New expansions for Era: The Consortium

I've spent the last day or so taking an advance look at the new material for Era: The Consortium, in particular the three books currently being offered up as part of their next kickstarter.  There's already a wealth of material out there for Era, but they just keep on throwing more things out there.  It's a bold model to take, releasing as many different books as they are in smaller bites rather than having a single larger book to look through, but it seems to be working well so far.

The three books in question are Rapier (the Hacking Sourcebook), A New Dawn (Psionics), and The Fifth Race (dealing with the emergence of the Pilangrathilon), and as with the books before them, they share a number of common aspects...

Rapier deals with the aspects of computer security and the breaking of it, together with the nature of the different things that you can encounter while in the electronic world.  It's a small book (31 pages) with ten of those pages being the fiction in the book.  The system works aren't complex, and provide a basic framework for dealing with hacking systems and protecting against hackers.  The understanding has to be present that as with all things in Era, the rules are there to fill a need, not provide a complete overlay of that aspect of the game.  Hacking is a part of the game, but it will never be as essential as it is to games like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun.

And that brings us to A New Dawn, similar format to Rapier, 31 pages, sixteen of which are fiction with the rest being devoted to the systemworks. Psionic abilities are covered in brief, as are the potential hazards of using them, the potential for madness for those who spend too long playing in the realm of the mind, and the dangers of having a psionic coming after you.  As with Rapier, it's enough to give you something to work with, but not so much that it takes over any aspect of the game.

Which brings us to The Fifth Race, largest of the books at 50 pages, with a commensurate amount of fiction (22 pages), describing the first encounter and subsequent emergence of the Pilangrahilon.  A race of small sentient semi-avians, given to belief in the order of things and a persons fate already being decided before they were born.  There are rules for new weapons, new bionics, and new equipment, making this the most immediately usable of the three books and certainly the one most likely to see use in the average campaign.

As always, production values are high, artwork is spectacular as always, my one bugbear remains that I believe there should be more rules and less fiction in a splatbook, but the rules that there are to the point and fit the system well. Overall they're good products that deal with individual subjects well, and if it all comes together in a single rulebook one day, it'll be complete in ways that nothing since Traveller has been.

The Kickstarter is still running at the moment, you can find it at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadesofvengeance/era-the-consortium-expansions

Organising the Awesome...

Someone asked for a few pointers on running games conventions...

I have a few...

But the first thing you need to ask if you're planning a convention is Why people go to conventions…?

There's only one reason, to do things they can’t do at home…

People will say they come for the games, the company, the ambience, take your pick, but at the end of the day, it’s always down to things they can’t do at home.

Why? 

If you can do it at home, why would you travel all that way and spend all that money to go do it somewhere else?

We, as convention organisers, therefore have only one remit…

Make it Awesome, make it something that they can’t do at home...

This is not as easy as it seems, after all, at home, you can do everything, the food, the game, the entertainment, and you can do it yourself, because you’re only catering for your friends around the table.  At a convention, you’ve got to cover everyone and make sure that they all get something of what they want.

So there are a few things you’re going to need to watch out for…

Location

and by extension, Travel…

You’ll get more people in a major city than you will in a small town, but if you’re starting small (and that’s often the best way to do it), as long as people have travel lines to get to you, then you’ll be fine.  If you have the convention in a village hall that has a train station and regular bus lines running past it, you’ll get a lot more people than having it in a huge hall where only those with cars can get to it. 

Dates

There are already a good number of conventions on the calendar, check carefully to make sure that what you’re doing doesn’t clash with something that’s already established and running around the same time.  Doesn’t have to be the same days, usually within a fortnight of a similar convention will constitute a clash of interests.

Duration

A single day convention is travel down, attend convention, travel back.  All the variables on that are enclosed within that single day.  When you put a second day (and possibly a third or fourth), you’re asking those attending to find a place to stay for the night to come back in the next day.  This increases their costs significantly, as well as adding a second day to your own expenses.  For traders this has a knock on effect in the amount of stock they bring (far more) because they’ll need to restock overnight to make sure they still have product on the shelves.  They'll also have to consider if two days increases their sales very much when a lot of people turn up to buy on a single day rather than two, those coming for the whole convention tend to buy on the last day, everyone else buys on the main day for the convention.

Of course, gamers are inventive, ask about the shut-in that occurred at Gencon Olympia when thirty odd gamers couldn’t be bothered going home and so commandeered a cleaning room upstairs with two on watch at all times in case the security guards wandered past. It’s not likely that you’re going to get a bunch of gamers hiding in the top of the town hall, but you need to consider costs for the area when you move the convention to more than a single day.

Volunteers

Volunteers come on a broad spectrum, ranging from “Will do everything and anything, will keep working long after their shift is done and will call for more every time”, down to “Give me my free ticket, I’m going to the show, you don’t expect me to work do you?”

The grim thing?

There’s more on the “Give me my free ticket” end of the scale than there are on the other end, and many people won’t think twice about offering to help at the show if it’ll get them a free ticket, but they start bitching when you want them to carry out their part of the bargain.  There isn’t any way around this, I wish there were, when it happens you’ll have to do the job with whatever good people you’ve got around you and if there are no good people around you…

You’ll be doing it yourself…

Never underestimate this as an Organiser of Conventions, keep two lists, one for the people who do well for you and one for the people who let you down.  The good list will be shorter than the bad one, but as time goes on, both lists will increase, and after a few years, they’ll be about the same length.

Am I overstating this?

I wish I was…

The other thing about volunteers is that you need to be clear in what you’re offering people to help at the convention and once that offer is made, you need to honour it, no matter what, because you only get one chance at that.  The usual offer is free entrance in return for running a few hours of games (Four hours is the accepted amount at most conventions), although you can offer more if you have provision to do so.  Word of advice on that score would be not to offer too much too early, because when you’ve offered it one year, trying to take it back the next year is really, really difficult.

Clear Advertising

Everyone comes to conventions for a different reason, so be clear when you advertise the convention, if it’s RPG’s, make it about RPG’s, if it’s about Board games, make it about Board games.  If you want it to be a little of everything and you’re just starting out, be aware that you can either do a quarter con for all the attendees and try to gauge the interest levels for the year following, or you can specialise to begin with and then branch out in following years.  My recommendation would be to specialise for the first year and then branch out when the people who came the first year come back to you (which they will) with ideas for next year. 

When you’re putting out the word for the convention on the first year, get it in place six months before you’re going to run the convention as a bare minimum, and at least two months before you open to take interest from GM’s and umpires for events.  Make the lines of communication clear, get the website in place and start promoting on social media as soon as it’s up.  In the second year and onwards, word of mouth will do a lot of this for you, but in the first year, make sure your profile is up and clear.

Events

One of the most difficult things to organise in any convention is the events that you’re running, it’s not hard to get people run games, but getting them to run the right games…

That’s another matter.

You’ll always get someone offering to run their latest homebrew system for four hours in return for getting in free.  Unless they’re offering something that people have heard of as well as whatever they want to run, turn it down.  Published games make up more than 95% of the games that will be taken up at a convention, we’ve monitored the ticket sales at a number of conventions for several years, and it’s apparent that while there is mild interest in homebrew systems, that interest only comes when they can’t find anything else to play.

Damning indictment…?

Not really, if you’ve travelled all this way to get a game in, you want it to be a known quantity rather than taking a risk on something that could be the most awesome game in the world.  Games in the playtesting phase are a different matter, particularly if they’re from one of the larger publishing houses, people do have a lot of interest in emergent systems if they have a chance to influence them.

The other thing about events is the special events, the one’s where rather than just costing you an entrance ticket to get the game running, it’s actually costing you cold hard cash.  These have the potential to bring in a lot of people if pitched at the right level, but you have to balance the draw against the cost.  When you’re doing this, you must think not only about the cost of the event but for the number of people who’ll be attracted to the con by this event.  If you’re running something that might only seat fifty players, but you’ll get a hundred just to come and take a look, then you’re on to a winner, but when you’ve done it once and people have liked it, you may find that you have to do it again.

Layout

There are those who think that this doesn’t apply to smaller cons, and when you’re dealing with less than a roomful of people, then it’s less the case, but you still need to look at it for several reasons.

Noise – Putting a loud dungeon crawl next to an atmospheric Cthulhu game isn’t going to endear you to the Cthulhu players, the dungeon crawlers won’t care as they’ll be the ones making the noise but you should consider quieter games near quieter games if possible.

Board vs RPG – You’d think that in this enlightened age, we’d be able to co-exist with each other, but every year I see people arguing “These are BOARD tables, these are RPG tables” when in actual fact…

They’re just tables.

When you get to a certain size and you’re not just moving things around one room (says the man who just came from the NEC), you need to consider layout.  If you have something that’s going to be really popular (Bring and Buy for example), then you need to put it away from everything else if you possibly can, there’ll be crowds around it all day and they’ll filter around so that they impact on everything else going on in the con.  If you’re selling space to the trade hall, consider your entrances, exits, and thoroughfares when you’re offering the stands out, it may be mercenary, but the understanding has to be that all the traders are there to make money, so should you be.

Feedback

Let me save you the time on this one…

Attendee’s – We want more games, more variety in the games being offered, less players per game, more players per game, bigger tournaments from bigger companies, smaller tournaments from bigger companies (how are we supposed to win when the field is 500 people), more prizes, bigger prizes, free dice on the front desk, in fact, shouldn’t you be paying us to come next year?

Traders – We didn’t make any money this year, we’ll have to look carefully at if we’re coming next year, can’t you lower your prices, can I have that space for free, it’s your fault that my stock went missing, get rid of all the open gaming space and give it to me for demo tables, can you put all my old stock in the bring and buy so I don’t have to buy trade space to get rid of it....

You can’t please everyone all the time, it’s a melancholy truth, but it’s the truth.  When people ask for things, they’re asking for themselves, not for the convention. When you gather the feedback, if 1% said they wanted more space around tables and 20% said get more games in, don’t leap in on the 20%, look at the space you have, the space you’re going to have next year, make the decision based on what you can do, not what they want you to do.  Many times the things requested will clash with each other and there won’t be anything you can do to please all types, so do the right thing, do what you want to do as the convention organiser.  If you forget why you’re putting all this hard work in, then you’ll put less hard work in and before you know it, you’ll be putting no hard work in, and that’s how good conventions collapse.

Conduct

Have something in place in case someone behaves badly, stupidly, or in some way contrary to how you want your convention to run.  Most people believe that everyone is like them, and as an organiser of conventions, you’re doing this because you want people to have fun.

Not everyone is like you…

Bitter lesson to learn the first time some irate know it all comes pontificating over the front desk at you, but one that you’re better being prepared for.  Most conventions have an Anti-Harassment policy, every convention that got past year one has a code of conduct, even if it’s just notes on their website to say that they can and will throw out people who are ruining it for everyone else.  I could fill the rest of this issue with instances where people weren’t as nice as I’d hoped they would have been, but in every case, it’s been dealt with because there’s been words to back me up when I needed to make those difficult calls.

Finally, and perhaps most important, even though I’m listing it last

Finance

Some conventions are commercial ventures, some are just gamers getting together to have fun together, but whatever the reason, at the end of the day, there’s the bill to settle.  If you’re looking to have fun, just want it to remain the same size and you can afford the hall every year, no problem, you need read no further.

For everyone else…

The first year of a convention may break even, if you’re done the research and PR ahead of time, been all over social media and built a solid presence with keeping people up on what awesome things are going on at your convention, then it may break even.

But don’t count on it.

The number of conventions I’ve seen that have failed in year one because the organisers presumed that it’d make money and had nothing left over to make a second year is beyond count.

Many people don’t come to the first year of a convention, the usual attitude is that they’re already doing several conventions and don’t want to extend to another one just yet.  Better to wait till the reports have come in from the first year and see where it goes from there.  In the first year, be prepared to make a loss on the convention, it’s almost universal that this happens.  A break even on year one should be considered a significant victory, so don’t be downhearted if this is all you get.

Year two is a different matter, if you’ve continued to build the profile and keep people informed, then year two will almost surely be a breakeven point as all the people that missed it last year will come in for it this year.  Year three and onwards should be (if carefully managed) growth years.

There’s a million things more I could tell you all about, but every convention is different, and every convention makes mistakes, no matter how long they’ve been going, no matter how well planned they are, every convention makes mistakes.  When you make yours, learn from them, there’s few mistakes that will kill a convention stone dead in one hit.

Except not opening the doors…

Always open the doors…

And I have faced death a thousand times, but not like this...

Sue in the bottom left, you could never tell she was a gamer...

Of things I thought I would write today, this was not amongst them…

Earlier today, around seven in the morning, one of my oldest and dearest friends passed away far too young, her name was Sue Wilson, and she was one of the few constant companions throughout adventure that I have had the joy of knowing.

Two months ago, she was walking around with a mild case of heatstroke, and last night I sat by her bedside with her husband John, leaving only to return home to sleep, knowing that the mornings wake up call would likely be the news we had all been dreading.

And it was…

People have been asking me how she died, and I won't say...

I will tell you how she lived…

I met Sue the best part of twenty years ago, part of the SLA industries mailing list Station Analysis, and we had similar senses of humour (a good thing in the early days of the net), and it wasn’t long before we’d arranged to meet up and game, and so I saw Sue almost every month of every year between then and now. 

She was a brilliant GM, a master at improvising, and you could always tell the table that Sue was working at a convention…

They were howling with Laughter…

The laughter got so much that other GM’s dreaded being in the same room as Sue in the same way comedians dreaded being on stage after Robin Williams, they had no chance against whatever she was up to, and I ended up putting her in smaller rooms so she didn’t depth charge too many other games with the joy she brought to her table...

She went to all the conventions I ever organised, always ran in all the slots, and even when she found out it was cancer, she was still planning to come down to Dragonmeet and run games, down to planning on bringing a range of different wigs to help her switch between NPC's.

She was a fierce friend, she’d stand in the way of Gods and Monsters for someone she loved, and she never backed down, no matter the odds. You could converse with her on any subject and she’d be able to hold her own.  We adventured from the Edge of Mort to the darkside of Greyhawk and faced death a hundred times…

But not like this…

And I will remember as she lived, because sometimes you lose members of the party, and while we’ve still got a Magic User, a Paladin, a Rogue, a Monk, and a Cleric, our Bard is playing somewhere else tonight, and it won’t be as bright and colourful as it was, but we'll adventure on...

Don’t wait for tomorrow to do what you want to do today, every day can be an adventure if only you take the first step forwards, there are others like Sue out there even now, people that brighten every part of your day.  There are places full of wonder and bright days filled with joy, so don't wait, don't fill your day with What If and Maybe, reach for what you want, don't listen to the doubts, give your joy to the world, because what you give to the world comes back to you many times over.  

Most of all, live for today, because when you're waiting for tomorrow, it never comes...

I will miss Sue forever, but I'll carry with me her joy of life and give it to those who need it, as she would have...

Don't get any ideas though, no group hugs...

Airecon, Day one

And so today, first time at Airecon, and running the RPG room downstairs, which was a curious thing compared to what I normally get up to at conventions, but for once, a pleasant change of pace... The day started well, a few new players and when I asked them what their favourite bits of TV/Film were, I got Spaceballs, Evil Dead, and Coronation Street...

This was going to be an interesting day...

They said they only had half an hour, so were pleasantly surprised two hours later they finally decided that they'd done enough by foiling a plan by Ken Barlow to raise the cast of years past to become an unstoppable army of the dead...  Mike Baldwin ended up eating one of the players arms and the Rovers return was found to have a cellar with high powered rifles in it...

Told you I could run anything...

The rest of the day was good, I'd brought along as many games as I could fit in the bag...

All the dice...

A few hundred weight of Casino D6...

and of course, in case anyone wanted to discuss pens... Both Rolls...

Really good day, good atmosphere, plenty of people, a good bring and buy (mistakes were made), and a good board game library.  It's a great venue with a lot of space, but at the speed it's growing, it'll be too big for the current venue by the next time around, and it's only going up, really do recommend it as one of the up and coming conventions.

I'm there tomorrow with a ton of RPGs to play and a ton more (needed a wheeled suitcase to hold them all) to go in the bring and buy, Me and Simon Burley are each going to take one side of the room and see how many people we can tear away from their boards...

Tomorrows offer will be to run anything at all, even if there isn't a roleplaying game of it, you can bring me your favourite board game, and I'll make an RPG out of it on the spot...

Challenge extended...

And this time, I'll get photos of the main hall as well as the trades and upper floors as well as the other rooms.

Airecon tomorrow, and an offer to play any RPG ever made...

And so tomorrow I'm heading to Airecon, there to offer RPG's to anyone who's interested in playing them, I'm taking along a stack of games including such classics as Dead of Night, Fighting Fantasy, D&D (Not telling you which one though...) and Call of Cthulhu (all of them), so I should have all the basic covered.

That said, I'm also doing a few other things while I'm there...

Firstly, anyone wanting to run a game for the first time or learn how to run a game in the first place (particularly at conventions), I'll be on hand to talk you through the basics of things, give you something easy to start with, and then keep an eye on the game to make sure that you're not having any issues running it.  If there's a whole bunch of people turn up wanting to learn, the more the merrier.

Secondly, and I suspect more likely to be of interest to those going, if you've got an RPG that you've always wanted to play and either (a) never got around to it, or (b) couldn't get your head around running it, bring it along with people who want to play it (or get a group at the convention) and give me ten minutes to get my head around the rules, after which I'll run a game of it for you...

I should point out for those of you already thinking in the wrong direction, in previous years, I have had people ask me to run games of Wraithu and FATAL, both of which I managed, so even with attribute scores of 3d20 + 33 to contend with, there was success, although I don't know if successfully running FATAL could be considered success...

The universe was destroyed at the end of it though, so that's something...

Hope to see everyone there...

www.airecon.uk

And back on the subject of Cheap fountain pens...

The problem with having really nice fountain pens, is that everyone knows they're really nice fountain pens, and as a result, you often find that they go missing...

I'd like to say that it's just a case of me misplacing them...

But it's not...

So, today begins the start of a new plan, wherein I'm going to try cheap and cheerful pens while I'm public places, on the theory that if something does happen to one of these, i'm not actually losing anything of immense value...

So, there's two in the first look, the first is a Jinhao 599, which is the one that looks very much like a LAMY safari (albeit with a thinner nib).  It's lighter than the safari (and the safari isn't heavy to begin with), and the nib isn't interchangeable like the Safari,but it's got the same triangular stem at the bottom as the LAMY, the same ink window, and the same oval shape as the LAMY.

They even put the name in the same font as the LAMY, only not in italics...

Not even trying to disguise that it's a copy...

It comes with a twist refill with a significant sized reservoir in it, and while it needed priming to get going, once going, it writes a constant line, doesn't burp, and doesn't jam up.

The second is a Jinhao 126, similar in size and nature to the Pilot Cavalier I've got, simple draw reservoir, not the same size as the one in the 599 (thinner pen), and possessed of a spring at the bottom of the refill for some reason that I still haven't figured out yet.

As with the 599, it needed priming to get going, but again, once going, it writes a steady line, no variance, no splatter, and it doesn't jam.  Of the two, I prefer the 599, but I'm going to take both with me and see if they continue to perform over time.  Neither of them is as solidly constructed as the original versions that they're a copy of, and while the nibs on both are solid, there's no give in them at all which might be a selling point for some, myself included, but won't suit those who are after a little give on the tip.

As for the writing...

For those wondering, the prices of these (including shipping from China...)

Jinhao 126 - 99p
Jinhao 599 - £1.29

Not convinced yet, but it's a reasonable start.

Dragonmeet Games and Seminars, more helpers needed for cons, Airecon, Longcon, and why I've not been around more...

First and foremost, I've listed several of the games that have been put forwards for Dragonmeet, I'm waiting on a whole bunch more for clarifications before I put them up, and I haven't listed the club games yet, but they will be going up in the next week or so.

Listings can be found at http://www.dragonmeet.co.uk/gaming.html

I'm finalising most of the seminars this week so people can start planning their day, but I'm still looking for more GMs, and I'm certainly looking for more volunteers and people to help with the show, and as we've had in years previous, everyone wants to come along, but far less seem to volunteer than at other shows I do.

Not sure why that is to be honest.

So, in the hopes of getting the people we need to help on the day, those volunteering to GM or to help on the day will get early access to the booking system and to the sign up boards on the day, as our way of saying thanks for helping, drink and snack on the day as well as free entrance comes as standard, but this way there's a distinct perk for helping us to make the day better.

We're also putting games together for Airecon in a few weeks, and we're still looking for more people for that as well, we'll be running a number of drop in games, but more GM's in particular would be appreciated.  Full details are available at http://www.airecon.uk

Finally, Longcon, provisional date for next year is going to be the 8th and 9th of July again, will finalise that in the next week, but put the date in the calender, because it'll be within a week of that either way and I suspect this years going to be very popular.

As for myself, well, things of recent have not been the best they could have been, lot of work going on behind the scenes have meant that my social media profile has dropped significantly, so rather than telling people that I'm doing things, I've just been doing things.  All well and good, but sometimes you need to tell the world what you're up to as well.

A few weeks back I mentioned that Sue Wilson, my excellent friend of many years, had pancreatic cancer, well, she went in this morning to have it removed and when they went in, they found out that it had spread to her Liver...

Inoperable

Not untreatable

But Inoperable...

The same diagnosis my mum got earlier this year, different cancers, same situation, so I've spent the day with the Wilson Clan and will likely be doing more of the same in the months to come, more when I can, up for work in six hours...

This is John Dodd in the socialist republic of South Yorkshire and Goodnight England, Wherever you are...

All about the Hack - The Indie, Cthulhu, and Jack Hacks

When the Black Hack came out, it sent a good number of waves out into the world with the ideas that it generated, and from it rose a number of inspired products that covered other types of games, rather than the standard fantasy genre that the original Hack covered.

Given the nature of the Black Hack, each of the new hacks is working towards making the type of game they cover easier to run whilst keeping the feel of the game in question.  To do this, they present the basics of the rules boiled down to the essentials, and then make them interesting to play.

Today I'm looking at The Indie Hack, The Cthulhu Hack, and the Jack Hack...

Bear in mind that with each of these, you do still need the OSR rules to work with, mainly for the run of the mill things like creatures and weapon stats, although most of these books have stat blocks and character information for the bits that they cover in detail.  Something that was introduced in the Black Hack was the concept of Usage Dice, which add to the results that are rolled and are slowly degraded in ability and discarded when overused, each of these new Hacks has a particular slat on their Usage Dice, which I'll come to in each review.

First up is the Cthulhu Hack

Paul Baldowski's epic release that covers in 22 pages what the main CoC rulebook takes a few hundred to do, the version that I have was one of the first ones, with the original cover artwork.

The Cthulhu Hack works with the regular OSR statistics, but the Usage dice for this hack are Flashlights and Smokes (keeping with the 1920's) to get the ideas flowing.  Flashlights are for finding Physical clues, Smokes are for looking into Social clues.  When you're out of dice, you're out of ideas, burned out, you've got to do something to get yourself back on track, and as a mechanic, it reminds you that you're not as indefatigable as the creatures you're up against, which I really like.

There are character archetypes and rules on sanity, not massively involved like others you may have seen, but faster and easier, with less chance of a character being permanently retired as a result of something bad happening.

It makes for an excellent swift game of horror, and as Paul keeps evolving it, it's well worth picking up.

Next up is the Indie Hack.

Slade Stolar's inspired look at putting in the narrative elements of modern gaming into the OSR world of solid crunch has a lot going for it, not least of which being...

Colour...

It also has a simple numerical mechanism for making the character better at some things whilst making them worse at others and also rules for generating relationships between characters so that they can assist each other.  Characters don't have to accept the help that they get, but there are options, something that was never present in the OSR.  It's not the same as Usage Dice, but it does make for an interesting change.

What it also has is more character types and creatures than either of the other Hacks, so there's lots of choice to work with, and there's a lot of artwork in there that's nicely suited to the product, even if it is in colour (get back all you purists...)

Liked the ideas presented, and if OSR had had something along these lines way back in the day, the face of modern gaming might have been very much different from what it is now.

Finally there's the Jack Hack

John R Davis takes a look at the world of Victorian horror, with an interesting take on the idea of morality in the form of White and Black usage dice.  The White usage dice carries with it no inherent risk, The Black carries the possibility of having psychological consequences when used.  While no one would want to take the risks if they have the choice, when the white die is exhausted, or at the GM's discretion, the Black can (or must) be used.

It's a simple mechanic, and it's simplicity makes it easy to consider using till you see all the negatives that can come from using it.  It doesn't take much for a downwards slide to begin, and then your characters are in a world of hurt...

The rest of the book is hooks, locations, prompts, and plots, as well as a whole field of NPC's to work with.  It doesn't leave much on the setting beyond the notation that you're in Whitechapel, but if you're playing RPG's, it's almost a certainty that you read books and stories, so the genre is well enough (in my opinion) to be assumed.

And if not, watch a season of Penny Dreadful, more than enough information there to keep you going forever...

All three hacks are available from Drivethru for less than the price of a happy meal from Mcdonalds...

If I didn't already have them, I'd skip dinner tomorrow...

Book Review - Children of Time

As a writer, I like plots where you don't give everything away, I believe that if you tell people what's going on as you go, you're depriving them of the fun of figuring it out for themselves.  The problem with this, of course, is that when you do that with things you write, you find yourself looking for the same in other peoples writing.

Sometimes you find it too easily, sometimes there's lazy storytelling that leads to you looking at the page (or the screen for that matter) and going "It was them that did it..."

Which is really disappointing...

So imagine how cheerful I was at the ending of Children of Time, where I absolutely did not see it coming...

Children of time starts with the end of humanity, as Dr Avrana Kern aboard the Brin 2 (Nice nod to the David Brin Uplift series) oversees the beginnings of humanity seeding the stars with uplifted animals to help them build new colonies when they themselves finally arrive.  What humanity hadn't counted on is the lunatic fringe deciding to sacrifice everything so that they could retain their tenuous position in the foodchain.  Everything changes in a second and the bright future that we were on the brink of is laid wasted before us.  

Eighteen hundred and thirty seven years later, the crew of the Gilgamesh awaken to the realisation that something has gone wrong, and following a signal, head towards the beacon of the Brin 2, only sign that humanity is still out there.  On the planet around which the signal orbits, the new race of creatures seeded by the Brin 2 begins it's long journey into evolution, but they aren't monkeys...

They're spiders...

The book proceeds in alternating chapters, one on the Gilgamesh, one on the Planet, and it's difficult to keep a story going in two places unless you're watching 24, invariably one of the perspectives can fade into obsolescence while the other thrives.

Which may have been the idea...

It's apparent that the Gilgamesh isn't equipped for what it now needs to do, originally designed as a carrier of people, it's now a reformatted century ship, and with the chain of command demolished beyond their own locality, civilised creatures revert to territoriality and try to claim what they can for themselves as their way of life starts to fall.  While on the planet below, generations rise and fall, and with each one, they learn a little more of themselves, a little more of the world around them, and they begin to rise and above them, teaching them of the world that they came from, is Dr Avrana Kern, who is on no-one's side but her own...

This book is brilliant, it's paced even, neither side gets all the limelight, and seemingly unimportant things become vital at later points.  It charts the complexity and need for change in worlds still emergent (which by definition would include the one that we're all stood on), it shows what people can do if they have hope, and equally what they will do if they have no hope.  

It's not a fast read, the story is told over generations of both races, but the building of the plot is essential to the end reveal, there are some moments of dramatic genius (Dr Kern's realisation that she's been helping spiders to evolve all along for example) and the end reveal is one of hope, when all along all that had been present was the darkness of two civilisations ending.

Well recommended

(Un)fold, something new on Kickstarter exploring the link between creativity and mental health

I do back a lot of things on kickstarter, most of the time they're just cool things that I like the look of and have the spare funds to buy in on, sometimes they're things where I just think that the persons got a dream and I want to help them achieve that dream and sometimes...

Sometimes it's something that you've thought about and never got around to addressing...

This is (un)fold, potentially the first in a series of publications aimed at exploring the link between mental health and creativity, and by that I mean not just the theory that every creative person might be a psycho lurking just under the surface...

Although that said...

I know a lot of creative people, between the games companies that I work with, the writing groups I'm with, and the various groups I'm in that get creative with all sorts of other things, from prototyping to photography, and if I'm honest, in creatives that I know, there is a higher percentage of people who have anxieties of various types.

I'm not saying that those who aren't very creative don't have anxieties of their own, but certainly they're less evident than in the people who spend their days dreaming up new worlds and ideas.  Maybe it's because we spend our time dreaming up things that we can see all the possibilities out there and sometimes it's hard to ignore those possibilities when we see them.  Maybe it's because we're putting ourselves out there all the time, and everything we create is a little bit of ourselves on view to the world, and we wonder whether or not everyone see's more of us in what we do than we wanted to put on show.

Maybe...

For myself, I'm an Introvert masquerading as a monstrous Extrovert, always have been, those who've seen me at conventions know all about the big personality. I'm large and in charge, the life and soul of the party, no one's ever going to doubt the Dodd in high gear, because that's not what I am out in the world, that's the part of me that faces impossible odds and doesn't think of what might go wrong.

But what do I see when I'm in the dark, and the demons come...?

Never going to tell anyone, because it's no one's business but my own, possessed of gigantic mirth and gigantic melancholy, and those who know me, know how well I can hide both, but they're there. I see those same things in the words and deeds of the other creatives I know, so I'm interested in this Kickstarter because it might well be something that goes some way towards addressing both my thoughts and the thoughts of others like me, and for that I'm backing it.

They're inviting articles from anyone who works creatively in some way (doesn't matter how) and wants to share their thoughts on the matter, and I think that it's worth lending a hand here.

The kickstarter can be found at

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/161012329/unfold

Feel free to spread the word

Kickstarter delivered: Control

I like games that don't need you to read an operations manual to play, simple rules with artwork that fits the concept and fast gameplay.  But I'm also a sucker for something where I can get behind the premise of it, all games are a combination of working out the odds and going with your gut feeling, so it's particularly good when you get something that goes with all of the above.

So a game that's all about time travellers trying to build a time machine whilst sabotaging the other travellers efforts got my attention for certain...

This is Control

The premise of the game is very simple, each turn every player gets one action, they can draw a card, play (install) a card, burn one of their cells on the table to use the effect of it, or defuse an opponents card by playing a card of equal or higher value over it.

The winner of the round is the first one to make 21 exactly with the cards they have installed.  This makes for a very short game in some cases if people have exactly the right cards in their hand, it also means that as soon as any players points reach 11, the other players have got to consider that the next card played may be the one that ends the game.

There are two different types of card, Silver and Bronze, silver have an immediate effect when they hit the table or have an effect when something affects them, Bronze can be burned to trigger a different effect.

We believe that using a rift to take out a nova should always be done to the sound of the Death Star Exploding...

There are two different types of card, Silver and Bronze, silver have an immediate effect when they hit the table or have an effect when something affects them, Bronze can be burned to trigger a different effect.

As the game goes on, the types of card on the table and the effects that can be played really start to mesh, there are some cards that can destroy all bronze or silver cards on the table, other cards that can stop actions, steal other cards, allow you to play extra cards, and so on.

As soon as a player scores 21, the round is over, no chance to retaliate or change things, the traveller has travelled.  When a round is won, the player gets a time token.

And they're really shiny...

Collect three tokens in a two player game or two in a three or four player game and you win

Abbie being modest about the win...

Two minute learn for a ten minute game (and that's with four players), the combinations are really interesting, the game gets involved quickly and if everyone is concentrating on what everyone is doing, the interplay can get very complicated, which is excellent when it's such a simple premise.  At a glance, everyone can see how everyone else is doing, but keeping up with the different abilities on the table makes every game different.

The production values are excellent, custom box with real metal counters, the cards have been done to bicycle standard and the box is thick card.  Don't know what the retail value is, but if it's anything like what I got it for on kickstarter, this is going to be one to watch going forwards.

Zombie Boot Camp - Not quite full contact LARP, but fun...

The month before the wedding, we went on a Stag Do organised by my brother (He who finds awesome things), and in a change from regular Stag protocol (go around a hundred pubs and drink them dry), we decided to travel a hundred miles south to Worcester and engage in a day of beating and shooting things...

This is Zombie Boot Camp...

Before...

The day started with weapons training and orientation, first how to hold a shield and baton and how to lock the shields together to resist charges, easy enough if you're already trained in the doing of it, but problematic if you have no prior.

Our group had several with prior...

The other group sadly had no such experience.

After...

and as we ended up going up against each other, that really wasn't too fair, but the rules were simple, if you got hit, hand in the air and walk back to the other side, easy way to get most of your people through it play it like bulldog, throw the biggest buggers in the middle and let the fast movers run around the side.  Easy enough stuff, but the shields were designed for people with smaller arms than most of our gang, so we ended up with a variety of friction burns where the shield was rubbing against it.

Then we're on to rifle training, grabbed a rifle and went out into the training area, ran through a few drills to get used to the weapon and work on firing positions and movement tactics.

Again, simple enough stuff, just enough to get people into the spirit of not shooting each other in the ass (or indeed, shooting themselves in the foot..) although the rifles all had splitters in the end of the barrel so the paintball came out as a shower of paint rather than anything that was going to leave a mark.

Somebody wake up Hicks...

Then to the meat of the day, two live exercises where we took a van ride to a deserted area not far from the training camp, there to put the new skills to the test, not so much 28 days later as 28 minutes later, but it's all good.

Before...

So, the idea in the first place was to wander around an industrial estate, watch out for civilians or scientists to recover, beat the s*** out of zombies, and then pull out of there.  Easy enough, but here's where the problem occurred for me...

I don't LARP these days, but I have done, so I'm familiar with hit protocol, don't target certain areas, if you get hit, acknowledge the hit, and make sure you're not hitting too hard in return.  We'd had the briefing at the beginning of the day, we knew we were going to get pulled around, pushed over, specific rules like not being able to grapple with the zombies, don't hit in the head, and don't use the shield as a weapon.

Fine with that...

Unfortunately the zombies didn't have the same rules...

After...

Now I have to say that I understand that you can't have the zombies going down in seconds or every fight is going to be a real short one, and I understand that for most people, they're going to be too busy hacking away at things to think about what's going on.  However, after the fourth time the zombies had pulled the shields sideways to disengage them, then started making one-two hits against the shields (the first to knock the shield back, the second to hit you because your shield is now against your head), a few of us were starting to get a little frayed.  I got ragged to the ground at least once, and that was because I was keeping to protocol and not grappling, but the fact that the zombie in question was specifically pulling against the shield and ignoring the hits going in at ground level was more than a little irritating

Damage Immunity: Blue plastic batons...

When the zombies didn't go down under a few hundred hits, then just fell over when it was time to move on to the next area, it was difficult for many of our group to stay enthused, it didn't feel like we were winning at anything, just staying in one place long enough to set up the next area, then moving on.

Nothing like a few hundred rounds a minute to make you feel safer...

The shooting went better, zombies go down when you shoot them, and it's far less physically demanding than getting ragged around and hitting something a few hundred times, sensible to do the more physical stuff first and move to the easier stuff to finish.  We also got the sense that what we were doing was having an effect, mainly because the zombies didn't want to get any closer when we were scoring hits, even with the splitter in the barrel, so we got the sense we were actually succeeding at what we were supposed to be doing.

Overall, not a bad day. If I'm honest, I probably wouldn't do it again, although they have an alternate event that runs at night that I would find more interesting, and sadly they stopped doing the werewolf version, which I think we'd have got into a lot more, because everyone loves Dog Soldiers...

The problem for me was that when we were mashing the zombies, they were ignoring the hits, and while I understand why they were doing that, it's a problem when you're wanting to make some effect and everything you do is being ignored.  It's also a problem when your rules of engagement are different to theirs, and again, I understand why that's the case, but it's very frustrating when you're trying to keep to those rules and the other side is ignoring them.  In at least one case, I know one of our side smashed a zombie into some tyres after it ragged one of us over and then kept coming, we got the warning for it, and we kept to the rules after that where we could, but it wasn't easy.

I think that it's an excellent day out for those with no experience of LARP, certainly the other groups had a lot of fun, and it's run by a good group, they're offering a very specific experience and they deliver, just don't go expecting full contact LARP, because it really isn't.

More details can be found at zombiebootcamp.co.uk