/var/log/orava

I’ve read The Gunslinger before, but that was so many years ago that I only remember some vague bits of it. I remember it being “ok”, but nothing really spectacular. Now that I’m starting to tackle the whole “Dark Tower” series, I thought it would be a good idea to re-read the first book, just to refresh in my mind what’s going on.

Turned out to be a good idea. For one, the book is better than I remembered, and has lots of little bits that I’d completely forgotten about. The story is… strange, and was one of those narratives that languished in King’s half-written pile for ages, apparently. Looking at the publication history, it seems that this book was originally published as separate short stories in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, around 1980 or so. In the author afterword, King notes that at the time he wrote the afterword, he still doesn’t know how the complete story will play out.. but that he knows that it will comprise of lots of pages.

Now, that could be good or bad. There’s no rule that authors (or moviemakers, or…) have to know what the whole story will be when they start out. Sometimes it can lead to spectacular results, as the thing unfolds in an organic manner. On the other hand, it can lead to an incoherent mess, as the author desperately tries to fit various bits together to form a coherent whole, or tries to stretch things out way past their reasonable limits. “Wheel of Time”, I’m looking at you here. What will this story be? I don’t know, yet; I’ve heard that this isn’t King’s best work, but on the other hand he is a good writer and some people seem to like this series a lot. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt, for now.

The story itself is a strange mix. We have the Gunslinger (who is called Roland, we learn later). He is pursuing the Man in Black across a desert landscape reminiscent of the (mythical) Old West – though it becomes clear quite quickly that it’s not quite our Old West. The saloon pianist plays “Hey Jude”, and Roland knows about nuclear power (as vague theory, anyway). We are treated with flashbacks from an earlier life, where Roland is being trained in a fairly brutal manner to be a “Gunslinger” – so it’s a title, also, and one that needs to be earned. His world, the old one, has “moved on”… but what that means, we aren’t told precisely. There are references to bloody rebellion, of civil war, of a dark and heavy past, but again things are left open. Why is Roland chasing the Man in Black? Apparently because he’s actually chasing knowledge of something called the “Dark Tower”… which, again, is left an enigma. Roland meets up with some people along the way, but the results are mostly tragic; he also concludes his quest to catch the Man in Black – but not in quite the fashion he would have imagined.

I have to say I liked this book quite a bit, but can understand why some people might be left somewhat bemused (or even a bit infuriated) by it. It combines mythical elements, visions of our modern-day Earth, and in general is a big anachronistic mish-mash… and apparently so on purpose. While at times it’s a bit too much style over substance, it left me wanting to know more – so as an intro to a long series I think it works well. As a self-contained work it’s somewhat too vague to be really satisfying.

Yu-Shan is the third book in Exalted’s “Compass of Celestial Directions” supplement line, detailing various “extraplanar” locales (using the word “locale” very loosely) for the game. The first book detailed the Blessed Isle – and as such was a somewhat weird start, since the Blessed Isle is a very concrete location in Creation. Maybe it was a reference to the fact that it’s the center, in both the physical and metaphysical sense, dunno. The second book detailed the Wyld (where the Fair Folk exist), and now we have Yu-Shan, the city of the gods.

That’s one of the many things to love in Exalted: where many fantasy games have gods, and the concept of a “heaven” (or “plane”) where they live, those locales are usually left abstract and undetailed; usually for the reason that gods are so far above “mere mortals” that such detail is unnecessary. However, since even beginning Exalted characters have the ability to kick (minor) god ass or at least talk to it as an equal, the game needs to be much more specific with regards to gods and their abode. So… Yu-Shan, the magnificent city where the Celestial gods live.

As an Exalted GM, I love this book. It brings tons of detail to what up to now has been a fairly loosely detailed location, and contains tons of plot hooks all over the place. You’re really forced to to face the fact that it’s a city… not an abstract one, but a very concrete and vast one, with many of the problems you would expect to find in a huge city. Crime, unemployment, traffic problems, you name it (yes, unemployed gods exist in droves, and provide plot hooks galore). We get detail on the (deadly) constant bureaucratic infighting, the personalities involved, and the historical reasons of how things have gotten to the messy state they are in. We also get a lot of background on the limits the Sidereals have to operate under, and of the multitude of still-extant legal loopholes and rights available for Solars; should they ever find out about those rights, things could get very interesting fast. One of the oft-encountered setting questions in Exalted has always been “why don’t the Sidereals just kill all the Solars, they seem to have the power for it?”. Well, we’ve already gotten a lot of the reasons “why not” in previous books, but here we get even more. The Sidereals are constrained (screwed, even) in a multitude of ways, and in ways that make sense given the history of things.

So, lots to love here if you’re running an Exalted game. While a Sidereal campaign set in Yu-Shan would obviously get the most mileage out of this, I can see it being very useful in a more “generic” game, too. Solars will encounter gods now and then, and may find their way to Yu-Shan too… and then there’s always the Carnival of Meeting, which you can use to introduce Heavenly politics into pretty much any type of game.

After a long pause, I’ve started training swordsmanship again. Some things seem to “come back” quite fast, other things (like proper physical fitness and details of various techniques) take longer. My body isn’t quite used to this thing yet, but that’s how it always goes. A (Capo Ferro) rapier semester is starting up, and this weekend will consists of 12 solid hours of training for that (6h per day). I expect to be fairly dead afterwards.

The school now has a spiffy new salle (same location, but other side of building). It’s a lot bigger, with more fresh air, storage space, and room to train. Guy is still constructing parts of it, but overall it’s really nice and roomy. The webpages have also been renewed, Ilkka has done an excellent job there – I really like the look and feel.

Up to now, the school hasn’t really needed to advertise; the smallish older salle was usually quite full of students, and word-of-mouth was enough. Now it’s starting to not be enough any more, and there is more room at the salle than there are new (or old) students.

…so consider this an advertisement. If you’re interested in learning historically accurate swordfighting as a martial art (as opposed to sport) and you live in the general Helsinki/Espoo/Vantaa area, this would be a great time to try it out – there is a beginners’ class starting up on May 6th. No previous martial arts experience needed, all you need is a willingness to learn and to do physical exercise. Guy is a (really!) good teacher, and the students tend to be a fun bunch of people. Besides being fun and interesting, it’s also great exercise – if you aren’t in noticably better physical shape at the end of the beginners’ course, you probably already were in pretty good general shape. Getting in shape for the summer is always a good motivator, I’ve found…

I’ll be happy to answer any questions about the school and about training there, and the contact page has the relevant official contact info.

The next VTES expansion, Twilight Rebellion, will see daylight (figuratively) near the end of May, and as has been the tradition we’re organizing a tournament around it. This time around it’s a “post-release” event, where players build decks from 5 Twilight Rebellion boosters and 5 Anarchs boosters. These events have been lots of fun, traditionally, and I don’t expect this one to be any different. Always cool to play around with brand-new cards when everyone else is in the dark about them, too.

More info on the VTES page.

Scroll of Kings is one of the batch of new Exalted books that arrived recently – due to various delays at White Wolf’s end lots of books got pushed forward in time until now, so now we get a pile of new books in one fell swoop. Fine by me.

This book is about warfare in Creation (Exalted’s game world), and goes to detail about how the various cultures think about warfare and extend that thinking into practice. I wasn’t expecting too much from this book, afraid that if would mostly just consist of army lists and dry “crunch” like that. I was happy to be proved wrong; this book is more of a “military gazeteer” of Creation, and goes into detail of how the various war gods think of war, how this affects mortal nations, and how the environment also affects thinking and practical matters.

The book is divided into sections by geographical direction. We get information about the varied forms of warfare in the East, the fast-moving skirmish mentality of the South, the naval paradigms of the West, the commando raid mentality of the North, and the traditional massive army paradigm of the Realm. While the organization mostly works nicely, it has the downside of spreading the rules crunch over the whole book in a semi-random fashion. Said crunch has to do with extensions to the mass combat rules in Exalted, which I have yet to use in practice. Didn’t bother me, but more crunch-oriented readers may find this type of organization very frustrating, especially combined with White Wolf’s traditional total lack of index and bare-bones table of contents. There is literally no way of searching for anything, other than by leafing through the thing.

Despite small organizatorial niggles, I liked the book quite a bit. While it could not focus on any area for very many pages (Creation is huge), it did add lots of useful information and nice local color all over the place. The writeup on the Linowan managed to not conflict with stuff I had created for that area, amazingly enough (though that’s mostly because the Linowan chapter was very short). Each described location/nation gets one or two sample statted mass combat units, which is probably very useful if you intend to use the mass combat rules – examples always help.

The end of the book lists some new large-scale weapons (steam cannons, yay!), stats for various vehicles, ships and flying thingies, and ends with a list of (mundane) traps that soldiers might create or encounter, with some required skills for creation and other details. Nice.

While it’s great that summer is finally inching its way over here, it’s playing hell with personal work morale. While I should (and have to) be inside in a slightly-too-cool-to-be-comfortable cubicle office, where I want to be is outside on our patio, basking in the sunshine and reading a good book. Gin&tonic optional, but recommended.

Sigh. Me needs a vacation at some point.

Crown of the Kobold King is the first “proper” module in Paizo’s “GameMastery” module line, with the very first one being an offering for “Free Rpg Day”, Hollow’s Last Hope (by the way, I’d love to get a print copy of that one, if anyone has pointers please let me know). This module is coded as “D1” (where Hollow was “D0”), with the “D” standing for “Dungeon”. So ok, we have a dungeon crawl on our hands.

Of course, since this is written by Nicolas Logue (an rpg author I’ve become to appreciate more and more), it’s anything but a boring, straightforward affair. The thing is set near Falcon’s Hollow, the setting of both D0 and the later scenario Carnival of Tears. It’s a lumber town with lots of built-in conflicts, darkness and social injustice (i.e. not quite your normal “we’re all happy farmers” D&D town) – and this time around a bunch of children have gone missing and it’s up to you, the players, to rescue them. Why? That’s largely left up to the GM, though hints on motivation and “how to get started” are given.

The adventure itself involves kobolds (surprise!), but they have been given quite decent motivation and some culture of their own, not just “we’re evil so we do evil stuff!”. There are even some quite distinct personalities among them, which is all too rare in this type of scenario. It reads like it should be a very fun affair to play or run, lots of room for total mayhem.

I’m reminded of the old TSD AD&D module N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God, which I still consider to be one of the best entry-level D&D scenarios. There, like here, we have a town with interesting social interaction material, and then a quest into a dungeon/lair to free up kidnapped people. I don’t know if this was intentionally written as some sort of “spiritual successor” to that module, but in any case: I liked this quite a bit, I think it should make for a very good beginning scenario for a D&D 3.5 game.

As an aside, I recently used the town of Falcon’s Hollow (to a very tiny extent) in my Exalted game, transformed into a snowed-in Linowan logging town near the Haltan border. The players didn’t stay other than to spend a night with the luxury of “sleepin indoors for a change”, but had they opted to do stuff I would have had some specs of the town itself to fall back on. Products like these don’t have to be limited to just the game system they’re written for, cooking up new stats and (sometimes) names for NPCs isn’t an impossible chore, given decent basic material to work with.

Sins of the Saviors, by Stephen S. Greer, is the fifth and penultimate part of the “Rise of the Runelords” adventure path. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the last part in that it’s somewhat less straighforward. It’s also mostly “just” a dungeon crawl – granted that it’s a fairly interesting dungeon, but still… a bit too little social interaction there for my taste. Some parts are very cool, though; the beginning is nice, and the dungeon itself has some nifty parts and some internal politics which could be expanded in fun directions. I’m not completely sold on the “seven sins” motif that the adventure path uses a lot, but it’s used to fair effect here. Overall, quite solid.

Other than the adventure, the book contains some notes on “rune magic”, mostly 3.5DD crunch which doesn’t interest me. The (to me) more interesting part was the rest: a writeup on Lamashtu, a “Mother of Monsters” god (good stuff), some more Pathfinder travelogue (also fun), and some more strange creatures to pit the players against.

I’ll reserve comments on the whole of the adventure path until I read the last part, but so far it’s looking like a nice package with lots of varied stuff thrown into the mix. I remain sold on the overall quality of Paizo’s “Pathfinder” stuff, even though I still don’t play D&D.

“Have you ever secretly wanted to be best friends with a magical unicorn? His name would be Dewdrop, and he would talk to you with his thoughts, and he would carry you on his back away from all the bullies and the parents and kids who don’t get you, and you’d have such wonderful adventures!”

“This game is pretty much like that. Except if you drew Dewdrop on your Trapper Keeper, they would send you to the principal’s office, then to the school counselor, and then probably to a place with a name like Morning Meadows Home for Disturbed and Psychotic Youth.”

“Dewdrop has too many dimensions and can gouge bleeding wounds in reality with his infinitely fractal horn. His dainty hooves burn the floor, and his breath makes Mrs. Wombatson’s prize petunias wilt and shrivel. But he really is your best friend.”

It started out as a short “proof-of-concept” game using a variant of the ORE rules (as seen in Godlike, Nemesis, Reign, etc), with the idea of players playing children with monster friends. Monsters of the more Cthulhu variety than Disney, and not even half as imaginary as parents would like. Calvin and Hobbes, except that Hobbes is an uneuclidean horror from beyond time and space, one which loves Calvin and is very proud of its tiger tail.

It got an extremely positive reception, so the author (Benjamin Baugh, Bailywolf on rpg.net) got together with the Arcdream guys to produce Monsters and Other Childish Things: the Completely Monstrous Edition. I placed a preorder as soon as I heard of it, and now the thing is finally out of the printing press and in my grubby hands. It’s hardcover, 180 pages, and it oozes Awesome. “Oozes” is the correct word to use here, as would be some alternate word involving tentacles… just can’t think of one right now.

“A distressingly fun roleplaying game about kids and the relationship-devouring horrors from beyond time and space who love them.”

…says the back cover, and really, that’s what the game is about. It’s also a very good read; the day that I got it, I sat down on the sofa intending to browse it a bit. Suddenly I notice that it’s about 1am and I’ve read the whole thing, giggling in a not-too-sane manner at times. Something like that happens very rarely to me with rpg books – fiction yes, but rpg sourcebooks very rarely. This thing is damn fun (and funny) to read. I mean… you have section titles like “Great, Now I’m On Fire” and “Special and Unique Snowflakes”. What’s not to love?

The mechanics seem excellent. It uses the ORE base engine, as noted, with some neat extensions. You have Relationships, which are very important – you can get bonus dice from them, but if things don’t work out you’ll hurt those relationships. Monsters practically eat relationships, if given the chance. Then there’s the fact that in this game, you get as much damage from words (social conflict) as you do from actual “sticks and stones”. As the author notes: “When Mom says it doesn’t matter what people think about you, she’s lying to save your feelings. It matters.” There’s also a One-Roll Conflict Generator, to kick-start things, if needed, not to mention lots of nice campaign seeds and one Buffy-esque intro scenario that is almost guaranteed to turn into high mayhem. And let’s not forget O’Malley, the Anti-Drug Dog, and other delicious antagonists.

The game posits three “grade levels” of play: elementary school, junior high and high school. The first has everyone playing very young kids (Calvin and Hobbes country), with matching challenges and interests. The next level expands horizons and bumps up age a bit, life starts to get complicated in new, strange ways. When you get to high school, we’re firmly in Buffy and Veronica Mars land (both cited as inspirational material). You pick and choose what you like to run and play with. You also need to decide if the monsters are secret (i.e. the kids only know about them) or if they are a known fact, with “media sensation” overtones. How does little Bobby cope with life, when he’s surrounded by cameras hoping to get a glimpse of Gnarly Sapsucker, his monster? And why does everyone seem afraid of him, when he just wants to make friends? Gnarly has promised not to eat any of his friends! Why can’t everyone just forget about that one time? Nobody liked Wilson anyway…

It’s simply a brilliant book, and Benjamin Baugh seems to have captured some essence of what it means to be a kid. The real stuff, not the saccharine stuff we’re presented with from Hollywood and Disney, or the edited version we’d prefer to remember, editing out all the embarrassing and terrifying parts.

Baugh is working on a follow-up of sorts, which goes into Tim Burton territory. The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor is due out pretty soon, and will go on my pre-order list the second I see it announced.

While it’s hard to predict what 2008 will bring, I’ll say this: right here, right now, if you only buy one rpg book this year, make it this one. Yes, it’s really that good.

“It’s a confusing time, childhood. Even though it doesn’t feel like it, your clay is still wet and everyone leaves fingerprints on you. The Art Teacher of Life hasn’t got the kiln working, so you have to sit on the Windowsill of Time and bake in the Sun of Experience. Then you get the Cracks of Hard Knocks as the bits closest to the sun bake quicker than the bits facing away.”

“Anyway, that’s childhood. It’s pretty much the same for you as for everyone else.”

“Except your best friend is a monster.”

Nice weekend. We managed to do some “useful” stuff (such as getting a newer dishwasher to replace our ancient one, and doing some garden stuff) in addition to just enjoying a nice, sunny weekend. First time this year we used the grill, too, whee!

The most brilliant bit was being able to sit outside on the patio, basking in the heat, and drink a gin&tonic. Felt like summer, even though it’s still a bit cold and the plants are still considering this “should we grow now?” thing. I guess that’s one of the reasons I’d really hate to go back to living in an apartment… sure, it can be convenient, but there’s just no replacement for having your own yard, some place where you can go lounge in the sun whenever you feel like it and listen to the wind in the trees.

We need to do a bit more work until the yard is really cat-proof (including felling one tree) – at the moment we do let the cats out into the yard now and then, but need to keep an eye on them.

In general it’s been life as normal, without too many serious hassles. We tried to buy a new fridge, but it turned out to be mislabeled at the store: claimed to be 175cm tall, when in fact it was 179, something that won’t fit in our kitchen. Not without renovation, at least. So we continue to hunt for a 175cm high model, in the 90cm wide form factor and preferrably with a brushed-steel look and an automatic icemaker. The models do exist, but of course we’d prefer to not pay ridiculous amounts of money. We’ll see.

Tempest the cat is now healed of his urinary infection, the antibiotics kicked in efficiently and did the trick. Just got a call from the vet to confirm that the check-up lab results now confirm he’s fine… so that’s one lesst thing to worry about. I’ve cut down on dry food in general for the cats, though, both to reduce risks of further infections and to maybe cut down on weight gain problems.