New Car, Irish Politics, Sundays and Gaming

[tcpip]

We have a new car, which has some similarity with our old car (traded in a blue 1995 Nissan Micra for a blue 2010 Nissan Micra). The Micra is just right for an inner city family of two who have very occassional country journeys. The network engineer described it as the "world's best car"; at first I thought he was taking the piss, but it turns out he was quite serious, having owned such a vehicle in Ireland.

On the topic of Ireland, they recently held a general election where there was a massive swing to the various left-wing parties (and a collapse of the Green vote), breaking the Fine Gael/Fianna Fail duopoly in the wake of the Irish bankingreal-estate crisis and subsequent bailout. Despite these results I suspect that there will not be further improvements in the broad left vote as the incoming government engages in an austerity campaign and have written a small piece outlining my pessimism. I hope to be proven wrong.

Sunday attended the Unitarians to hear Anne Sgro, president of the Union of Australian Women, speaking on International Women's Day and specifically the apparently never-ending campaign for pay equity. After this conducted the Philosophy Forum discussion on The Phenomenology of Perception. With a title like that I expected a lot fewer people; instead the turnout was significantly larger than normal with a number of new younger people making an appearance with excellent contributions. After that took the car for a journey out to the wedding of Jiri and Sarvnaz at Nathania Springs; a delightful ceremony with its multi-cultural elements (Jiri is Czech, Sarnvaz is Persian), a well-suited couple (both with PhDs in computer science). Best wishes to them both!

Interesting gaming news over the past several days; on Thursday ran a session of In A Wicked Age, which has the interesting mechanic of generating the characters and plot elements as part of the game story itself, a thoroughly entertaining method; recumbenteer played a very interesting Adonis-like character in the ancient Egyptian setting that was selected (you may have noticed I have an Egyptian motif running of late). With pre-generated plot elements the GM has to be very quick on their feet, but usually there is sufficient tension generated for a good narrative to emerge. Last night was another session of Britannia-Pendragon where we've unearthed a community of protective bleiden under threat from druidic shapeshifter. It's been a good game, but the pacing has been a little slow for my liking.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

How's the Micra in crash tests? Is it "YOU WILL DIE"?

[tcpip]

Probably not. The thing is full of airbags these days.

http://www.5min.com/Video/2010-Nissan-Micra-Crash-Tests-516955580

[belegdel]

"In a Wicked Age" seems curiously bent on inciting inter-player conflict, then resolving it through negotiation.
Not one to play with immature people or strangers I'd say. Almost seems likely to play out like the various storytelling card games (or is that what it is? I've only had time to read the review)
I also thought sword and sorcery was an oddly rigid genre choice for such a flexible system.

[tcpip]

That's not too surprising; there's a body of thought that argues that intra-party conflict creates more drama around the gaming table than an external threat or even conflicting interests within the character (although these are handy as well), and I managed to include a fair bit of the internal/external sources as well. The intra sources haven't really played themselves out yet.

(A game which quickly divulges in 'beat up your fellow PC' is Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North)

Sword and Sorcery was indeed their published choice, but there's plenty of others on random-generator.com.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

It's just occurred to me, seeing your mention of Ireland, that you might find nwhyte an interesting person to follow. You both say thoughtful things about politics, so I thought there might be some common ground there. :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Having perused their journal, I'll certainly take you up on that recommendation..

[greg.livejournal.com]

Not sure if you ever read this (http://lhote.blogspot.com/2011/01/blindspot.html) but I feel that, certainly in the US, there really is no such thing as a substantive left anymore. Certainly, it was never in vogue to be a socialist or communist in America but it seems like, as you've speculated here, the general left isn't as 'left' as it once was.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

After reading that post and the comments I am more than convinced for the sake for clarity of the distinction between what it means to be 'left' and the collectivist vs socialist divide.