Shores of Night

It's a funny thing time, I'm never sure if it goes too slowly or too fast. Half way up my mountain, it seems as if this semester has gone in a blur of the other currency, and that I've been struggling to keep up. I'm doing Screenwriting this term and, if I'm honest, I've found it hard. Film doesn't feel like my natural language, I like film but I struggle to watch anything for too long; people who know me know that I'm not one for telly. I can only really settle to watching something when I'm at the cinema or what I'm watching is animated. Otherwise, if I'm honest, just sitting watching feels too passive, I prefer the more active, intimate, experience of reading. And I'm picky anyway, there are huge swathes of films I've not watched just because they have 'that guy' in them (asking me to remember actors' names is like asking me to do nuclear physics - doomed from the start, unless it's someone like Edward Woodward or...

One of my distractions at the moment is gaming. Not actually doing it (I'm hoping to start an all female game of Night's Black Agents, which  I must confess I'm really looking forward to; but for my main group I'm still on a break), but just thinking about it. This has taken a few different modes, first realising that I've been far too conciliatory on some levels. I've given ground on games I like and really want to play in the name of getting some sort of game which all the players can grasp, even to the extent of taking a 'high concept only' route at one point to ease the way. If I couldn't explain a game's concept in 25 words or fewer I simply didn't pitch it... not ideal when I really want games about urban magic and conspiracies not only to control the world but to bind its imagination in webs so tight that aberrant thoughts become near to impossible. This has been coupled with a black mood where I worry that going back to my gaming ...

I'm late to the party with this, mostly because I get my news second hand these days (I stopped paying attention when it became clear the game was over and we live in a elected dictatorship where the only things that change are the faces, not the policies). Putting my bitter, cynical shell aside for the moment (if I can, I mean it's really tasty); when I found out about this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24440923 , through Charles Stross' site I felt I should say something (honestly, I think we should). It seem fairly typical of our Prime Minister that he would try to co-opt the centenary of the First World War for his own ends (and why are we celebrating the start, should we not mark the end instead?). It fits with so much of what he's done during his tenure of the position; from the bread and circuses of the Diamond Jubilee and the Royal Wedding to the historical stumble that put Britain in a supporting role during World War 2 during a visit to the USA, this is a ma...

Last night was a brilliant one, for a number of reasons. Firstly it was my wedding anniversary yesterday, my wife and I have been married five years and I feel blessed that she sticks with me through everything. We exchanged gifts but spent most of the day asleep because we were both tired. In the evening, we went out to a night of horror readings, organised by the marvellous Fringeworks/Darkside Press. We had readings from Theresa Derwin, Jasper Bark and many others. All the stories and readers were brilliant. It was great too to see some other folks, Catherine and Laurence from Crafty Miss Kitty were there for instance and its always great to see them.

As mentioned a while ago I've stopped playing RPGs for the time being. What I'm doing instead is reading and thinking about games and what I want to get out of them. I've been particularly taken with FATE and some of its bolt ons (that's rude in the Isle of Man apparently, which means I'll be using it as often as possible). Specifically I like the game creation idea in the core rulebook, the idea that the players and GM decide the setting together is something I've been chasing for a long time. I love the idea of a game where everyone chips in details and ideas equally and you all develop it together. In the light of this, Diaspora's cluster generation system seems particularly good and I've had some fun mucking around with generating worlds and their relationships. I like the fact that even though Diaspora is a hard SF game (for hard SF read, no gravity drives, no psionics, no real alien races and so on) the cluster generation system is clearly po...