Of Walking, Ingress, and Other Gaming

[tcpip]

It was Thoreau who wrote the wonderful essay on walking, and there is much in it that I do find most agreeable. I do not engage in the twenty miles or four hours per day that he recommends, and I usually do travel with a purpose and direction in mind unlike the transcendentalist. But I am incredibly fortunate to live with a remarkable level of nature and yet only several kilometres from the centre of the city. The foliage around the Yarra River is beautifully dense with a huge number of bats, many species of bird (local and introduced), numerous possums, the occasional kangaroo, and recently I spotted a pair of foxes. Yet it also saddens me with the realisation that as I look at satellite imagery that I live in a tiny sliver of green, as the grey scar of human suburban habitation is the dominant feature. Once upon a time, all of Melbourne was as rich in non-human life, if not more so, as where I live now.

My enjoyment of walking has led me to recently download an pedometer application for my 'phone with consideration of health benefits that comes from a daily ten thousand steps regimen. As expected it took little change from my normal activity to reach such a daily target, although ironically a few days afterwards I was knocked out of action by a cold. Not a terrible one, but enough to put me largely out of any substantional activity for a while (and enough to take a day off work). In addition to the limits on walking, it also has limited by Ingress journeys. On the first night that I picked up the application, I walked Victoria Street, from the far west of Carlton to the far east of Richmond, taking out every single enemy portal, all of which were L7 and L8. It was about 60 in total, and it cost about 500 L8 bursters and around 100 ultrastrikes. Eventually I ran out of power cubes and battery, but was saved at the end of the journey by another agent who provided me with a bit of both.

In other gaming events the long-awaited (i.e., very late) double issue of RPG Review 26-27 has been released, 128 pages of pirate and swashbuckler goodness. It's a huge publication and I'm hoping the next issue will have several more people contributing a few extra articles with its nominated subject of "The Undead". In other gaming goodness, engaged in a very enjoyable game of Laundry Files during the week, along with a satisfactory conclusion to a chapter in our GURPS Middle-Earth game. Today we visited ser_pounce and hathhalla for another day of cheesequest (semi-finals between port salut and boursin) and played Small World and Small World Underground, both fairly well-designed games with strategic and tactical elements.

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I really like the pirate double-issue.

I once went on a book binge and compiled game notes on "typical" medieval ships and transport types. I had rough estimates on cogs, galleys and suchlike written down, including averages sizes (which meant somewhat less than I would've wanted, given the variety), speeds, carrying capacities, crew sizes and conditions, and notes on what they were good and bad at. There were even practical notes on how convoys would work. I also had information on how (English) peasants might transport food and goods, where and how a 14th century Italian merchant house might run their business, how much goods a mill or a mine might produce in a day and how many people were needed to work them, and, bizarrely, how to organise and run a camel caravan.

I can only imagine that I played... very odd games back then.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

> I really like the pirate double-issue.

Thanks! It's a real trial getting it all together, but finally made it over the line.

> I can only imagine that I played... very odd games back then.

Oh, I don't know. My historical simulationist side gets quite pleasantly giddy hearing about such things.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I took a look-see, and it seems I still have much of this information. If a DM anywhere ever needs to know that an average English medieval water mill can process 32-48 bushels of grain if it runs twenty-four hours straight, then I'm their man.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That would be great. It is just the sort of information that would really enhance the verisimilitude of a Chivalry & Sorcery or Harnmaster game.

Personally I'm a sucker for history of technology...

[delphipsmith]

Not to mention it's good to know if civilization ever collapses...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have much praise for the forebears of civil engineering. Much praise.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

If I can find the time, I'll try and collate some of this into a coherent format, and maybe offer it for common consumption. It'll take a little bit of... information wrangling, however, and it might be a good while.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Email me at lev@rpgreview.net and we'll make this happen.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Sounds good. I'll drop you a line when I've got something usable. I'm juggling a few things, so I kinda foresee this being somewhere in the middle of Earth's next great geological period, but we'll see.