Like something out of those really cheesy horror novels by hack writer Guy N Smith, hordes of gigantic crabs are on their way to invade Europe. And Joseph Stalin is to blame! As Ken MacLoed says, those fifties B-movies got their subtexts right after all.
GURPS Atomic Horror, anyone?
So, the dire predictions that the Academy would never give the best film award to something made by a fat bloke from New Zealand whose main audience is ‘engineers called Dave’ turned out to be wrong. Still, had anything else won the ‘best film’, the Oscars would have ended up with roughly the same credibility as the Mercury Music Prize.
It’s the first time a fantasy or science-fiction film has won the Best Film award. 2001, A Clockwork Orange, ET and Star Wars all managed to get nominated, but never won anything but consolation prizes like ‘best special effects’. It’s a belated recognition that these genres are now part of the cinematic mainstream. It’s a contrast to the world of books where sadly SF is still confined to the ghetto.
You don’t want to see the alternative timeline, where they gave the award to ‘Seabiscuit’. Those Los Angeles Nerd Riots were a terrible thing.
Some Game bloggers get to be invited to the best parties. Not that I’m jealous, of course.
So said the bowl of petunias… In an earlier post I made reference to disfunctional egroups, particularly railway modelling ones. There is one group in particular, that’s been renamed twice following major flamewars, and has burned out so many moderators I’ve lost count.
Now we have a prominent member (and onetime moderator) feeling he’s being forced out of the group because of the backbiting of others. I’ve never known any other net community based around any subject that’s been as political as this one. While there are plenty of good people prepared to discuss aspects of railway modelling, there seems to be a minority that are only interested in causing trouble.
What in Ed Burkhart’s name is wrong with you people?
The engineer’s possession is now complete. There were few glitches caused by the fact the MT database files hadn’t migrated properly, and some more caused by the fact I needed to change some configuration parameters because some directory names had changed.
Further engineering work is scheduled, probably this coming weekend, while I convert the database from Berkerly DB to MySQL.
This website will be moving to a new server sometime tomorrow (Wednesday). Knowing the length of time it normally takes for DNS changes to propagate, you may experience problems accessing the site over the next few days.
The good news is that the new server supports MySQL, which should be a lot more robust.
Need a unarmed self defence technique to defend yourself against evil lubruls? Learn Rumsfeld fu.
Warning! Rumsfeld Fu is a specialised martial art practiced by highly trained and skilled neo-conservatives. If practiced by the untrained, it can be dangerous.
It’s also not to be confused with Rummy-Thump, which is not dissimilar to the ancient Lancastrian martial art of Eckythump, except that instead of a black pudding, you use a priceless vase looted from the Iraqi national museum.
Game WISH 85 is all about Character Inspirations
What inspires you to create characters? Do you have partially-developed characters in mind for use when you get into a new campaign? Do you shop characters around, or do you come up with new characters when you get into a campaign? Why? If you GM, are you bothered by receiving a solicitation for a “generic” character, or does it enthuse you to get a solid proposal even if it’s not closely tailored to your game?
Short answer: it varies.
In games set in detailed fantasy or science fiction universes, I like characters to mesh in with the campaign’s setting in some significant way. I believe characters should have some sort of context; if the campaign setting is filled with all sorts of cults, guilds and megacorps, it’s a good thing to incorporate at least some of those into the character’s backstory.
As a player, sometimes I’ve had more than one idea for a campaign, and had asked the GM which one he or she would prefer before spending too much time fleshing any of them out. Unfortunately other times, I’ve just found the creative juices refuse to flow, and I’ve actually had to pass on some online games because I’ve been unable to come up with a decent concept in time.
I’ve seen a lot of batting of ideas back and forth between player and GM from both sides. For example, a recently a new player joined my ongoing Kalyr campaign with a character with ‘extensive underworld connections’. I sent the player a list of ongoing underworld NPCs, with the question “so what’s her relationship with these guys?”. Things like this help to plug the character into the gameworld, which to me is always a Good Thing. I did much the same thing with the GM of my last major face to face campaign, with Javin the river pirate of Pavis.
On the other hand, a ‘generic’ character should be able to fit somewhere into most gameworlds, although it might not necessarily fit into a narrowly-focussed campaign. One interesting case I had was the submission of a character possessed by a ‘demon’ (Who I’m told was based on a character from a David Gemmell book). I had to put in a bit of though to work out where this ‘demon’ fitted in to my gameworld’s cosmology. Quite what it is would be a spoiler for any of the game’s players that might be reading this, so I’m not going to say.
I’ve only ever created one PC based on a character from fiction; Karl Tolhurst, of whom I’ve written about before, and will probably write about again. He was based on Dan Ward, the central character from Iain Banks’ Espediar Street, a former rock star who’s band had ended in tragic circumstances.
I’ve also done a little bit of develop-in-play, from a very basic starting concept. Vandal the space pirate was an example of this. Basic concept was “big, tough and dumb as a rock”, and I just took if from there. I had a lot of fun playing that that character; he was quite different from the archetypes I usually tend to play.
This afternoon I heard the amplified tinny tones of “Lily the Pink” (I’m showing my age here if I can remember that!) coming from what was presumably an ice cream van.
It’s currently 4 degrees centigrade with a considerable wind chill factor. Don’t suppose he did much trade.
This is what I call a rant! The Sociology of Model Railroading (Link from Cold Spring Shops)
It’s about the American scene, but a lot still seems familiar. I’ve generally avoided the British ‘grotmeet’ scene, but I haven’t heard anything about it that contradicts this:
A Weberian, rationalistic approach to swap meets would assume that they are meant to be efficient local markets for second-hand merchandise. They would, for example, be a means for hobbyists or those leaving the hobby to liquidate unneeded supplies in a fast, informal way, without the potential heavily discounted effect they would see by trying to sell them back to a hobby shop. Some swap meet vendors are able to negotiate with heirs to purchase the model railroad assets of estates and then sell these assets at swap meets.
The rationalistic assumption would be that the consumer goes to a swap meet expecting to find a lower price for merchandise that she may find acceptable, though it may be outdated or in imperfect condition. One might also assume that a seller, finding price resistance to goods at a particular level, would be prepared to negotiate in order not to have to carry the goods back from a swap meet unsold.
A major factor that contradicts these rationalistic assumptions is the fact that many hobby goods of the type that are offered at swap meets have simply lost all economic value — while hobbyists are fond of calling swap meet merchandise “junk”, much — probably a lot more than half — of what appears at swap meets can’t realistically be sold at any price. It is literally trash, kept from the landfill by the expectations of the putative sellers. Often it’s dusty, broken remnants of merchandise that was already schlock when it was new in the 1970s or earlier. The effort to restore it to operation, if it’s practical at all, is greater than the still-low cost of new, better-quality merchandise, and the original junk hasn’t even got sentimental value.
I’ve also seen the dysfunctional clubs and egroups plagued with constant flamewars. But I’ve also been a member of clubs and egroups that don’t suffer from those problems.
One thing in his rant I don’t recognise at all is the description of the exhibition circuit, which is the major difference between the American and British railway modelling scenes.
In America (if magazines are anything to go by), the best layouts are huge, permanently installed basement-busters. Except for the occasional open day, the public never gets to see these layouts. Meanwhile, portable exhibition layouts revolve around modular layouts made up from disparate modules, sometimes with with ill-matching scenery and different standards of modelling.
The British scene is totally different. I believe this is a result of a combination of two factors, our smaller houses (without those gigantic basements), and our more compact geography. Here, many of the biggest and best detailed layouts are not permanent installations, but portable exhibition ones. Quite a few are too big for the owner to be able to set up and run the whole thing at home! As a result, it’s only at public exhibitions that these layouts are ever set up and operated. Combine this with the fact that many British cities are only a couple of hours drive from a dozen other large cities, and you get a thriving exhibition scene, with a large number of high quality layouts, many of which have multiple public outings a year. For just about every model railway club, the highlight of the club’s year is the annual show; all the better shows showcase not just the best of the club’s own modelling, but many high quality visiting layouts as well. And for trade support, with a few exceptions (Doncaster?), the grotmeet junk dealers are conspicuous by their absence. Instead there are a lot of small cottage industry business selling their own products, often obscure items the average model shop doesn’t stock.
Overall, I think the British model railway scene is in pretty good shape.