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A Zombie Christmas and Eden, Ian Curtis and Joe Strummer, Asian Politics
As with most people on our economically advanced states, late December comes with its degree of festivities. Last Friday eve was a end of year function at the Fiztroy Gardens Pavillion, leaving me unable to attend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trayce's function the following day. On Christmas day visited Brendan E. for drinks and zombie flicks (the excellent 1950s-styled comedy Fido, and a good 'realist' news broadcast short film - whose name I can't remember) and then onto severina_242's for food and another zombie flick (Resident Evil: Extinction, which had some good action scenes but that's about all). For new year's caseopaya and I (and Rogue) are heading to Eden. a delightful coastal town in southern New South Wales.
Last night went to the Astor to see an excellent double of Control, the Ian Curtis story and The Future is Unwritten, the same for Joe Strummer. The former, being derived from Deborah Curtis's memoir "Touching from a Distance", had a stronger narrative sense with excellent casting and sense of the times. The latter was like a combination of home movie (yes, this is a negative comment about the direction) and comprehensive documentary with significant input from a range of people close to Strummer (one especially great line "Strummer's lyrics were like an atlas to the world"). Both films managed to show the significant flaws and genius of these two great poet-musicians.
Politics is very hot in Asia at the moment. The liberal-socialist, and front-runner for the Pakistani Presidential election Benazir Bhutto has just been assasinated. In Thailand, a coalition supporting the exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is being formed, which may have the monarchy a little annoyed. Not as annoyed as the Nepalese monarchy who have been abolished by their parliament (the Nepalese parliament is led by the democratic-socialist Nepali Congress Party (with 133 seats), the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (84 seats) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Lenninist) (83 seats). Eight other parties have a total of 30 seats).
In other news, my review of RuneQuest (1st and 2nd edition) has been published on RPG.net.drjon provides an excellent review of the upgrade from Vista (to Windows XP) which is comic in its presentation but serious in its content (and links). On a very closely related topic reddragdiva notes that Microsoft admit that editing pictures, Quicken or Quickbook files with Vista may corrupt them.
trayce's function the following day. On Christmas day visited Brendan E. for drinks and zombie flicks (the excellent 1950s-styled comedy Fido, and a good 'realist' news broadcast short film - whose name I can't remember) and then onto severina_242's for food and another zombie flick (Resident Evil: Extinction, which had some good action scenes but that's about all). For new year's caseopaya and I (and Rogue) are heading to Eden. a delightful coastal town in southern New South Wales.Last night went to the Astor to see an excellent double of Control, the Ian Curtis story and The Future is Unwritten, the same for Joe Strummer. The former, being derived from Deborah Curtis's memoir "Touching from a Distance", had a stronger narrative sense with excellent casting and sense of the times. The latter was like a combination of home movie (yes, this is a negative comment about the direction) and comprehensive documentary with significant input from a range of people close to Strummer (one especially great line "Strummer's lyrics were like an atlas to the world"). Both films managed to show the significant flaws and genius of these two great poet-musicians.
Politics is very hot in Asia at the moment. The liberal-socialist, and front-runner for the Pakistani Presidential election Benazir Bhutto has just been assasinated. In Thailand, a coalition supporting the exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is being formed, which may have the monarchy a little annoyed. Not as annoyed as the Nepalese monarchy who have been abolished by their parliament (the Nepalese parliament is led by the democratic-socialist Nepali Congress Party (with 133 seats), the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (84 seats) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Lenninist) (83 seats). Eight other parties have a total of 30 seats).
In other news, my review of RuneQuest (1st and 2nd edition) has been published on RPG.net.
drjon provides an excellent review of the upgrade from Vista (to Windows XP) which is comic in its presentation but serious in its content (and links). On a very closely related topic reddragdiva notes that Microsoft admit that editing pictures, Quicken or Quickbook files with Vista may corrupt them.
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How appropropriate.
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Service Unavailable. Drats.
I really hope it comes back soon. It is amusing and informative.
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Ah good, it's up now. Enjoy!
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Control
Dogs in Space
The Decline of Western Civilization
Trainspotting
... any others?
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RuneQuest was a great achievement, but a very flawed one even for the time. And I say this as someone who loved it like crazy, and has had a lot to do with the community over the years.
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The runes do get a slight mention, iirc, as foci in basic magic. But yes, apart from that it's pretty thin.
I don't agree with your assessment of RuneQuest/Glorantha however. Whilst it is true the Guilds were never mentioned in other Glorantha-based publications, that it is hardly the game-system's fault (although they did appear in more fannish material, eg. Jonstown Guide). Likewise I think it could be played without Cults of Prax using the sample cults and runes provided. It just would have been quite different (YGMV). Indeed, I get the sense it was written for Balastor's Barracks :-)
On-topic, I'm about to start a Traveller PBEM based on the new Mongoose playtest rules. If you're interested drop a line on the thread at
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And the guilds thing was just an example of how not only are there not enough details of the world in the book (say, a 1-2 page gazetteer of Sartar would have made a VAST difference), but many of the details that are provided appear to be more or less wrong, or at least misleading.
IMO RQ was a great game largely due to the strengths of its supplements (Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror, Griffon Mountain, Borderlands) and the rulesbook itself is rife with the sort of idiosyncratic omissions that we were used to then, but wouldn't tolerate now.
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I am less than impressed that it took MS two and half months to move from "we know about this" to a Knowledge Base article. That's truly appalling.
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Happy new year!
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
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