…that the citizens of Perugia compelled the surrender of the citadel of Gerard du Puy, the cardinal-nephew of Pope Gregory XI, during the War of the Eight Saints with a trebuchet nicknamed the cacciaprete (“priest chaser”)? I think that the modern day Catholic Church has dire need of this.
What’s that in the background?
Today I had lunch with Mike and Jim in Kainan Cafe. We then went round to Forbidden Planet where I refrained from buying a lot of stuff. This is self-control, I tellya.
Return of the Great Old Ones.
Found this gem when I added Pooka’s blog to my blogroll. “In 1901, New Year’s Eve, the Stars Were Right. The Great Old Ones Returned, bringing with them all manner of being from their starry prisons. Fortunately for humanity, while the Old Ones were certainly horrible to look upon, they were not nearly as great…
Raising the bar
I’m arrogant to believe that I can write and, to be honest, most of the time the feedback has been pretty good. I like writing, it’d be nice to do it for a living (and not the stressful but boring job at $BIG_COMPANY) but them’s the breaks. In my spare time I write a lot…
Spiralling Down
I don’t blame anyone really. Sometimes I get angry or depressed and curse my friends, my family, the company, the system, the church and anyone else I can name. But it’s a short madness and like all things, it will pass. I haven’t slept very well in the last few days. Bouts of lethargy and…
There is a hole in my memory
I don’t remember a game I allegedly ran over a decade ago. Nothing at all memorable. I think it was a superhero game/ That worries me.
“Do people still go to cons?”
This year, Q-CON celebrates it’s 15th year. It was sixteen years ago that I finished the ‘market research’ of conventions in Ireland (via Gaelcon and Warpcon – and getting illicit copies of their after-con reports from by Bothan spies). This was while I was the President of the RPG society, Dragonslayers. It was a year…
WotW: Earth – The Second Launch
“Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience….
Gates of Hell
A couple of pics of a really accessible volcano. Easily re-used for something gaming…
“I don’t have any choice, somebody has to save the world”
I’ve been reading a lot of old comics this week. Warren Ellis Planetary The Eclipse Miracleman stories. I’m trying to track down my Authority trade paperbacks as well. There’s been a recent thread on RPG.net about creating a setting where Superheroes conquered the world. This, along with other memes, was part of what I was…
New Downloads
Some people were looking for them so I’ve put some downloads on the books page: Wildtalents fanzine 1 60K PDF Wildtalents 3 fanzine 1.5MB PDF Wildtalents 5 fanzine 373K PDF 23rd letter character sheet 22K PDF zombi character sheet 86K PDF If there’s anything else in particular that people are looking for, please mention it…
Man vs…
The topic of conversation this morning in the car was the substance of plots. Traditionally, we have plots which are Man versus Man (and yes, I intend to keep the male pronoun because anyone who would be sensitive to it likely has stopped reading a long time ago). Man versus Man This describes the quintessential…
The State of the RPG Industry
An article on MSNBC writes about the woes in the RPG market: “Wizards does not reveal sales figures, but Pramas estimates the overall market for traditional role-playing games at $30 million annually.” When I first read this, my immediate thought was ‘piffle!’ and that it was a vast underestimate of the market. Okay. Let’s take…
Site refresh
Bear with us while we engage in some site jiggery-pokery. Those of you who subscribe to the feed shouldn’t notice any difference. Also it’s a bit harder to tell who wrote what post at the moment, but that’s OK by me – it makes it look like I’ve written more!
OREs Magica
I spent some time at work today thinking about things that could be done with the ORE system. I admit that I’ve not yet had the chance to really test it in anger Part of this is to kick a bit of life into the forums at Project Nemesis as well as the ones at…
WotW: Earth – The Computational Analyser
“In the Spring of that year I had the good fortune to visit my friend, Mr Askell, at the Royal Society where they were pursuing development of a computational device using the research of intellectual giants who had gone before. Bright young scientists to’ed and fro’d with metal rods and some articles salvaged from the…
Feeling Planetary Love
OMG, I’m feeling the love for Planetary all over again. I’m itching to run a Planetary-like game using Wild Talents. Soooo much….
222 years ago
“Blood running in the streets. Mobs of rioters and demonstrators threatening banks and legislatures. Looting of shop and home. Strikes and unemployment. Trade and distribution paralyzed. Shortages of food. Bankruptcies everywhere. Court dockets overloaded. Kidnappings for heavy ransom. Sexual perversion, drunkenness, lawlessness rampant. The wheels of government are clogged, and we are descending into the…