Cthulhu!, Websites and Cooperatives, Two Camps, Miscellany

[tcpip]

Spent a lovely day with serehfa and caseopaya, playing various boardgames including Carcassonne and Chez Cthulhu. On the latter topic Thursday night was a roaring session of the Venice chapter of Horror on the Orient Express, involving a vampire stalking Hercule Poirot in the winter fog, local fascists putting the pressure on, and the destruction of a 15th century clock tower. What could possibly go wrong? The next issue of RPG Review is a Cthulhu special, with material already beginning to come in.

On that note, have had problems with a couple of my websites in the past few days; there's been a rather sudden explosion of connections and they seem to be legitimate. The RPG Review website has been down twice due to exceeding bandwidth, mostly downloads of the latest issue of the 'zine, which is no receiving the sort of circulation in a week that it used to receive in a month this time last year. My main IT website is now receiving c7K unique visitors month, and the Isocracy website has tripled the same in the past two months to c5K. Also, absolutely delighted to have Race Mattews speaking at our AGM, after attending a great event with Mondragon Cooperative spokesperson, Mikel Lezamiz with whom I spent some time with. At the dinner afterwards, sat on the same table as the person who handed me my MBA, an opportunity for more fine conversation.

Attended an excellent gathering recently of liberal Unitarian-Universalists at a Breton cafe; also attended St Michael's Uniting Church for a good talk on the anxiety of emptiness. Afterwards, put in an application for membership to said congregation which will be confirmed on November 4th - the same day that I'll be presenting at the Melbourne Unitarian Philosophy Forum on "Utopian Tragedies : Cautionary Tales for Political Philosophy". Keeping a foot in both local camps of the genuinely liberal in each religion provides a good means to avoid the fundamentalists of both breeds. We shall see where the journey takes us next.

Have been re-reading a heavily annotated edition of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and Machiavelli's The Prince. The latter is particularly surprising for its moments of grave moral content. Tomorrow morning heading off to Sydney at stupid o'clock for the 2012 eResearch Conference. Have spent most of this week trying to organise as much as possible from our end with new cluster installation.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I know your BRP history :) Good to see however that you've been exposed to Gumshoe and I do like the setting you've suggested.

As a person who thinks about such things, do you think that their attempt to introduce skills as a resource narrative works?

[(Anonymous)]

You know I did rather like that and in fact I am considering using it in Traveller where the skill range is similar and could be viewed as a narrative resource in much the same way. Robin has a real point about using points to find things that are critical to a plot, and skills to resolve acts of urgency. It is dependant on a structure underlying a plot/conspiracy and not all campaigns/games/groups/GMs have that.

What did you think?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Certainly I agree with handing over plot clues "for free"; using plot devices is necessary standard fare for narrative development (I have an old Infinite Images gaming club t-shirt that reads "Don't shoot! I'm a plot device!"). Certainly I agree with the concept of using skill points as a resource over a game session (although there is the question of variable length). Also, I think the single d6 for tests however is somewhat limiting.

Overall an excellent concept, albeit with less than optimal implementation.

[tzunder.livejournal.com]

Which also reminds me what a trad gamer I have been in recent years, returning to Traveller and BRP big time.