Friday, 29 April 2011
New podcast
Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/DarkerDaysRadio/status/64005852876636160
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Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
glittersavvy: my cat is the god of the new world
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my cat is the god of the new world
My wife took some humorous images of our cat Yamato with a 'Death Note'
Monday, 18 April 2011
All the visual effects from BBC's Wonders of the Universe in one eye-popping video
Alasdair Wilkins — Set aside fifteen minutes for this incredible collection of all the visual effects from the recent documentary Wonders of the Universe. It's got everything from close-ups of Earth and the Sun to exploding stars, black holes, and vast galactic vistas.
These effects were created by BDH for the four-part documentary series Wonders of the Universe, which aired earlier this year on the BBC. BDH has now collected and released their entire collection of simulations and artist's conceptions of the universe's various phenomena, complete with backing music from Timo Baker. They haven't released a description of what exactly all the various things in the video are, but NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day site is making a start:
Some stills in the video are easily identified, such as the Hubble image of the Carina Nebula that occurs at about 2:22, the Crab Nebula at about 7:45, and the Cat's Eye Nebula that occurs at about 8:16. A pan away from a spiral galaxy occurs at about 4:00, and breathtaking vistas of the spiral occur until past 5:00. Pulsars and supernovas seem to take over at about 9:00 and are truly spectacular. Binary star systems containing a pulsar and an accretion disk occur beginning at about 14:30. Past that, the entire computer animated video seems to sparkle with unknown stars, unknown planets, and sequences where unknown gas is flowing toward unknown places. What, for example, is being depicted at 13:00?
The site is asking people to help identify all the various images, which will all go into an updated, annotated version of this original video. Anyone interested can help them out with that here.
Via NASA.
Set aside fifteen minutes for this incredible collection of all the visual effects from the recent documentary Wonders of the Universe. It's got everything from close-ups of Earth and the Sun to exploding stars, black holes, and vast galactic vistas. This is one excellent video!
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Friday, 15 April 2011
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Kitty Napalm - Sci-fi/anime shoot
So yeah, this is a new shoot my wife modelled for. Go look, comments here will be passed on.
Saturday, 9 April 2011
[advice] Do you have a plan? @darkerdaysradio
In came up over a few pints between myself and David the issue of how much planning do we put into running a roleplay game. David admits to being lazy and working on the fly. I plan a lot, and have loads of notes that may never see use, but exist anyway. So which way is best? Related to this we also considered the nature of a setting and whether or not you plan your setting and plot before or after characters are created.
Our realization. I plan TV series that assume a null hypothesis.
What does that mean? Ok I plaan long plots. In fact I have in mind multi season plot arcs. I find that most one shots I run for a game are often a test of the setting for the series. They are the 'pilot' episode, where the basic feeel of the setting and the game can be tried out, just like in the Fading Suns game I ran recently. That plot comes out of the back of the 2nd edition core book, but I have a whole chronicle planned to follow from it. What do I like about this way of planning? The ability to dip in. I can look at the events of the chronicle from the angle of any for off antagonist, and choose to play from any point along the timeline of the series. I can dip in and start from any point, and the players really have little or no clue to this. This is a sort of fail safe so that I can create a plot, and if the game falls apart and I restart with a new group I can play from a point I haad originally hope to gett to in the past.
Ok that seems fair. A person wants to get something out of the game they are running. I like to have the feeling that there are grrand plot arcs and that I can sample the plot at different points, since to me these represent different types of gameplay i.e. you begin at the very start of the plots and are a starting troupe of characters, or you begin at the half way of the plot and are an experienced group. The issues that each group deals with at those points in the plots are very different. Thus I have built in tiers of gameplay in my settings.
This gets us to the other point, that of the null hypothesis. David asked me why I plaan before character creation. I answered that I want to make the players feel like they are within in the setting, but that the setting doesn't just hinge upon them being. So that means events will occur in the setting whether or not the players are aware of them. Therefore it is up to the players to get involved in the plot. Of course some plot points I have left loose so that I can work the players in properly, or I have left entire areas open to incorporate the player ideas. So then David asked what happens to the setting with the players interacting, surely nothing? That I said is not correct. The fact is that setting will always result in the a change, and it is up to the players to interact with that mechanism of change. There is no status quo. The players are interacting with the setting at a point of upheaval in the setting, no matter how minor. This means if, for a new group of players we start at season 2 of the settting, it assumes that the events off season 1 have happened but that the players never interacted with it. Thus the null hypothesis. What happens to the setting if the players don't interact with it. This is because I also think about what reactions NPCs would have to the player interactions. I get behind the mind of the NPCs so that believable reactions can occur in responce to player actions.
Now I would say that there is merit in designing a chronicle simply about the info you get given on the player characters, or having a looser setting, or handing out to players pre-generated characters that fit in with your plot. After all these are just tools and guidelines.
Update - As always these are not at any frequency.
In general how are things. I would say good and getting better. The other month saw me finish me latest application to the Leverhulme trust. This again would be the funding that would let me also do teaching for 2 years, and so has a significant payrise attached to it. Last year the competition was tough and this year I expect it to be no different. But there are a few changes this time round. Only those who have had phds in the last 5 years could apply. This means true early career researchers and so no competition from those who should have had their career sorted out by now.
Also at work I have 2 papers on the go. One is almost complete, with few changes, which I feel is a good measure of my own skills since my time back in Manchester. I'll be glad to see these two papers done since they are proof of principle type things and so anything after is the icing on the cake.
Home wise the cats are now all well since their operations a month ago. Yamato is just a big, athletic killer of a cat, while Kalina is just the same old cute, little cat. I doubt she will grow much more than she is, making her a 2.5 kilo cat. Tiny!
On the gaming front, the last week gone David and Aidan tried out 'Chaos in the Old World'. It's a Fantasy Flight game based on the idea of each player being one of the 4 Chaos gods directing the war of Chaos on the Old World in Warhammer. It is very good. Excellent gameplay, and great tatics involved.
The weekend before I had the chance at showing some of the guys 'Fading Suns' and essentially dusting off the chronicle I ran while in Manchester. It was met with enthusiasm and was seen as a great sci fi game while not being too heavy on the science in the setting, and really being great fun to play since the setting places the player characters in a position of command, while still being at the bottom of the rung in some respects. I can see this game being played more frequently in the near future.
Also on the roleplay front Changeling now creeps to its conclusion and I now prepare to run Exalted. I am both excited and scared by this prospect.
Finally, on the roleplay side of things I am near the completion of my Venice setting ebook for Changeling, and I have also co-hosted, and expect to do so again, on the Darker Days Radio podcast for White Wolf games. It was a blast and I eagerly await the next recording.
Onwards then? More papers, more recordings, more roleplay, oh and Combichrist are playing in Leamington!
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Friday, 1 April 2011
Changeling: the Lost - A retrospective #changelingthelost #whitewolf
So it had now been 6 months or so since I started my chronicle for Changeling: the Lost, the 5 game in the New World of Darkness line by White Wolf. I gave my initial impressions here, but I think I can add to that now having run the game for so long.
Changeling has struck me that it can be just as dark a game, if not scarier than, Vampire: the Requiem. It has been some time coming, but I have now really hit my stride with the game, now with just an episode to go of it (about 2 -3 sessions) and the players have come to fear the Fae, distrust other Changelings, make pledges, and be involved in the beautiful madness of the Changeling Freehold.
But now, with hindsight, what things work and what don't?
Well for starters Changeling in crammed packed with stuff in the core that you will unlikely use to their fullest unless you have an episode focus on it. For example I have found that Oneiromancy and Hedge travel are rare events, and only come up if the players are interested in going down that route. So, despite there are involved rules for these things, do not be put off by it since I can guarantee that you will more than likely not deal with these that often if you set a story predominantly in the real world.
The Fae themselves are a great antagonist. There is the ever constant fear of them being at your back, and just behind the mirror, and so Changeling has and almost constant tension of paranoia. Something that is heightened by the fact there is the paranoia induced by other Changelings, something that I have used to my advantage when running games. I would definitely suggest using the Fae sparingly, and their minions more. Especially those mortals being used by the Fae and fuelled by nightmares.
Contracts themselves are fairly fun, however, I am often left finding that their progression in function is sometimes a little strange or random. But then that just adds to the flexibility of the Lost.
The politics of Freeholds is of course easy tom implement and ripe for plot and intrigue, but the pledge system is definitely something to eyeball well. I have found that leaving less rules inclined players to work out pledges is too time consuming, and it is often better to ask what they wish to achieve and work it out for them and just deal with the wording. This is had a monumental speed up in the use of pledges. Of course the best pledge is the Motley pledge as it binds the characters together and gets the players working together.
If anything the only thing Changeling is guilty of is having too many options, and this makes it a bit of a problem for players to remember what they can do with a character.