/var/log/orava

Off to the frozen wastes, ho!

A hiking & wilderness -expert friend made a suggestion somewhat along the lines of “let’s take a week off over Easter and go ski-hiking in Lapland in the snow! It’ll be fun!”, and Janka & I replied with “sure, why not” (in the grip of some dementia, no doubt). I have some amount of hiking and outdoors experience (and gear), but the last time I tried skis was… 20 years ago or so, and I’ve never been on an extended winter outdoors trip. Janka has, but said she’s never liked it before. So why go? Who knows. It might be fun, this time. We’ll see.

So anyway, in a few weeks time we’ll be packing a ton of winter gear on the train and heading towards Kilpisjärvi (almost as far North as you can get in Finland). The plan is to spend about 6 days out in the snow, sleeping in a tent (or an igloo if the snow is suitable and we feel like it). It might be really cool. It might be miserable. At least it shouldn’t be boring.

I still need to locate some warm mittens for myself, and some extra warm footgear for the non-ski times. The good point here is that due to the time of year, we’ve been able to get lots of good gear really cheap from all the “X% off!” sales. I found a brand-new ski coverall (also suitable for snowboard use) for 20e. Not complaining.

If we don’t come back, send out the huskies. We’ll try to survive by eating lichen and the occasional stray raindeer.

Minireview: Disciples of the Dark Gods (Dark Heresy)

The Dark Heresy line continues to impress me. In Disciples of the Dark Gods the GM is presented with a collection of antagonist groups to use in his/her games. The title is a bit misleading… only some of these are worshippers of “dark gods” as such. Many are “just” human, with motivations either very twisted or quite understandable. In fact some of them have motivations that are quite benign by our standards (search for ancient knowledge, for example). That sort of thing just happens to be heresy, punishable by execution, in the DH world. No, it’s (still) not a happy, fluffy place. I guess that’s part of the twisted charm.

The antagonist groups are divided into sections, roughly by type. We have the human groups, the aliens, the demonics, and “internal dangers”, and others. To my mind, all the groups presented were interesting and very usable as antagonists and/or foils in a game. All are given motivations and typical methods of operation, making their inclusion in a game all that much easier. Anyone needing a cool set of “bad guys” for their DH game should be well served by this book… I think the main problem would be choosing which one(s) to use.

The book finishes off with an adventure, titled House of Dust and Ashes. It’s a bit gimmicky, but since it features such absolutely cool locations (airship, volcano, etc) and good NPCs, I’ll forgive it for containing some gimmicks – especially since the whole things reads like a very fun (if quite lethal) romp. The piece concerns an auction of some potentially dangerous/heretical items which belonged to (now deceased) Rogue Trader Erasmus Haarlock; the PCs are sent in as errand boys (of sorts) of an “allied” Inquisitor and need to watch their backs & gather information on who bids on what. Well, it’s not quite that simple. It never is…

Once again, excellent production values, good writing, good art… not much to complain about, even if I wanted to. Did catch a few typos and some missing page number references, but those were minor.

Minireview: Northern Leaguebook Two, United Mercantile Federation: The Price of Success (Heavy Gear)

In the second “Northern” leaguebook, United Mercantile Federation, we’re (unsurprisingly) given the full-details treatment on the UMF, the economic powerhouse of the North. Like most (all?) Heavy Gear societies, it’s modeled after real-world ones (or ideas) with a ton of extrapolation thrown in. In this case, the starting premise was “ultracapitalism”. How would a society without taxation (for instance) work? Or would it?

Here, the UMF is a nation run like a company (somewhat like their chief competitor, the Southern Mekong Dominion, but with different emphasis). There is no tax, but citizenship costs. Applying for a “public” position also costs, so in order to get “elected” one much have both cash and popularity. Unsurprisingly, all this has a dark side – those without cash have very little in the form of a safety net, and as a whole Mercantile society has little place for those unable to get and retain a career. Being poor is ok (to a point). Staying poor isn’t. Also, the power of corporations here is huge – in a sense, you can’t really separate the main corporations in the UMF from the state itself. It’s all intertwined.

One unusual facet is the fact that the government isn’t one huge entity. In fact, each city has historically been allowed to keep its own system of government, as long as they conform in the “big picture” details to the UMF ideals. So there is one city ruled by a honest-to-goodness king, via inheritance (!) while another city follows something almost resembling communism. As can be imagined, these differences cause no small amount of social stress to the system, and there are various internal terrorist groups fighting to get “their way of living” imposed on everyone else. It’s a big mess, but perhaps because of that it feels quite “alive”.

Like the Mekong Dominion, it’s neither a dystopia not a utopia. The citizens are generally content and proud of their nation, though the pressure to perform is high. Being a “dropout” from society has real and potentially lethal consequences, so those who can’t “make it” run a high suicide risk. It’s a “work hard, play harder” society.

As with all Heavy Gear supplements I’ve read to date, the quality and detail level is high. The society is mostly believable and very interesting, without being a complete stereotype. While the UMF isn’t maybe as “colorful” on the surface as many other Terra Novan nations, there’s a lot of local color in the internal affairs.

Minireview: Big Book of Bots (Paranoia XP)

Despite the title, the Big Book of Bots isn’t all that big. But it is about bots (i.e. robots) in the Paranoia game world. Up to now, these helpful machines have been mostly tools for the GM to cause (helpful and friendly) diversions for the PCs. In this case, “helpful” usually means “stupid and/or obstructionist” and “friendly” means “lethal and/or homicidal”. What this book provides is both an expanded listing of new and old bots (with skill listings), and a system for creating bot PCs. The Computer knows that you’ve always (secretly!) wanted to roleplay a scrubbot. Well, now you can! As an added bonus, bots can’t be traitors (according to the Computer), since they don’t have free will (according to the Computer) and are programmed to always look after the good of Alpha Complex (according to the Computer). Your reality may vary.

On the downside, it’s a fairly thin book and the editing & layout are slightly shoddy in places. On the plus side, it does have some fun extra crunch on bots and even includes a bot-centric adventure. An “ok” minor expansion book; not a must-buy by any means but contains some fun and/or useful stuff for the game. The system by which bots gain skills (via memcards) does lend itself to some evil ideas, if you happen to be an evil-minded GM. Not that any Paranoia GM would be that.

Alkoholi on myrkkyä...

So, the school had its 8yr celebration party on Saturday. Much fun was had by all, and much alcohol was imbibed. Thanks to our visiting lovely bunch of Hungarian lunatics, the booze levels didn’t drop off at any point, and by the time we staggered off home (via taxi) we were quite plastered. There was a weird side episode there, where the taxi’s card reader refused to read our debit cards – so we ended up doing a detour to a local ATM, after some argument with the driver (who spoke with a strong Russian accent). We got it all sorted out in the end.

Anyway… Sunday was a lost cause. I tried to get up around noon, figured I was still too boozed-up for that, and went back to bed. Got up an hour later, had some breakfast… and then went back to the horizontal. Some hours later I finally felt semi-alive, and spent the rest of the day doing no-brain stuff like watching the end of 2nd season of Burn Notice. The wife and friends were having fun hotdropping some carriers on pirates in EVE, but I didn’t feel stable enough to do anything requiring coordination or brain cells (the ones not dead from the previous night, that is). Sigh.

In contrast, now on Monday I feel great and the sun is shining… and tonight is a Sisters of Mercy gig at Nosturi. Sometimes Monday is the good day.

Minireview: Midnight Harvest (Call of Cthulhu)

Midnight Harvest is the third Cthulhu scenario I’ve read from Super Genius Games, and it continues the high quality set by the earlier ones. Frankly, I was a bit sceptical of this one initially; it’s a modern-day scenario with a Halloween theme, I’ve found a lot of “seasonal” scenarios to be quite weak, usually, they just tend to put some twist on a trope and leave it at that (“Santa is… an alien!”). Need not have worried, that’s not the case here, the Halloween connection is only incidental.

Don’t want to spoil the plot here (since it’s a pretty nice one), but to give a basic overview: the town of Five Lanterns, Rhode Island has an age-old tradition of a grand costume parade on Halloween. It’s been on hold for many years due to some tragedy years back, but now the townsfolk are intending to revive it, along with the “Haunted Trail” tourist attraction and other features. Well, since it’s a Cthulhu scenario, it’s easy enough to guess that things will take a dark turn, but to the writer’s credit many of the obvious cliches are avoided here (they work well as red herrings). There’s an interesting mix of NPCs and motivations, and a “town sanity” mechanic is provided for tracing evens and effects. The art is a mixed bag, as are the handouts, but all are at least decent.

In sum, a pretty cool modern-day oneshot adventure, which could be plugged into pretty much any modern-day occult game. The main emphasis is on investigation, though, so gun-happy groups will find less here (and will have a nasty run-in with local law enforcement, most likely). This could probably be run in one evening of play, though the players may need some guiding if they go off to chase too many red herrings.

Minireview: A Feast for Crows (by George R.R. Martin)

Well, “they” were right, this latest (so far) installment in the A Song of Ice and Fire series isn’t quite as good as the previous three books. To be fair, the earlier books set an extremely high bar, so it’s easy to come off a bit wanting in comparison. This book isn’t bad by any means, it’s merely “good” where the earlier three were “fantastic”.

As the author notes in the afterword, A Feast for Crows is really part one of a bigger volume; he started writing and as some point realized that has too much text to publish as one book and decided to split it up. He also decided to do the split among the characters instead of along the timeline… so here we have certain events told from the viewpoint of one set of characters, with another set notable by their absence. No Tyrion here, or Dany. I’m not sure if that split was a wise choice or not… In any case, while there are good stories here, the whole does drag on a bit. It’s nowhere near Robert Jordan -level “nothing happens for 1000 pages” crap, but you do get the feeling that this could have been tightened up a bit. Maybe he just needs a more stringent editor.

The title does describe the book quite well. The big battles are done, and now the carrion birds settle down to fight over the scraps. Cersei, increasingly paranoid, tries to hold on to central power, while various bids for power are made in the smaller kingdoms – some successfully, some not. A lot of the spotlight is placed on Brienne, who is searching for Lady Catelyn’s lost daughter(s), and a somewhat-reformed Jaime also gets quite a few pages. Arya is off in Braavos, training to be… something. Maybe an assassin. There is a weird choice made here of describing some of the chapters with figurative names like “The Prophet “or “The Kraken’s Daughter” instead of the real character names (like in the previous book). Not sure why this is. Maybe Martin thought that people would be having problems remembering who is who without hints like that. Dunno, it seemed a bit superfluous to me. To be fair, the cast is starting to be quite large, maybe even a bit too large.

We’ll see. The next book will probably give indication of where this series is going, quality-wise. Might be that this is just a minor hiccup along the way, or maybe it’s the start of a slow decline. I hope it’s the former, obviously, I’ve really been enjoying this series – and this book too, even though it has some problems.