Of course, it has to be from Cracked.com. Go look. Now.
Month: October 2007
Aliens
When you’re lying awake in the night and dreaming new dreams about far off places and alien races, in science fiction and fantasy, and you think it might be easy to invent something new. No. A few years ago, some of us tried to write a science fiction background which included some elements from sci-fi…
Warlock writes: Why don’t you just give it up.
In the comments on the previous post the almost anonymous Warlock (IP: 213.78.235.176 – 24/10/07 – Some Onetel subscriber in the UK who hides by putting false email addresses) writes: Seriously, you’ve been hacking away at this hobby for donkey\’s years and never produced anything of note other than a blog which demostrates your total…
BadWrongFun
Great Definition badwrongfun: Playing “the wrong way”, but having fun anyway. You might be playing the wrong way by going against the expectations of the game (“You can’t run a hack-and-slash game using Vampire; you’re missing the entire point!”) or the expectations of gamers who have decided they are more evolved beings (“It’s not possible…
I bought a book today…
…entirely because it was illustrated and designed exactly the way I want Q to be paid out. I spent a few minutes leafing through it and in my minds eye transposed the text and art to that which I envision for Q. Looking over my Q notes the other day reminded me of the parts…
Rowling channelled Lucas?
(I’d attribute this but it was passed to me and no-one seems to know…)
Heroics, Risk and immersion.
James “JimJamJom Jimbo” Wallis writes about Heroics: Of course, a lot depends on how the player views their avatar, whether they regard the game-character they’re controlling as ‘me’, as a companion who they care about, or as a disposable camera and weapon-wielding tool. … But basically players don’t like risk. They like the appearance of…
Rowling casts Evil Eye on Hindi festival
A Hindi community is being targetted by Warner Bros and the Rowling estate for infringement because they’re building a huge model of the Hogwarts school. The finishing touches are being applied to thousands of similar structures, known as pandals, across Calcutta and elsewhere in India. Many of them touch on popular themes and the BBC’s…
Q-CON XIV video
The official video for Q-CON XIV was posted today: It’s good to see it running as I did all the research for the first Q-CON by visiting cons around the country when I was President of ‘Slayers the year before. I amended the constitution, got it ratified and and then pushed the idea of running…
Rolled up a superhero character?
Flight? Check… Agility? Uh… Strength? Um… Energy Attack? Ah… Reactions? Well, you see… So we have Flight. Cool.
Run out of plot ideas?
LifeOptimiser covers some of “the best books of human civilization.” It beggars my belief that someone may not have a plot to mind much like I find it hard to believe that an artist doesn’t know what to paint or a programmer what to write. I suppose that because I neither paint nor code, I’m…
The Game I’d Play Right Now
I’m having a lot of fun writing half-a-games at the moment. You know – getting the grist of a game together. I’m not really enjoying the layout/art section though I’m sure I’ll get round to it. Illusion is almost ready to go. Six requires about another few weeks. It’s all good. I have a hankering…
post-apocalyptic rainstorms
The atmosphere is becoming more humid in a pattern consistent with man-made climate change, researchers have found. “This confirmation that humidity and temperature are increasing as expected has important implications for future human health and comfort,” observed the Hadley Centre’s Peter Thorne, one of the research team. – BBC News Looks like BladeRunner had it…
Your rights … under Section 44 of the UK Anti-Terrorism Act
This kind of thing gives me the shivers. Two disabled blokes were detained by UK police for suspiciously opening a white envelope and looking at police men in public view It’s been asked about 20 times now when I’m going to London with the job and I’ve been wanting to put it off. Anything to…
Bad Halo Reviews? Bungie leaving the Evil Empire?
Pardon my French, but this is fucking mint. Escapist’s Yahtzee reviews Halo 3. It made me chuckle and made her-indoors roll her eyes. Meanwhile we learn that Microsoft and Bungie are parting ways. So sad, too bad. Of course, Bungie is now broken but who cares. Really.
Even more on Sexism
Okay…. From the Wonderland blog: While we’re debating the use of English pronouns in RPG books, we find that Ubisoft have just created a range of games for the Nintendo:DS which consist of shopping, fashion, animals and babies. The world is imbalanced, side-loaded, lurching: we need more female policemen, actually – aren’t Ubisoft watching Life…
Jame’s Herbert’s ’48. A review.
I recently read James Herbert’s ’48 which is a post-World War II version of a few post-apocalyptic stories. It was essentially “28 Days Later” or “Night of the Comet” but with Nazis. It read like a muh shorter ‘lite’ version of Stephen King’s “The Stand”. It’s Dawn of the Dead with a swastika. Sure –…
Natural Wonders
The Giant’s Causeway is one of the most astounding natural formations in Northern Ireland. This got me thinking about the representations of natural wonders in gaming. In the Aurore Sourcebook for 2300AD, they described a tidal flood plain which was so flat that the tides, sped by the influence of the large lunar satellite on…