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Programming, NaNoWriMo, Gaming and Social News, the Socialist Tide
Not surprisingly both prior employers have contacted me asking for advice. One requested that I come back in the future saying "that your finger is really on the pulse" on what needs to be done. Er, thanks but no thanks. I still have one hefty web contract outstanding and as such I've spent quite a lot of time reviewing and rebuilding my Apache, PHP and MySQL knowledge along with installing OpenSuSE in preference to Ubuntu on my desktop - and just in time for major changes between Novell and Microsoft. Further, because it rocks, I've started programming in Free Pascal, something I haven't done for a good fifteen years.
Also simpy because I can I've joined NaNoWriMo yesterday. My novel is entitled "The Outcast Girl" and is loosely based on the Ten Thousand Islands PBeM roleplaying game I ran many months ago. In a nutshell, it's a historical and anthropological study of Malay society in the early sixteenth century, with a monomythic narrative. Two thousand words done, fourty-eight thousand to go!
Gaming this week consisted of further development in our DragonQuest world (I'm really enjoying the additional grounding in the earth sciences this is giving me), a new initiative system for AD&D that actually makes sense, Urban Arcana last Sunday where the noble PCs saved St Kilda's prostitutes from a "Jack The Ripper" demon, and Diplomacy and Carcassonne (courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anthanum on Tuesday. Came second in Diplomacy, but was thoroughly thrashed in Carcassonne, which I played for the first time. The latter is really quite a brilliant production. The rules are very simple but the strategic depth is excellent. Social life included a wonderful fourtieth birthday party for splodgenoodles with culinary delights provided by tenbears and halloween drinks and zombie movies with severina_242 and _zombiemonkey
In world politics over recent months I've noticed a run of victories for various left-wing and socialist parties, including the re-election of Lula in Brazil, the re-election of the socialist president in Bulgaria, a surprise win by the Social Democrats in Austria, and even little Montenegro. The only exception is Congo where the politics are personality-based rather than ideological. Alongside all of this, the world's biggest union has just been formed. Is the world going a slight shade of red without the mass media noticing? And what will this mean for that Stern Report? It takes New Zealand newspaper to accurately display Australia's view.
Also simpy because I can I've joined NaNoWriMo yesterday. My novel is entitled "The Outcast Girl" and is loosely based on the Ten Thousand Islands PBeM roleplaying game I ran many months ago. In a nutshell, it's a historical and anthropological study of Malay society in the early sixteenth century, with a monomythic narrative. Two thousand words done, fourty-eight thousand to go!
Gaming this week consisted of further development in our DragonQuest world (I'm really enjoying the additional grounding in the earth sciences this is giving me), a new initiative system for AD&D that actually makes sense, Urban Arcana last Sunday where the noble PCs saved St Kilda's prostitutes from a "Jack The Ripper" demon, and Diplomacy and Carcassonne (courtesy of
anthanum on Tuesday. Came second in Diplomacy, but was thoroughly thrashed in Carcassonne, which I played for the first time. The latter is really quite a brilliant production. The rules are very simple but the strategic depth is excellent. Social life included a wonderful fourtieth birthday party for splodgenoodles with culinary delights provided by tenbears and halloween drinks and zombie movies with severina_242 and _zombiemonkeyIn world politics over recent months I've noticed a run of victories for various left-wing and socialist parties, including the re-election of Lula in Brazil, the re-election of the socialist president in Bulgaria, a surprise win by the Social Democrats in Austria, and even little Montenegro. The only exception is Congo where the politics are personality-based rather than ideological. Alongside all of this, the world's biggest union has just been formed. Is the world going a slight shade of red without the mass media noticing? And what will this mean for that Stern Report? It takes New Zealand newspaper to accurately display Australia's view.
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Looking forward to the Ten Thousand Islands novel! I enjoyed the game a lot, and think it got a lot more subtle in its attention to detail and theme than most. I'm thinking of starting an Ars Magica game in a similar PBEM format (though with more use of web resources, and more rules transparency) myself soon.
AD&D? As in, super retro? D20/3E really is a much superiour game, and captures the retro elements quite adequately I feel (I enjoy the retro OTT violence, garish bizarre monsters, and utterly mad completely adventure aligned gameworlds, but I don't miss the bizarre rules inconsistencys and schizophrenic proclamations of the one true path to role playing).
Carcassone is indeed a fine game. The whole german-style board game renaissance is a very good thing.
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As for 10K Islands, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was attentive to detail and theme, although I feel I failed in sufficiently generating a storyline. I'm hoping I can do that with the novel.
The other thing about 10K Islands is that you (successfully) hammered into my head what narrativism really is. I have you to thank for that.
Send me an email WRT to Ars Magica. I reckon I could be very interested in that.
AD&D as in superretro (indeed the mailing list is entitled "RetroADnD). I know that 3ed is much better, but it's just what we've been playing. After all, we've been using superretro modules too (U, A, G, D, Q).
Glad to see that you approve of Carcssonne. I was a little worried when the rules were listed as "age 8 and up". But that's more an indication of how clever and subtle the rules are...
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It was a regular games night staple when I was back in Perth