Get Writing is apparently the BBC’s answer to New Stage, an open online writing workshop/showcase. What caught my attention is the Disclaimer, which starts out with:
Most of the content on BBC Get Writing is created by BBC Get Writing Members, who are members of the public.
Members of the public
. How dignified. Even the worst trolling yobs on the talkbacks at ynet, nana and walla, the BBC reminds us, are members of the public
.
Aya sent me a link to the site of her new campaign, Ozymandias, which apparently is also tangently related to Sultans of Steam, my own Victorian campaign.
Looking at it gave me a chance to find her art gallery, and the sites for the Amber and MERP campaigns she played/plays in (the former now ended, the latter still going strong, under Dicky’s iron rule).
Wolf-Spoor points to a thread on the RPGnet forums suggesting "Tangent" versions of the World of Darkness, i.e, settings that share the familiar names and ideas but mix them all up into interesting new takes.
The post that caught my interest was a Tangent version of Mage, inspired by Zoroastrian Magi.
Zoroastrianism, the religion founded by Zarathustra, is most commonly associated with dualism, although this is a western misconception. The Greeks and Romans seem to have had their own misconceptions about The Magians (although they note explicitly that they do not engage in Sorcery).
Anyway, although it’s a religion still practiced today, it is also makes a suitably exotic basis for fantasy mysticism.
Charlie Stross on The Panopticon Singularity: How the convergence of computing and communications technologies will enable the ultimate police state. Links to some responses are in his blog.
Also from Stross, an explanation why US President Bush’s Mars expedition initiative makes much more sense as an extension of his administration’s defense policy:
- We believe
the Martians posess weapons of mass destruction (heat rays,
tripod death machines, red weed).- …
- It is
possible that Osama bin Laden is on Mars. (Image enhancement
of the background to bin Laden’s videotapes rebroadcast via Al
Jazeera are suggestive of a boulder-strewn desolate wasteland.
We know that Osama bin Laden cannot be found in Afghanistan,
and Mars is also a boulder-strewn wasteland, so Osama bin
Laden may indeed be on Mars.)- …
- Tony Blair has asked us to allow time for
diplomacy to work, but the Martians have stubbornly refused to
talk to the British Beagle 2 lander.
Neil Gaiman points to an online MP3 of March of the Sinister Ducks, Alan Moore’s odd little dip into the world of music from way back in the Eighties (I reckon). Catchy!
[ tip-off from PeliG ]