Big B******* Walking club, On a week of Overtime, there can be no rest...

 And so, following the epic fail of trying to go to Langsett Reservoir last week, we set out again this week, this time with regular maps as well as postcodes with which to guide us, and amazingly...

We found it...

Langsett isn't much further down the road than Underbank, but it is designed to walk around and provides a reasonably scenic route as well as a good degree of up and down so the walk doesn't get too leisurely.  We found a number of interesting things on the walk...

High into the pass, or into the long dark of Moria...

Yep, avoid Moria...

 

Although the Watcher, could have been watching...

It may not look far on the banking to the left, but it really is...

At least there's a wall to stop you falling straight in...

Although neither of us wanted to meet the bird that made that birds nest...

Or find out what was re-enacting Predator but using trees instead of people...

A good bridge (yes, we always find one) over the stream.

Which showed us the path along the river that was (today) to be denied to us...

And no easy way down on the other side of the bridge...

 Meaning back up the hill (Damnit...) to the high path...

 

And so we found an opportunity for Cmdr Swift to practise his druidic talents...

Proof of his tree bending can be found by all those going here in future.

Although we left before the Kaiju that did this came back...

To retrieve the snack it had clearly left here the last time it came through.

Poetry...for me to put my arse upon...There's something not so poetic about that I think...

And an excellent Sunset...

No matter where you look at it from...

And the spotted cafe beloved of those watching the Tour...

So we couldn't go all the way round because the path was closed both ways on the far side of the bridge, but we're returning next week, and we'll have the whole thing this time, so more next week...

August, it seems, is a month for kickstarters doing well....

I do back more kickstarters than I should, I really do, I know this, but I tend to back things to small amounts and often, rather than larger amounts and often, which is not an excuse, but it does make me feel better about them.

Still, on the back of Feng Shui 2 and Exploding Kittens, something else came in the post today.

These are AKO dice...

What drew me to these dice was the simple way in which they've been designed.  Every face has a line or part of a line on it, and those lines combine together to form the number for that face, it's a very simple concept, but one that's been very well presented and designed.  For example

One, Two...

Three, Four...

Five, Six...

And as you can see from the pictures, there are no dots on these, everything is a line that has a place on at least two sides.  Takes a little bit of getting used to, but they're well constructed, reasonable weight, and while they weren't the cheapest dice I've ever bought (Worked out at around $3.50 each including the shipping from Thailand), they are amongst the most eyecatching that I've ever seen.

Did I mention some of them glow (and I mean really glow) in the dark...?

They're setting up the store sometimes soon at http://www.ako-dice.com/

After writing a million words, you need to edit them...

So Last year I wrote a million words of various things, wasn’t easy, and in fact up until the last week of the year there were doubts about if it was going to come off...

But it did, and I was left with five novels, a few hundred articles, and several dozen short stories...

The Challenge this year was to edit them into something resembling publication worthy and then get them out, it turns out that editing is far harder than writing the things in the first place, but I’m at a point where I’ve got two of the novels good to go and I’m considering which one to put out there first.

To this end, I need readers for their opinion, I’m sending out the first part of each book as a tester, with a request of each reader not of a full critique, grammar check, or anything like that.  I just want to know which one you found more interesting...

There’s about fifty pages in both of the testers, enough to get into the story without giving everything away, I can’t offer much in the rewards for this, all those helping will get a mention in the book when it comes out and a copy of it as well.  Those that know my writing know that I write reasonably dark fiction, so both stories have an edge to them, not in the red triangle category, but enough to get an 18 rating when the BBFC gets hold of them...

The two novels are:

The Shift – In a world where soldiers can be killed a thousand times but only die once, the walls of sector three have stood unbroken since the creation of the city, but the enemy has changed, and now the wall is threatened by more than just the threats outside.  Leo 17, fights alongside Johnny 3k, Once a Night Jones, and Dead Girl Gibson to keep their home standing, despite the best efforts of those on either side of them.

World War Wolf – The human race is over, the wolves ran faster and bit harder, those who remain live in a world overrun with furry bastardry.  In the north, Laurentia Wyndham, a captain in the british army, leads what remains of her garrison south to find the cause of the war.  In the south, Weylyn, Once a man and now Alpha of the London east packs, begins to question his role in the war and if any part of him could still be called human.

All those interested, mail me at john _ automatic @ yahoo . co . uk and I’ll send you the copies out. 

Avatar the Board game – Or why massive licences don’t always make excellent games

Amongst things I got for my birthday was a copy of the Avatar board game, and I’ll freely confess that prior to the point of getting it, I had no idea that a game had been made of it.

How can this be?  This film was one of the best selling films ever, more people have gone to see it than go to church every week, and whatever you say about the story behind it, a licence like this should have owned everything...

So what went wrong?

Well, in the first instance, it’s not a game...

Pretty to be sure, nice board, big and colourful, a constructed tree in the middle to sit pieces on, but then we get to the point where we actually have to play the game, and here’s where it all falls apart.

The players take the part of the Na’vi warriors defending the tree of souls against the RDA forces aligned against them, all they have to do to succeed is keep the RDA levels down, and they do this with special multi coloured dice that give you a one in six chance of placing more RDA troops down, and between a two in six and five in six chance of blowing up the RDA troops in your space if you have all the equipment you can have.

I appreciate that the game is designed for eight year olds and upwards, but I need to ask the question here, at what point do eight year olds not know how to play games? The victory conditions for the game are such things as "Be on a purple square and beat two RDA counters" or "Give up three counters that you get for free..." It's not a challenge, it's pick up sticks with dice...

We did a test run with the random placing of the RDA forces using the dice, it’s possible to place all the RDA forces without causing the overload that damages the tree, and the mechanics required for the good guys to trounce the bad guys make this game all but Ludo with Smurfs...

It is things like this that make me furious, here’s a chance to get people into games, to give them something that combines their love of the film with a simple game to get them going, now squandered with something that looks pretty but isn’t actually something that you can play with tactics...

Dear Mega Games, when you get a licence like this and want to produce a game for eight year olds and up, it doesn’t require that you have the game designed by eight year olds...

Just saying...

Big B******* Walking club

So we headed out again this Tuesday, this time having to go by car to find somewhere interesting to walk.  We were aiming at Langsett reservoir in south Yorkshire, but somehow managed to find our way into Underbank reservoir, which has a lack of walking paths and made for an interesting diversion, although at the end of it, there was a distinct idea from all concerned that sometimes going off piste is a sure fire way to end up piste off...

So this is the car park...

With trees all around...

And a day centre for out door activities (closed) at the bottom of the path...

And somewhat awesome looking trees...

Leading down to the Dam...

Which wasn’t really required at this point...

And had an interesting layered approach to the drain away.

Leading down to the area where the rest of the water sits.

And industrial pipes in the middle of woodland areas, with no discernable links.

But the forest was well walked and open

And indeed the lake still and calm

In all directions

Although we ended up walking on what was the reservoir bed due to lack of water

We do suspect that this plug hole had something to do with it.

But night was falling

  

And before long turning back had to be done.

We’re intending on returning this way next week, this time to get Langsett and not Underbank, but we’ll see how it goes...

Game Review - Feng Shui 2

Sometimes Kickstarters are not what you expected them to be, sometimes they have all the potential to be awesome and end up being little more than awful.

Sometimes you make a mistake and back something made (or not made) by Ken Whitman...

Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s everything you hoped for...

This is Feng Shui 2

I always liked the original game, if I’m honest, it was one of the first games that got me into the over the top world of high fantasy martial arts films.  I hadn’t broadened my horizons much at the time at which I got the first version, and the idea that you could do phenomenal things without breaking the rules, that you could mow through hundreds of nameless nobodies with no more thought than how cool you looked getting rid of them, simple things that we all take for granted now.

Back then, this was a revelation...

Prior to this I’d played Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, even Space Master, and I’d found that every person you fight had a chance to kill you, not so here, this was Big Damn Hero land, and there was a legend to be carved out.

The group I was with at the time had a penchant for escalating things beyond the ridiculous and into the insane, and eventually, when Feng Shui was not enough, it went to Exalted, and the rest is history, but back to the matter at hand...

The new version is everything (literally) that the old version was, the only difference being more content, better artwork, revised rules that don’t let you cycle infinitely (both a good and a bad thing I know), and more settings to work in...A lot more settings...

It’s an improvement on the originals in every way, and the originals weren’t half bad.  It’s the same game that we played all those years ago, but with a few (I would say subtle, but like the setting, they’re really not) changes.  The characters have been streamlined, less stats, more focus on what the character can do rather than trying to define them in terms of numbers.  Schticks are still there and in greater number, there’s a larger degree of embellishment on the various factions, enemies, weapons, in fact pretty much everything...

The question of course, is whether it’s still something of interest in this day and age, back when it came out, it was groundbreaking in a way that most couldn’t believe, but it’s twenty years later, and the worlds had chance to catch up...

Here’s where my objectivity fails me, I always liked this game, I liked the absurd things you could get up to, and it got me into a number of other things that before this, I would never have considered, so I’m going to be biased...

My wife however...

Never played the original, has no real experience of Hong Kong Action beyond Big Trouble in Little China, and has never really played anything like this, where most of the bad guys are little more than fodder for cool stunts.  I gave her this to have a look at and within ten minutes, she’d found Kaiju Patrol, and we’ve got a game being asked for...

And that is where I rested, more when we get a game going and see how well it plays after all these years, but it’s a definite win so far, and goes some way towards restoring my faith in Kickstarters...