Wonderful Wellington; RPG Review #2; Unitarians and MSF; Iconoclasts and Greenhouse Emissions

[tcpip]

Wellington was wonderful as it always is. The geekmansion of beagl, kimeros and ferrouswheel (hello!) was a superb temporary residence. Managed to meet up briefly with mr_orgue (congratulations on handing in your Masters!) and later in the day caught up with both tatjna and mundens f2f for the first time and was introduced to the delightful allyn at BBC (beer before curry). "Curry" in this sense is a regular meeting of the New Zealand Network Operators Group. There were about sixty people in attendance including ehintz, whom I hadn't seen since the 2004 ANZUUA conference in Christchurch. Whilst in Wellington I also managed to get an oddity in the RPG world known as Hunter Planet; hilarious game which I haven't played for years.

On topic with such things, the next issue of RPG Review nears completion. It's a Middle Earth themed issue with a neatly incorporated Rolemaster retrospective. There are also reviews of Pathfinder Beta, Grey Ranks and the new SF indie game, 3:16 and articles on the recently revived Dragon Warriors. I'm getting a little worried that Other Minds seems to be seriously delayed in its fifth issue and am debating whether to include the article I included for those guys should be included in RPG Review as well. I should also take the opportunity to mention that the last scenario I ran for RuneQuest went amazingly well. High stakes, dramatic narrative, character conflict and development with players on at least two occassions doubled-over in laughter.

Last Sunday was the Melbourne Unitarian's end of year concert which was ably supported by the Choral Institute of Melbourne. We raised a "not insignificant" amount of money for Médecins Sans Frontières and following my advocacy for donations at the concert, I'll be speaking on 3CR next Saturday morning at 10.30am about said organisation.

A good week for sixties iconoclasts. Justice Kirby steps down and argues in favour of love in opposition to the moral disengagement typical in conservative politics. Germaine Greer makes some telling comments about Baz Luhrmann’s Australia. From those determined not to be iconoclastic, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd caves into business interests with a softcock greenhouse gas emissions policy; Paul Kelly is delighted (hat-tip taavi)- but in doing so seems unaware of the notion of dependencies (Kenneth Davidson, on the other hand, is bluntly sensitive to the chain of command).

Comments

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Heh-I did see your previous entry a day or two later, in which I read about everything you'd just told me about at curry. :)

Hopefully we can catch up again in less than 4 years eh? :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That would be good. How about visiting Melbourne sometime, eh?

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Would love to-would actually be keen to tour aussie. But the airfares for the whole family are a bit painful. One of these days.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, it's quite a journey and one would need a good reason for a visit... Australia is, of course, bloody huge. About the same size as the US but with less than 1/10th of the population.. And lordy, those deserts and steppes.. They go on and on and on...

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Yeah-it's the sort of thing I'd like to take a month or two to explore. Just get a campervan and go for it.

'Course, with the costs involved and the family connections, odds are if we do have that sort of cash we'll end up going to Cali instead. Kinda ironic to be this close to Aussie for 5 years and still not jumped the ditch for a visit.