went around beating up nazis, planes, tanks, and Hitler. Then Niddhogg appeared and killed them. Now these Demigods are making their way through the various Underworlds, trying to return to the land of the living. This week, and for the few weeks preceding, they've been in Yomi, land of the Japanese dead.

This week, they finally reached the mountain home of Yomi's queen, Izanami. But, she being a Goddess and they being Demigods, there were trials. I had each of them face an opponent tailored for them. James Mildenhall, Oxford Professor and son of Hades, beat a brilliant Japanese strategist at Go and Shogi (Japanese Checkers and Chess, respectively). Olfus Njordsen, Thor-like son of Odin, sparred with a mighty ronin who then shared some mead. And so forth. Then they got to the top of the mountain.

Now, Gods are affected strongly by Fate. This is a sort of zeitgeist-like Will of the People, a force by which Gods become what people think they are. In Izanami's case, she *must* offer everyone who meets her a plum. These plums trap their consumers, Gods included, in Yomi. Izanami doesn't want people trapped here, but she must ask anyway. It was hard for me, as a GM, to portray that mixture of offering something while dissuading it. It didn't help that a couple of my players have a tendency to do "zany" things. Eventually I had everyone make easy rolls to realise that the plums were bad, and had Fate decree that those 2 who were going to do it anyway couldn't, because their Band-mates weren't doing so.

Rail-roading is an interesting word in roleplaying. As I've heard it used, it describes when a GM forces the players to take certain actions. In some ways, the Fate system of Scion can be seen this way. After all, it lets me say "no, you don't do that" or "you do this" in a way few other companies would (White Wolf games that I've been in before all tend to have a way of wrenching away players' control of their characters). However in this case, it certainly saved the players from a trap which I didn't want them to fall into. It's a thin line, and one I'm increasingly aware of as the Band increase their Legend, and with it Fate.

After the game, I treat the players to a drink in the Student Union. This is mainly so they get a chance to tell me how awesome my game was (I don't care if it's sycophancy, it feels good to get validation on a regular basis). However, it's also so a couple of players from the other games in the club can bitch about said games' GMs to the rest of us. This week, I realised that I was far from railroading. One of the other GMs has done the following:

-Killed players who were away from the table

-Had traps far beyond the party's capabilities to prevent in every direction but the "right" one

-Had 100-strong cults of cthulhu worshippers waiting around the corner for a party who decided to fight the first room of a couple cultists rather than talk to them

-Threatened parties with wizards several levels higher if they don't "behave"

This is the sort of thing that sends players running for the hills. If I didn't have enough on my plate already (GMing 6 players is my limit, I've found through a little experimentation), I'd let some of them play Scion. As it is, I've settled for encouraging one of them to start flexing his own GM muscles.

To conclude the side-tracked Scion story, the Band avoided getting stuck in Yomi, and instead were given a ship that will take them to the Voodoo Underworld, via a crash with an iceberg. I'd say what was going to happen there, but I think at least one of them is going to read this. Maybe later.

As a final note, my very good friend (certainly the friend I've known longest) Dobmeister has linked me on his own blog. As if I wasn't already feeling popular tonight :3

WoW, you did what?

2009-03-12T12:12:00.004Z

This is a topic that's been covered many times, I'm sure, but I'm going to talk about achievements, specifically in Activision-Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Right after I point out that Blactivision (pron. Black Division) would have been cooler.

Like many topics, this one doesn't seem divided, everyone dislikes them. This is an illusion, however. It's just that those who do like them, have them, so have no motivation to complain. Those who don't like them, have them, so complain. Often loudly.

Like everyone audible, I'm not a fan of achievements. The abritary system has its positive points, sure. Being able to tell with a glance whether or not this or that person actually has experience of this or that raid is useful to those recruiting for a guild or Pick-Up Group (PUG). And it is a brilliant way to gain aesthetic things like mounts or mini-pets, especially those achievements like Mountain o' Mounts.

It is also a fantastic way of distracting players from what's actually important. Heroics? Screw that, I'm busy trying to fall off a cliff! Kill this boss? Okay, but this time one of us has to stand outside. Now, I'm in favour of making things more difficult for myself, but only if I think I could do it easily without doing so. This system merely entices people to try things the hard way too early. I don't really see the difference in my exclaiming to a friend that "I was in a group yesterday that 3-manned OK, it was awesome!" and "Oh yeah, I got that achievement for 3-manning OK yesterday".

That last sentence is a lie. There is a difference, and it's the sense of "awesome". Back in school, when I was around 13, we spent a semester of our IT course doing web design, and the teacher went on and on about "Wow factor!". This is the same principle. I want to be different. I want to feel that I have achieved something, sure, but something I decided to do. This system spoon-feeds us stupid ideas we should be having ourselves. Prime example: I read earlier today about a raiding guild who decided to do Noth the Plaguebringer not in the conventional way of sending half the raid to deal with ghostly respawns, but instead have the whole raid deal with those ghosts together when they were released. This isn't an achievement Blizzard told them to do, this is something they decided to do themselves because they were bored. And I'd bet money that it was more fun than simply downing Patchwerk faster.

So, to conclude, the achievement system was brilliant, until they decided to make it any more than a quick way of checking statistics. Now it's just a silly, e-peen enhancing bag of bad ideas.

Dear Internet...

2009-03-12T02:17:00.000Z

Well, this took me long enough. Here I am, stumbling into Web 2.0 like I'm back at school, catching onto the very end of the latest fad. It probably says something that I think the only scene I got into early was Pokémon.

I initially considered calling this blog "Dear Internet...", it seemed fitting for what I've always seen as a "public diary" of sorts. I decided instead upon Impotent Rants, which is what most blogs come out to be. Could it be considered pessimistic to call my own contribution to the ocean this? Probably, but as with all pessimists, I'll be thinking of it as merely realistic.

I'll be aiming to update at least 1 time a week to start with, probably more. Early posts will be easy. I have a few rants in store, and failing that I may even introduce myself.

May the Force be with me. Or the Light. Or Gaia. Or Odin. Or...