What the fuck is this all about? Damned if I know.
WotW: Earth – Vox Populi
“Have you seen my Jim? Have you seen him? My son? About four feet tall, blond hair, covered in freckles? … what about you, sir? Have you seen my Jim? He’s about four feet tall–“ – worried mother, Ealing, Day 1 after the end of the invasion “We opened fire with the mortars, next. I…
WotW: Earth – The Death Of The Martians
“My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, but it seems to me that Carver’s suggestions as to the reason of the rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as a proven conclusion. At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were…
WotW: Earth – Weapons of War
“Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the Heat-Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the…
WotW: Earth – The Flying Machine
“The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the evening star trembled into sight. It was deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. Something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness–rushed slantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds…
WotW: Earth – 21 Days of Invasion
The Narrator of the book was close to one of the arrival sites but this was not necessarily the most active site. He also spent more than two weeks (or a three week invasion) hiding in a collapsed house. He was not the first to discover the dead Martians at the end of the invasion…
Social Class in WotW:Earth
War of the Worlds: Earth is set at the dawn of the 20th Century. You have the legacy of Victoriana, the sunset of the British Empire and the rise of other nations including the independence of former colonies. Even back then, state education was available to all, the British Empire (even as late as 1921)…
Subversion for Writers.
TUAW has a link about Subversion for Writers. Subversion is a popular open source version control system. “It allows you to work collaboratively with folks on the same files (in most cases code) without fear of overwriting the work of others. Subversion tracks all the changes made to those files, and who did them, and…
Collaboration, writing and vision
This weekend I was busy with family duties but still managed to do a bit of work on WoTW:Earth. Most notably taking the draft ideas Aidan sent through and turning them into mechanics and flavour. Collaboration is hard. I’m very conscious that I’m an ignorant so-and-so with strong opinions and a jeadstrong way of doing…
What’s He Building In There?
Title taken from the Tom Waits track. This blossomed into a scenario where the PCs were sent to investigate a murder. A newcomer to a quiet US suburb was found beaten to death in his home. The house is trashed. And no-one else in the suburb heard or saw anything… Anyone else have done something…
Starship Concept Art
Picked up this link to amazing starship concept art over on theRPGSite forums.
Archaeology
I spent a couple of hours in the attic of my parent’s house excavating some old books. I have a notion to sell some of them considering that I’ve not looked at them in a decade but as I continued to browse I don’t think I could find one that I would seriously get rid…
Quality of Play theory
Levi Kornelson came up with this theory and posted it on TheRPGSite: The text inspires “solo play”. Personal play creates group play. Group play feeds back into personal play and pushes more group play. The punch-line is: The quality of solo play often matters more to actually getting a game than the quality of group…
WotW: Earth – Art
Last night I commissioned two art pieces from Storn Cook for the upcoming War of the Worlds book. I really like Storn’s art (massive thread on RPG.net here) and he was very nice when I enquired about the commission and explained what I wanted, even going so far as to suggest additional things. The ‘look’…
One for the millennialists…
Mike Cane 2008 reports that NASA got it wrong and an asteroid that they reported to have a 1 in 45000 chance of hitting Earth actually has a 1 in 450 chance of hitting Earth. It took a 13 year old German schoolboy to validate the figures after NASA experts forgot to take into account…
23rd Letter: Projects Campaigns
A Project-based campaign is as flexible as the players want. The G.M. may choose themes as he or she wants. PCs working for a Project are relieved of many of the worries of Network members or other independent espers. Usually they are not on the run, living out of safehouses or mobile homes, lack of…
Mario Kart for the Wii
Last weekend we picked up Mario Kart for the Wii for a fiver after trading in two games that we neither liked nor played (Wabbit Wampage? Cars?) and I must say it was the best fun I’ve had since I bought the device (over a year ago) and discovered Wii Sports. The game isn’t as…
Sexuality (part 1)
A recent thread on TheRPGSite talks about sexuality and sexual and/or gender bias. Art Cheesecake art in fantasy is a real issue. I thought it was mostly gone but there’s heaps of the damn stuff out there. You know – the male characters are ripped with muscles, the female characters are showing cleavage. It’s because…
The 23rd Letter
Balbinus on RPG.net responds to someone asking for sourcebooks about running a campaign about the whole concept of PSI powers: “IMO the best is a game called 23rd Letter, it’s basically Firestarter (the Stephen King book/movie) the rpg. Probably OOP but available I would have thought on ebay.” Thanks, Balbinus! It’s not out of print!…