OK, like several others on my friends list, I'm realising that it's time to start establishing a non-LJ venue for blog posts. The problem is simply one of appearances; LJ has an established reputation, and it's not one that helps people to take you seriously as a blogger. The tools on hand are really no worse than those most other sites have, but there is simply an entrenched idea of what LJ is.

There's also the fact that I have a livejournal presence, and it's one that, when I use it, I use in a social context. Most of that functionality is now migrating to Twitter and, *shudder* Facebook, though I use the latter as little as possible. I don't know if I'll continue to use this journal for much really; my impetus to post in any long form about my own life happenings has really drained away, which I guess is largely part of not being the younger man I was when I started this. So there's that.

Either way, I've dug up the wordpress account I built a couple of years back, to see if I can't start to develop something of a more professional webspace. The content will be a mix of off-the-cuff reviews and essays, some musings, and a bunch of stuff where I write about writing. For now, I've kicked things off with the first in a series about RPG design. Read it here: http://retrofreak.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/starting-a-new-project/.

That's all. Enjoy, and remember that if you want slightly more up-to-the-minute ramblings about my life (though still fairly infrequent) you can always follow my Twitter (@voroxpete).

Here's a snippet from the part of Exiles that I'm working on right now, for those who are wondering what's happening with that.

Rough draft, obviously.  Criticism welcomed, and encouraged.

( Read more... )

Residents of Britain are still totally not in any danger of having their activities monitored every day by a succession of governments with access to far too much power to intrude into the lives of people who deserve a right to their privacy, and are increasingly being denied it.

No danger at all

And of course, recent investigations into activities at a certain upstanding (now defunct) British publication have proven to us that systems put in place for surveillance, however supposedly legitimate, will never, ever, be abused.

Thank you for casting Chris Evans as Captain America, despite all of my misgivings.

Thank you for handing Hugo Weaving a role as fucking batshit as the Red Skull, and then handing him an entire continent's worth of scenery to chew.

Thank you for remembering that in war films, people die.  A lot.

Thank you for giving the Captain a gun.

Thank you for shooting in 60fps, so that I didn't have to suffer through juddery ass action sequences that I know would look so much better on my home theatre PC, with some simple motion smoothing applied.

Thank you for making Howard Stark even more of a magnificent douche-bag than his son.

Thank you for giving me another dose of Samuel L Jackson.

Thank you for offering up a lovely little teaser for The Avengers.

Most of all, thank you, Marvel Studios, for once again proving how fucking good comic book movies can be.

Well, merry flippin Christmas everyone.

Hope you're all having a good one.

Coming in just under the wire, here is the second weekly installment of Exiles.

http://www.scribd.com/full/45624459?access_key=key-1e2qpohriraud5fetytz

So, after some miss-starts and what have you I appear to actually be kicking off an Eclipse Phase game, run over Skype, this Sunday (round 6-11pm, GMT).  I'm hoping to grab a fourth player to fill out the numbers.

Don't worry about character gen, since I have an excellent selection of pre-gens on offer.
The system is also extremely simple to pick up; d100 based, fairly similar to Unknown Armies in implementation.

The game itself will be a one shot adventure (taking about 3 sessions), with the idea of kicking off a larger campaign (with space to switch out characters) if it seems to go well.

You will be playing agents of Firewall, a Global Frequency-esque unofficial intelligence agency, operating under a self-imposed mandate to protect the scattered remnants of humanity from a second Fall.  In particular Firewall is wary of the legacy of the TITANS, insane AI constructs that nearly annihilated humanity.  This adventure finds the agents on a scum barge (a floating city-ship of anarchist freetraders), tracking down a weapons merchant who has been trading in TITAN weaponry.

Eclipse Phase is a messy, violent, and brutal world of transhumanist conspiracy horror, in which humanity contends with both the fragility of it's existence, and the rapid transformations that are redefining the very meaning of "human".  In a world where identity is no longer predicated on the body you inhabit, where personalities can be edited, replicated, or conjured out of nothing, and where new forms of sentient life are being created every day, humankind must rediscover itself in order to move forward, as a new posthumanity leaps out beyond the solar system and into the worlds beyond.

But first, they must simply survive.


Anyone interested, just post a comment below.

Want to see me and Robin Laws talk about storytelling mechanics in roleplaying games for about 20 odd minutes?  Click here.

(This is actually one of the earlier interviews from the convention, hence my epic lack of elocution in the opening.  Fortunately Robin is an immensely cool dude to talk to, which definitely helped.)

Clicking this link takes you to videos of me doing (extremely short) interviews with Tahmoh Pennikett and Dean Stockwell.

Just figured some of you might want to know that.

First off, apologies to the players of my last little "roleplaying game run over Skype" experiment.  Whilst I did say that I would wrap up that adventure, I found myself distinctly lacking in the enthusiasm to do so.  The problem was that what was left of the adventure was pretty much just one big fight scene, which would have taken the whole session to play out with the SR4 system.  Shadowrun is a game that I love to bits, but it's apparent that it's never been well suited to the short, LURPS style, four hour sessions that transcontinental timing mandates.

Also, I really don't feel like I managed to capture the freewheeling sense of fun that Leo invested so well into the Caracas setting.  Again, longer sessions would help there.

For now though, I think what we need is a game that is fast, light, and perhaps better fits the tonally darker games that I tend towards running.

Fortunately, I've had a chance to try out Eclipse Phase recently, and I'd like to try running a one shot.  For now, I've got the starter mission released by Catalyst, with a set of pre-gen characters; a good enough starting point.  After that, I'll look into some sort of campaign.

So this is the open casting call.  Three to four players required, for a game of Transhuman Conspiracy Horror.  Oh yes.

Don't worry if you don't own the book:  It's free.  Yes, I am not shitting you, this is a professionally made and released RPG which it is fully legal to redistribute free of charge (the creators even uploaded their own torrents).  I'll pop up a sendspace link shortly so that people can download it.

Don't worry if you don't know the system; it's very nearly Unknown Armies levels of simple, just a quick percentile roll and a few d10's for damage.  You'll pick it up in 5 seconds.

And as for the setting... ooh boy.  Eclipse Phase has one damn fine setting.  Imagine a world where humanity has just begun to grasp at the edges of immortality, and a post-scarcity society, when it all explodes in our faces; our greatest creations, the TITANS, true seed AIs, go rampant, annihilating or kidnapping over 95% of the human race, before fucking off out of the solar system entirely.  Earth is a biohazard, completely uninhabitable, and the remains of humanity cling to survival in the corporate owned colonies on the inner worlds, and the scattered anarchist habitats of the outer system.

You play as people from all walks of life, every part of the system, who have been inducted into Firewall, a secret conspiracy with only one purpose; There cannot be a second fall.  Humanity must survive, at any cost.

First session will be this Friday, 6pm - 11pm GMT, on Skype.  Add me as "voroxpete".