State Politics, Gaming, Odds and Ends

[tcpip]

Labor wins the NSW state election; whilst the conservative Coalition didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell, I was a little surprised by how minimal the swing was. Much apparently due to the Federal governments unpopular workplace relations laws (despite being a Federal issue). On the other side of the planet, massive swing to conservative separatists in the Quebec elections, but the liberal federalists (Parti libéral du Québec) retains power, albeit with their worst ever result. The social democratic Parti Québécois came in third; leading to three-way split with each major party holding about 1/3 of the votes.

In gaming news have run two games of RuneQuest, one of Traveller: TNE, and the notorious AD&D1e module "Tomb of Horrors" since my last post. Recent reviews include Deities and Demigods (genius and idiocy in one package), Gods of Glorantha (solid content, average production), Spell Law (clear, balanced, but not beautiful) and the AD&D module In the Dungeons of the Slavelords. Oh, and remember the RPGPundit? Get a hold of these comments; Goth women are to be fucked and then mocked, and teenaged goths should be sent to therapists as punishment.

Visited recumbenteer and partner for their Parkville housewarming; most enjoyable, must have them over dinner soon. caseopaya is on a loose end, employment-wise (although I'm sure this will be a very temporary situation); she found a job where the pay, hours, work and people were good but the company wouldn't shell out the $6K that the agency wanted as a finders fee. Today we had an annual house inspection; the estate agents took (literally) thirty seconds. Rogue the rat hurt his foot during the week and spent a couple of days hopping around on three paws; all better now. LUV meeting next week with an emphasis on beginner's talks (new features of OpenOffice and an Introduction to DNS). Gave an introduction to philosophy talk (doc file, will convert later) at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Sunday; was extremely well received and will be expanded to further discussion topics.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

"Hastur the Unspeakable is described as being some 600' tall, but because the scale tops out at such a low level, he still has a 10% of failing to open a stuck dungeon door."

Heh.
Sometimes, I miss gaming.

What the fuc..

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

RPGPundit == professional troll.
The human that wrote that bot has serious issues.

Point by point:

[dandelionclock.livejournal.com]

1. I have an itchy trigger finger with the Ignore Button on RPG.net, and avoid the RPGsite like the plague, since it seems to be wholly populated with the inadequates who remind me why I am often embarrassed to get so much of my income from writing RPGs ("who do you write for?" "Oh, er, well, I did a book for the Student Christian Movement..."). Every so often, I get validation for those feelings. That is all.

2. Good solid philosophy outline.

3. As for loving D&D, well. Me and AD&D had a tempestuous, passionate relationship when I was a kid. We broke up when I was 18. I had been conducting an affair with Vampire: the Masquerade for some time, and AD&D and me didn't part on the best of terms. Recently, I've effected a reconciliation of sorts, and I'm seriously intending to go play D&D again. One of the things that changed my mind about it was the affectionate series of articles entitled I Was a Goblin on pop culture site Freakytrigger, particularly the one about levels and why they're a good thing. Recommended.

[mikey-ob.livejournal.com]

What Traveller rules set do you use? I have been a TAS member for over 20 years now and I would love to run the game again.

[bodgirl.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I miss you .....

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

whilst the conservative Coalition didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell

Not on the night, anyway. IMHO, as of two years ago they stood a very good chance of winning before they threw it away on factional infighting. I didn't have much time for Brogden, but the way the Right knifed him was ugly enough to hurt the Liberals' chances, and Debnam was hopeless - he should have been able to maul Labor when Orkopoulos and Scully came to grief, and instead he overreached and made allegations against Bob Debus that he couldn't back up. And so on.

I will be interested to see how O'Farrell goes. He's been gearing up for this for a long time; I get the impression he decided to let the Right burn themselves out before taking a run at leadership.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Re. Deities and Demigods:

I did notice straight away that Dagon and Hydra were absent in the Cthulhu section, but Deep Ones, whom they rule, were included.

That's canon for Call of Cthulhu, but I don't think it's specified in Lovecraft's own work. As best I can remember, the name 'Dagon' appears in two places in Lovecraft's stories: as the title of a story where a shipwrecked sailor sees a very big marine monster, and the 'Esoteric Order of Dagon' in Shadow over Innsmouth. Making Dagon a god of the Deep Ones is fairly consistent with that, but it's not something HPL really spelled out. I don't recall Hydra appearing at all in his stories, though I may have missed something.

But like I noted a while back, the Cthulhu mythos neither began nor ended with Lovecraft; there really is no definitive version on this, and Lovecraft's own stuff was vague enough that RPGs looking to detail mythos beasties and their stats often add in a lot of the later stuff.

BTW, you might be amused to know that Dagon has resurfaced in last year's Hordes of the Abyss as a demon prince (obyrith, which basically translates to 'old fogey demon that drives men insane').

[phasmaphobic.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ, that Pundit fellow is a douchebag.

[beagl.livejournal.com]

Everything I learnt about gods was from Deities and Demigods.... just kidding.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

The PQ is also often associated with separatism, particularly in whatever affiliation they have with the federal party Bloc Quebecois. However, they do seem to be more attuned to the social and environmental side of things, and are often seen as holding off on another referendum until the poll numbers look better for it. I haven't read enough about the ADQ, unfortunately...