Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul’s house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone. There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader…
Dectet
The Decktet is a deck of cards with suits, ranks, and named images. It is structurally unlike ordinary poker and tarot decks, meaning that you can do different things with it. This looks very cool and makes me think about the SeaFarers game. For each suit, there is an Ace and a Crown. Between them…
Government scrambles to conceal UFO
On June 20th, there was a report of a UFO over England. Today the BBC announced that it was a ‘glow lantern’ and not actually an observer from another world. Very convenient… [No, I’m not taking this seriously]
Zombi – out of stock at Key20!
I’m somewhat incredulous that Zombi is now out of stock at Key20 and will be preparing another shipment in the next week or so. I’m also going to work on providing a PDF version so people can download it from Key20. Watch this space!
I have a pretty strong stomach…
…but this revolts me: A BOY of seven was kept chained in a cellar by his cannibal family — as they ATE parts of him. He had been partially skinned after monstrous mum Klara, 31, caged him for months while relatives who were also in a sick cult feasted on his raw flesh, an appalled…
D&D 4th Edition … now with more!
I had a poke through a friend’s copy of 4th Edition D&D. It seems it has been genericised to the nth degree, and everything has been made more powerful from the word go. On top of that, alignments have been simplified and there is even the concept of “unaligned” (maybe they read my previous article)….
Frontier ‘look and feel’
More of a precis to get the feel across. There are a few themes that I am exploring here. And I’m not being preachy about it. Western Europe is devastated and the USA is somewhat ruined but in recovery – this is due to a particularly nasty ABC war a couple of hundred years ago….
Frontier summaries
Summary: The basic setting assumes that players are highly skilled, highly motivated members of the Explorer division of Human Unity, a ‘federation’-alike government. Their job is to make contact, explore gaseous anomalies and try not to get killed in the process. Terms: Human Unity – the Human ’empire’ based upon very liberal concepts and including…
Frontier: History of the Future
In the first half of the twentieth century, humanity discovered, developed and weaponised nuclear fission. Through a small amount of vision and a large amount of luck, humanity managed to survive long enough to actually advance these weapons and when they had exhausted their capacity to destroy, they invented new methods. Pre-History During the twenty-first…
Frontier: man and machine
While the scientists of Human Unity have pushed the frontiers of science and innovation further than any of their ancestors, there are some areas which they have not dwelled heavily upon. About seventy years ago when the Experts were becoming relatively commonplace, there were two projects which, though opposite in their aim, were entirely complementary….
The Morality of AI
On the Morality of AI (from an rPG net thread about Eclipse Phase “Their morality may seem alien because we may not want to grasp it but, at the end of the day, these will be our creations, our monsters. If they see us as annoying bugs, then it will be because we will have…
Gallifreyans do it in Time…
Wired writes about Gallifreyan incest: “Doctor Who star David Tennant is currently dating Georgia Moffett — the actress who portrayed The Doctor’s daughter in the Who episode of that same name. Moffett is the daughter of Peter Davison, who played The Doctor’s fifth incarnation. So, she’s a Doctor’s daughter playing The Doctor’s daughter. She’s also…
Erick Wujick has passed away
Kevin Siembieda writes: “Erick passed away as gentle as a snowflake.” That’s how Kay Kozora, Erick’s ‘Beautiful Kate’ of nearly 30 years put it when she called with the sad news. She and other loved ones were present when Erick passed away, Saturday evening, June 7, 2008. A Press Release with more details can be…
Frontier Swarmtech
Swarmtech is the application of robotics to nanotech principles. Nanotech is used extensively in molecular replicators – large immobile devices designed to replicate thousands of identical objects – often microscopic in scale which are then assembled by more mundate nanorobots into larger devices. The most advanced example of nanotech encountered by Human Unity lies within…
Frontier: other machine intelligences
Emotional Machines While they are not beings of pure logic, Experts cannot claim to have emotions. They do not get angry or resentful, they do not love, they do not show compassion: though they may appear to do so. There are, however, emotional machines. Some emotions come easier to machines than others (Fear, for instance)…
Questions about Frontier
Back in the day, Eamon, Colin and I did spend some time discussing the concepts a long time ago but it’s clear that we had divergent ideas. Some of these were because we knew too much (when you mix biologists and physicists and try to make a far-future sci-fi setting) and some of it was…
Citizen: a skill?
In our BRP-based Runequest game, Michael has asked a few times for rolls on ‘Gloranthan Lore’ and ‘Human Lore’ so that we can remember items from our own cultures. Because we’re all grotesque combat monsters (with the exception of Jim’s character), we’ve all spent maybe 10-20 points on these skills. Pretty feeble really but not…
Frontier: opening the book
I find myself thinking a lot about Frontier these days. (It’s probably because I have some self-imposed deadlines for ‘Illusion’ and ‘6’.) Over the last couple of years I’ve harvested some twenty names from the freelancer forums of RPG.net as I try to get a feel for the art that I want for my games….