Month: August 2005

Categories
Blather long

The saddest wishlist in the world

The title makes it sound like this is perhaps funny linkage. It’s not.
This is a wishlist for my birthday I put together under duress. Why duress? Why “the saddest wishlist in the world”? Probably for the same reason that making up a list of friends to invite to a party is painful to me. Because it’s trying to define myself using objects and relationships I want. And defining myself, saying “I am …”, that makes me very uncomfortable.
Ask for a wishlist, get neuroses.

Books:
Only 3 books? Hmmph.
Carter Beats the Devil — read good things about this.
Little, Big — this too. For a long time.
1610: A Sundial in a Grave — last time in London, I saw this in Waterstones, but decided to pick the much-praised Ash first. Ash really rocked, so now I want this one. Swashbucklers, samurai and seers, I hear.

Games:
The more expensive ones are probably the ones that I’m least interested in, actually. I’m not sure I can justify buying any of this, even to myself.
Blue Rose — or maybe not.
Mutants & Masterminds: Noir
These three for completeness’ sake:
Feng Shui: Blood of the Valiant
Feng Shui: Gorilla Warfare
Feng Shui: Thorns of the Lotus
Indie games, never sighted in a store:
The Sorcerer’s Soul
Sorcerer & Sword
Sex & Sorcery
Dogs in the Vineyard
My Life With Master

Comics:
Umm, Superman: Birthright? I’m really behind in comics, I am. If it’s cool and new, I might have missed it.

TV:
If anyone downloaded a season or so of Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars or even Buffy, I’d like to watch these, complete. Oh, also Sopranos and even Six Feet Under.

CDs:
My Bro introduced me to Mercury Rev, Franz Ferdinand and Razorlight. The last two only have one album each, but it would be cool to listen to this stuff legally.

Objects:
I used to have an MP3 player that I liked a lot, but I lost it.
I need good knives. Not big or ungainly or pointy, just good eating knives, the sort that would cut a steak or slice bread or spread butter, and all with ease.
I need a good handbag. A man’s handbag, with lots of room. My family might be getting me one, because I haven’t asked them for anything else.
A camera.
A webcam and a microphone, so I can talk to S.

Misc:
A happy birthday card you drew yourself.
A poem, a picture, a dance. Well, maybe not a dance.

Have too many clothes and shoes I should buy myself.

Categories
Roleplaying

You can’t put your mouse around a memory

Don’t Roleplay The Bugs, from The Escapist magazine, is a sad story about a brave GM trying (and failing) to recreate the tabletop D&D experience in Neverwinter Nights. It’s a cool demonstration of the old principal that computers do what you say, not what you mean, and shows how much of a gaming session depends on subtle elements of face-to-face interaction that are completely lost when you try to port the experience to an “immersive” VR.
[ via Ogre Cave ]
Update: The Forge chips in.

Categories
Roleplaying

250 things Mr. Welch can no longer do in a RPG

This is funny. Long, too: RPGnet Forums – 250 things Mr. Welch can no longer do in a RPG. Some of my faves:

17. Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.
21. No longer allowed to recreate the Death Star Trench Run out of genre.
35. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to play R2 units.
37. They do not make black market illegal cyberweapons for rodents.
64. My paladin’s battle cry is not “Good for the Good God”
69. There is more to wizardry than magic missile. Even if I can do 200 damage automatic with no save.
88. My bard does not get a bonus to perform if she is obviously not wearing anything under her tabard.
90. My swashbuckling fop cannot take the flaw Dark Secret: Not Gay
107. There is no such game as Wereshark the Buffet.
122. The paladin’s alignment is not Lawful Anal.
134. The King’s Guards official name is not “The Royal Order of the Red Shirt”
161. I will not nail every single female party member except for the elf chick played by that creepy guy.
191. My character is not related in anyway to Boba Fett. This goes double for Star Wars characters.
219. In formal introductions to royalty, I must not introduce my companions as just “The Other Guys”.

Go read them all.
Pointless update: added some more, because I couldn’t excuse myself for forgetting to put #90 in.

Categories
Comics Oddities

One for the Rhymer

Ananova: Hotel creates Batman room

A hotel has dedicated a room to Batman.
The room at the Hilton hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina resembles a cave and is full of interactive games and videos showing sequences of batman movies.
It even has a secret passage that leads to the adjacent room.
A spokesperson for the hotel said: “We decided to dedicate the room to Batman because we think he is the coolest superhero and with the new movie out lots of people got into the batmania again.”

[ via Uncle Bear ]
Update: Boojie found a picture: Batcave in Buenos Aires

Categories
Science Fiction and Fantasy

Plot Devices

Nick Lowe wrote some of the best genre movie reviews I ever read, as a regular columnist for the British SF magazine Interzone. Through an article at SJ Games’ Pyramid magazine, I found an old article by his called The Well-Tempered Plot Device, which I’ve either read before or read quoted at length somewhere else. The Stephan Donaldson racing game, the Leonard Nimoy poetry all sounds familiar, but is well-worth reading. And his points about the taxonomy of plot devices, plot coupons, plot vouchers are as funny and insightful as ever, and demonstrate how to easily deconstruct (well, deconstruct is what boring academic critics do; what cool critics like Lowe do is more properly rip to shreds) most modern fantasy – the current prime example (too late for Lowe to mention; this is an old essay) would be Harry Potter, but Tolkien’s already trod down that treacherous path..