Not long ago, a gaming acquaintance sent me a copy of a game he’s working on and asked me to playtest it. What I’ve learned from this experience is very simple: (more)

I don’t like heights. I will go so far as to say that I fear them, mainly because they make me feel dizzy and think that I’m going to fall and die. This makes it exceedingly difficult for me to clean our rain gutters.

The last guy we paid to clean out the rain gutters didn’t do a particularly good job and also removed these little baskets that were there to prevent leaves from clogging up our down-spouts. Funny, I’ve never seen that guy since. He’s like the evil rain-gutter fairy.

This brings us to robots: We’ve got robots that cut our lawns and vacuum our carpets, so where is my rain-gutter clearing robot?

I’m imagining a little rocket-ship shaped robot with wheels around its midsection and whirring brushes at one end to clean out all of the leaves. It would have a cute little tool on the other end if it ran into some annoying little twigs so that it could flip over and cut them out of the way. It might even have a webcam or two on it so you could watch it work because that would be awesome (at least for about ten minutes) or, you know, so you could tell it not to cut through something it shouldn’t.

I don’t yet have a name for this wonder gadget. Perhaps, Gutterba . . .

This weekend we went to the first Wixercon of 2010. As usual, it was a good time.

This time around I ran games of Microscope and Lady Blackbird, both of which, in retrospect, were a bit unsuitable to the nature and setting of the convention. They both played out tolerably well, nonetheless.

Friday night, Britt and I played out a SF timeline of Microscope with Wayne. The concept was about a conflict between humanity and Aliens. Overall, it was pretty bloody but in the end there was peace.

Saturday night, I ran Lady Blackbird for David, Erik, and Kat. I’d never run Lady Blackbird before. Despite that, the game came together quite well. Lady Blackbird and her companions were able to handily escape their imperial captors and continue their search for the Pirate King, Uriah Flint. The Lady’s hopes were crushed in the end when she discovered that her former lover had taken others in her absence but despite that, she and her compatriots survived to continue their adventures in the future.

As for games played, I reprised my role as the Veteran in David’s League of Shadows game. Once again, we fought monsters set on Amber’s destruction. This time around we had Julian’s considerable assistance. Success was achieved at some cost but not so high that we weren’t rewarded well.

The other game I played in was David’s Shadow Wars game which is Star Wars/Amber mash-up game. I was a Jedi Knight and captain of the Compass Rose. We, a cadre of Jedi sent protect General Dalt from an assassination attempt, were led a merry chase. The chase was figurative, of course, as it mostly involved unraveling the mystery of crazy Amberite history and deciding what to do about once we had. For some reason, it’s actually amusing to play Shadow level characters interacting with Amberites, despite the power differences.

As I said, overall it was a very satisfying convention.

I got my bluetooth keyboard to work with my iPad tonight so, clearly, it was time for a new blog post.

I’ve had my iPad for about two weeks now. I’m still pretty happy with my purchase, early adoption be damned. During the last two weeks, I’ve learned a few things:

1. I really enjoy the multi-touch interface and I’m happy I waited for the iPad rather than getting a iPod Touch. The touchscreen is really snappy and it’s a very nice size. If I’d gotten a Touch I probably would have learned to live with the smaller screen but I’m very happy with the size of the iPad’s screen.

2. Typing anything longer than a very brief message using the on-screen keyboard is kind of a pain. I typed my last post using it and it took me a ridiculous amount to time to do so. That’s why I haven’t post anything else recently (also because I couldn’t get my bluetooth keyboard to work the first time around).

3. I’ve missed Flash once or twice. It’s lack doesn’t bother me much. The only thing I used Flash for on a regular basis was watching TV on Hulu (mostly Castle, really). Since I can get Castle through the ABC app, I’m not missing Hulu much.

4. It’s great for consumption. I love surfing the internet, reading my gaming PDFs, and playing games on the iPad. Up to this point, it hasn’t been so great for writing (see #2). Now that I’ve got my external keyboard working that may change, though.

5. When it comes to Apps, i’m cheap. I’ve got maybe twenty apps of which I’ve paid for perhaps three. Plants vs. Zombies turned out to be as addictive as expected but otherwise nothing’s really grabbed me.

For the last few days I’ve been re-reading The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite authors. It’s been almost ten years since I read this book for the first time and I’d forgotten just how good it is. The funny thing is that I’m only re-reading it because I recommended LMB to one of my co-workers and, when she wanted to talk about the book, I discovered that I couldn’t remember anything that had happened in it.

And, of course, now that I’m re-reading it I remember why I recommend Lois McMaster Bujold books to people. : )

Crazy,huh?

I’ll post more after I’ve played more. : )

In honor of our Friday night Diaspora game, I decided to play with Photoshop.

I present to you the Rag & Bone:

Click for the full-sized glory.

We just finished watching the first season of the Tudors on DVD this evening. Overall, I found the show merely okay. I like the costuming and the acting seems good (though I don’t claim to be a very good judge when it comes to acting) but I find that it just doesn’t hold my attention.

I can appreciate why other folks like the show, and I wouldn’t be opposed to watching the second season, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to be available from the library.

I enjoy listening to This American Life on NPR. I realize that, just like A Prairie Home Companion or Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! (both of which I also enjoy), that This American Life isn’t interesting to everyone.

Some episodes of the show are just so informative, though, that I feel like everyone should be listening to them. Specifically:

The Giant Pool of Money

Return To The Giant Pool of Money

and Inside Job

Inside Job is from a couple of weeks ago and the two Giant Pool of Money episodes are from 2008 and 2009. Clearly, I think that they are damn interesting.

If you aren’t interested in the reasons for the financial crisis of the last couple years, you will likely find them less so.

I’ve run two different Cluster-/Character-creation sessions for Diaspora now, one as a demo at Madison Games Day and the other for our regular Friday night group. In both instances, I’ve noticed that there is a tendency for the players to make characters who come from the system that they created in the cluster.

This is not a requirement of the rules. In fact, the rules say that a player character can come from any of the systems. So, why the tendency?

I suspect that it’s because folks become creatively invested in the system that they’ve created and, having less of an interest in what their fellow players have created, create a character using what they know best.

Now, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Honestly, I’m just wondering if this is the case with other groups that play Diaspora. I could go ask the question over on the RPGnet or Story-Games forum but, frankly, I’ve rarely gotten a satisfactory result from attempting to have a conversation at either place so it’s likely to remain a mystery.

Saturday, I ran the second session of the Amber Quarterly Game that I’m GMing for the Amber players of Greater Wisconsin. This involved getting up early-ish and drove to Kat’s house two hours away to get the game started around 10am, though many players trickled in over the course of the morning.

We did have three of the six players immediately (normally we have seven players but one couldn’t make it this weekend), and two shortly thereafter, so we jumped right in.

We picked up pretty much where we left off from the last session a few months ago. So far, the characters seem to be under the impression that Oberon wants to do them harm, the Redheads are involved in some kind of conspiracy, and there are a whole lot of questions that they don’t have the answers to.

This time around, they spent a good chunk of the session exploring and asking questions. They’ve also started to figure out just big the universe is.

Overall, it was a good session. I think that there was some good character development and some interesting interactions. Questions were answered but there were more to ask.

I’m looking forward to the next one but I’m not looking forward to the months we’ll have to wait until then.

Friday, we finished up (for the most part) character creation for Diaspora. Britt was the keynote speaker for a Girls and Women in Science event at the college so she wasn’t able to make it to the session.

Once we finished up with principal character creation, I then ran a little demo of how the system worked for the group. I set them up in an archeological dig on a barren, airless moon and made them fight seven-foot tall robots left over from the previous T3 inhabitants.

So far, what I’ve learned is that Diaspora combat is much deadlier than what I’ve experience in the post-apocalyptic Spirit of the Century. Not surprising, I suppose, considering that the authors kinda tell you that upfront but experiencing really brings it home.

I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the game in action.

Last night we had our first session of Diaspora during which we did cluster generation and started on characters.

Diaspora is a SF iteration of FATE with the implied setting that thousands of years ago humanity left Earth for the stars, settling on countless worlds throughout the universe. FTL travel is limited, AI and anti-gravity technologies never appeared, and humans have not changed beyond recognition. Also, humanity has taken a few steps back in some places. Accidents happen and a high-level of technological culture can’t always be maintained.

Part of setting up a game of Diaspora is building a setting for your group. Each player (including the GM) rolls a few random stats and then uses those numbers to brainstorm a stellar system which will be connected to the systems of the other players. That collection of connected systems is the cluster.

Here’s what we came up with last night:

• Baln: [-1T, 0E, -2R] this system has one inhabited, hippie planet with no indigenous animal life but lots of plant life. Some of those plants move around under their own power and some of them, if you aren’t careful, eat people. The people of Baln have leveraged the biodiversity of their world into a pharmaceuticals export business. Did I mention that they also live in cities built among the branches of giant mobile trees?

• New Hawaii: [0T, +1E, +2R] one inhabited planet with lots of oceans, two continents, and lots of islands. The locals revere their ancestors and try to maintain their cultural heritage. New Hawaii is the richest system in the cluster and the primary exporter, sending raw materials to all the other systems. The inhabited world is a beautiful garden world where wealthy tourists are welcomed.

• Ianus: [-1T, 0E, -1R] one inhabited world, torn by war. In the past, the people of Ianus were united under one Imperialist government, possibly with British roots. Unfortunately, many of the technologically savvy among the commoners weren’t happy with the status quo and there was rebellion. The New Technocrats weaponized a terraforming device and, perhaps inadvertently, set it off. The surface of Ianus is a beautiful, unspoiled garden where few people live. Most of the inhabitants live in the ancient underground city-bunkers. Much of Ianus’s population were killed when the bomb was dropped and now those who remain are engaged in a cold war between the Imperialists and the New Technocrats.

• Jian Wu: [+2T, 0E, -1R] the people of Jian Wu collect trash. While they are the most technological society in the cluster, they do not use their tech-superiority militarily. They control much of the cluster by controlling the slipstream technology that allows for travel between systems. You can lease a Slip-Ship but it costs a pretty penny. At the same time, Jian Wu is paid by the other systems to take their trash and to transport their goods. Jian Wu also invests heavily in archaeology, mining the past in the hope of maintaining their tech-superiority.

• New Newfoundland: [0T, -1E, -2R] founded by Canadians, the planet of Newfoundland is a rocky world unsuited for farming. The New Newfies import nearly all of their vegetable matter from Baln. They are a hearty, hard drinking people who enjoy sports and do a brisk business among the tourist set that doesn’t want to pay the astronomical prices to vacation on New Hawaii.

• Seraph: [+1T, +1E, -1R] the Seraph system has one inhabited planet. The populace live in relative comfort while their government imports criminals from other systems to work their mining interests on the barren outer worlds of the system. Seraph is the penal system of the cluster, taking those that the other systems don’t want and putting them to work.

• Staavor: [-3T, +2E, -1R] the Staavor system is home to several inhabited worlds. In the distant past, the system was much more prosperous but an unexpected incident with their binary star rendered their original colonies on the rich inner worlds uninhabitable and destroyed much of the their technological base. Now the inhabitants of the Staavor worlds live subsistence lifestyles on less than ideal worlds. They are the best warriors in the cluster, though, so some of them leave their home planets to see the universe.

[When I get time, I'll post our cluster configuration.]

One of the shows that I miss watching when it airs is The Closer on TNT. I’m not really sure of the exact reason but I enjoy watching it so very much. We have the first four season on DVD and I think I’m going to spend a ridiculous amount of time re-watching them. Before we bought them, we had borrowed them from Britt’s mom and watched them a few times, too.

Part of it is that I love procedural television. Law & Order (the original), CSI (also the original), Monk (before they axed Sharona), Burn Notice. I could go on but I think you get where I’m going.

Part of it is that I love the characters. The ways they interact, the ways that Chief Johnson makes each of them crazy in different ways, and the way they work together as a team. The show just seems to have the perfect formula of elements that make it a pleasure to watch.

Our Friday night roleplaying group is starting a game of Diaspora soon. Coincidentally, VSCA, the publishers of Diaspora, just released the game in PDF the other day.

Now, I’ve already got the game in hardcover but having it in PDF would be a nice convenience. I’m not sure it would be a convenience worth $13, though.

I guess I’ve gotten used to the myriad deals lately that package a PDF with your order of the book. Since I’ve already spent $40+ on the printed page, I’m just not ready to drop the extra money on the electrons.

Anyway, if you’re interested in Diaspora but you’ve been waiting for a less expensive option, it’s now available in Hardcover, Softcover, and PDF. You can get them all at Lulu.

(The PDF is also available at DriveThru/RPGnow but the publisher makes more money from your purchase if you buy it from Lulu. They’re a small publisher, so give them the extra $1 if you can.)