/var/log/orava

I’ve been reading some Antarctica-related stuff lately, centering around Chaosium’s massive Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign book. I’m about halfway through at the moment, and… wow, it’s quite something. Insane amount of detail, and very inspired expansion on the original short stories “At the Mountains of Madness” (Lovecraft) and “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” (Poe). I’m still not sure I’ll be up to running this at any point – it would take a lot of time, and a group of players willing to put up with lots of 1930’s period detail and a fairly slow, deliberate pace; not all that much pulp-style heroics here. It’s something I’ll have to think about some more.

In any case, the sheer amount of background detail in the campaign book is mind-boggling, the appendixes themselves take up about 150 pages. It’s also very well written, and shows a deep love for the subject material. As an adventure, it also feels like it should play well – there are some bits I would tweak and some railroady bits, but on the whole it has a nice flow to it, with lots of plot twists. It’s no wonder that this thing is often nominated when talking about the all-time best roleplaying campaigns; it’s right up there with Warhammer’s “The Enemy Within” and other classics of the genre (with the caveat that I haven’t actually read Enemy Within yet, I’m just told that it’s really really good).

In order to get even more background detail, I’m also reading The Lost Men, the real-life story of Shackleton’s ill-fated Ross Sea supply expedition of 1914-1916. Fascinating stuff, and in parts unbelievable; it seems a miracle, and testament to pure human spirit, that there were any survivors considering all the poor planning and supplies. The whole “we don’t need to prepare, we’re British gentlemen!” thing seems quite alien to my modern mindset, especially since I’ve done a bit of traveling in difficult conditions myself. The thought of going into a virtually unknown, utterly deadly locale with piss-poor planning and sad lack of proper supplies seems suicidal. And was, apparently.

Another sort-of game prep book I’m thinking of getting is Mountains of Madness: A Scientist’s Odyssey in Antarctica, an account of a modern-day paleontologist’s journey to the real-world site of Lovecraft’s story. Might be interesting.

It would be nice to visit Antarctica one day. So many other interesting spots to see also, of course, so hard to say if I’ll ever get around to it – but I’ve always had a fascination for the more barren and hostile areas of the world.

In other news… we had another Exalted session, a bit dungeon-crawly but that was by intention, and was fun for a change of pace and as a chance to get more to grips with the combat system. We still didn’t get it quite right, I forgot about minimum “ping” damage and about natural soak values. Duh. Oh well, next time…

This weekend had me in Turku again, at yet another knife technique seminar. This time time around we spent the weekend practicing the care and feeding of the bali-song (butterfly knife). Apparently the damn things feed on blood, judging by the amount of nicks and cuts we accumulated – at one point we joked that we should have a “sponsored by Hansaplast!” sticker somewhere. Had fun, though. As a weapon the butterfly knife is not that hot; it’s sadly lacking in speed and ease of use compared to modern folding knives, and offers no real benefits of any kind technically. Sure, you can use some of the opening techniques as secondary attacks, but that’s pretty borderline. On the other hand, in more primitive times it was a folding knife that you could (with practice) open with one hand, something that’s quite a feat without modern-day mechanical production skills and tolerances. In the modern day, its main point is “it looks really cool”, and it acts as a fun stress toy and finger nimbleness exercise. One that needs focus to play with, of course, unless you actually like the sight of your own blood.

Considering that I had never played with one before, I’m pretty happy with getting some (very basic) proficiency in ten or so of the basic opening styles over the weekend, and with only getting one cut that required bandages during the process.

Fun weekend in Turku, attending a knife fighting seminar. This time we concentrated on folding knives (traditional ones, not butterfly knifes etc, those will come later). A lot of fun, and even though people managed to get some cuts and lose some drops of blood, it was due to fumbling with own knife – always better than accidentally scratching a training partner. I learned a lot, having previously had very little experience with the folding thingies, and managed to do a draw + open under one second; a small something to feel smug about. My new toy, though expensive, proved to be worth that cash and was a joy to use. Solid blades are always faster and more reliable than folders, of course, but folders have their advantages.

A funny mental thing: we did the normal pair drills this time so that the sequence started with the attacker flipping open his knife and attacking, the defender then opening his in response and doing what was required. It’s a small thing, but that metallic “snick!” sound you hear when the knife opens brings a whole new psychological element to the game. It sounds evil and dangerous, in a whole new way. My training partner also commented on it, so it wasn’t only me.

Speaking of evil and dangerous… when I got back home on Sunday I curled up on the couch and read Don’t Rest Your Head, a very cool little game from Fred Hicks (of “Spirit of the Century” fame). A bastard love child of Dark City, Neverwhere, Alice in Wonderland and some demented drug dream, this thing rocks and proves you don’t need a huge word count in order to have a complete game. It’s only about 70 pages, but that’s enough. The dice mechanics are very interesting and elegant, with the roll giving you several different details (like the ORE system in Nemesis and Wild Talents, though this has no other real similarities to ORE).There’s a death spiral mechanic that’s vicious, and a “hit the ground running” attitude running throughout the game. I get the feeling that this is most suited for a one-shot or short campaign, if only because the player character lifespans seem likely to be in the “short” category.

If you’re at all into indie rpgs, you’ll do yourself a favor by checking this one out. Mucho cool.

The weather is starting to hit freezing at night, and there are small patches of snow here and there in the morning – methinks summer is starting to be over. Our yard is finally clear of crud used by the workmen doing our roof insulation & wall paneling makeover, so there’s some hope of getting things into winter shape. I managed to scrounge up energy to rake up leaves into nice piles a few days ago, but by the time I finished it was so dark I didn’t feel like carting them off – and then it started to rain the next day. Oh well, at least they don’t form a soggy matress over everything, just a few soggy piles. Better than nothing.

Life’s been pretty quiet; work, some EVE Online and reading, nothing too hectic. I did attend a knife fighting workshop in Turku last weekend, though, so it hasn’t all been wombat mode. Said workshop was a lot of fun, learned quite a bit (more) about how to carry, draw and use sharps. I’m really liking my new toy.

The new VTES expansion looks solid, the “post-release” tournament was a lot of fun, with Antti Horelli claiming victory for Clan Assamite. I haven’t made any decks based on the new cards yet, but have a lot of ideas. Maybe this weekend I’ll sit down and put together a deck or two.

My four-wheel-transport situation is changing a bit, I’m getting my sister’s old Peugeot 306 convertible, which is 5 years and 100k km newer than my current car. It needs some fixing in the retractable roof department, but should otherwise be in good shape. Doing the papers on that on Monday. This leaves my trusty old ‘89 205 automatic a bit useless to me, so I’m giving it away if I can find someone who needs a car (for free). Details here (in Finnish). It’s old and has lots of “features”, but it still works.

My pile of 400+ USA/BM pictures are sitting on my hard drive, eyeing me balefully. Should do something about getting them processed and published.

Fun but slightly exhausting weekend; spent most of it in Turku at a knife fighting workshop. In a way it was a fun mini-vacation, spending a night at a hotel makes it feel that way even though you’re just away from home a short while. Of course, most of that time was spent at the salle/dojo, not much time for rest&relaxation.

This time around we studied various ways of carrying a knife, and how to draw it quickly into different grips. In the beginning it was pretty straightforward, but got harder (and much sweatier) when we bundled on our outside coats and some gloves, and then did all sorts of “draw knife quickly” exercises lying down, etc. Tricky stuff, it’s pretty easy to get tangled up in bits of clothing for many critical seconds.

The most fun exercise consisted of all but one person standing at one end of the room, and one person at a time walking towards them and doing some off-the-cuff maneuver to draw his/her knife into a ready position without the other people seeing the knife. Very challenging; some people managed to do it pretty smoothly but my “oops, I dropped my keys” routine only half worked, I didn’t manage to totally hide the knife. Instructional exercise, in any case. We also did speed-draw stuff, with a timer.

The rest of the time was spent with the normal pair drills with different types of knife hand / secondary hand timings, and in doing some more slow & careful sparring with sharps. No cuts this time, my packet of band-aids stayed in my bag.

After that was finished I hopped in the car and drove back home, showered, and headed towards town with Janka to see the Rachid Taha concert.

It proved to be an… interesting experience.

At the beginning things went fine. The crowd was a bit static (the theater-like seating makes Savoy a bit sub-optimal for rock concerts), but Rachid and the band got people warmed up and standing by doing a funny “let’s all sleep” routine. The music started swinging and everything seemed fine. I did notice that Rachid himself seemed a bit spaced out and subdued, but I just thought it was his stage persona. He was also having serious technical problems with something, probably an ear mic – there was a lot of scurrying about by roadies.

Unfortunately, about halfway through things started to fall apart and it became painfully clear that Rachid wasn’t subdued as such, he was just totally shit-faced drunk. He started staggering around stage, leaning on things and sitting down, singing only part of the time.. and the end, he could not even stand up and had to be half-carried away from the stage amidst a chorus of “boo!”s. All credit to the band, they played well and did their brave best to salvage an impossible situation, but in the end it just fell apart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone on stage that drunk since The Jesus and Mary Chain did Provinssirock way back when. Helsingin Sanomat also has some commentary about the whole spectacle.

Pity, since the man does good stuff on CD and I would have liked to hear him in proper shape, not as an (admittedly happily) drunk wreck. Hopefully it was a one-time serious miscalculation on his part, but in any case I can imagine that the hangover from this one won’t be pleasant; I’d think the band will have some… issues to discuss the next day. Most of all I feel sorry for the band, they were good and did what they could in a very pro manner. No complaints there.

Oh well, at least it was interesting, if not in an altogether pleasant way.

As I was writing this, a friend on an IRC channel transmitted the news that Rush is coming to Helsinki for the first time ever this fall. I’ll have to try and get tickets for that when they come on sale (whenever that is, no info yet). Saw them last year in Stockholm, nice gig but maybe a bit too much guitar soloing and (very) old stuff, it would be nice to see them on stage again, if only to compare.

Getting concert tickets and hearing about them is a bit of a pain nowadays. Placebo is coming to Finland in May, and I heard about it two days too late – of course it’s all sold out now. I’ll have to keep my eye out on huuto.net etc, but no guarantees. That’s another band I’d really want to see live.

Spent the weekend in Turku attending a knife fighting workshop, this time the subject was push daggers and (slow, careful) sparring with sharp knives. Was a fun weekend but not much of a rest and relaxation one, I’m now looking forward to Tuesday night when I can just relax at home – except that I can’t, have to change the car to winter tires. No rest for the wicked. Ho hum.

Anyways, the knife workshop was interesting as always; lots of people with various martial arts backgrounds, and lots of nice and sharp slicy pointy things. Push daggers were fun and there were a couple of fun techniques that were unique to them, and the sparring was almost suprisingly fun. It was also surprisingly non-scary, but that’s mainly because it wasn’t quite freeform and it was done at very slow speed and with a controlled “one attack, then the other guy/girl attacks” system. As with any even slightly freeform “fight” simulation, it was also pretty exhausting mentally – you need total concentration on what you’re doing, for obvious reasons. It wears you out fast.

The most important thing I’ve learned during these workshops: I never, ever want to get into a real knife fight, especially against someone who knows what they are doing. It’s nasty, brutal and (probably) very short.

One girl managed to nick her arm a bit with her own knife during sparring, but otherwise we were spared bloodshed.

I read rpg.net (Tabletop Roleplaying Open) quite a lot; it’s one of the best web forums I know, partly because of the semi-demented regulars, partly because a lot of RPG writers and industry people also take part, and partly because it has pretty much the best forum moderation I know – the mods are strict about personal and group attacks, but otherwise allow (civilized) flamewars and you can say “fuck” whenever you want, if you want.

Anyway, recently rpg.net had a thread that was among the more interesting ones in recent memory, titled ”I have never been in a fight. What’s it like?”. So far (page 12) is has stayed on topic and provided a lot of input on what real fights are like. What I’ve read matches my experiences, for what little that is worth.

I’ve never been in a real fight, not even as a kid (I don’t count the occasional playgroup flailing and shoving as a “fight”). There have been a couple of situations that might have escalated, but didn’t. If I never get into an actual fight during my whole life, I’ll be perfectly happy.

On the other hand, I’m interested in (and train / have trained) various martial arts, from unarmed to swords to knives to whatever. Maybe that’s a paradox, but I don’t think it is – I’m not really a very pacifist person; I don’t go around looking for fights and I consider violence a pretty much last resort, but I also think there are times when it is justified. And besides, humanity has never been so inventive as when it tries to figure out ways to kill other people.

Based on my sparring experiences (which I fully know is nothing like a real fight), I agree with many of the people on that thread. Most people simply don’t know how to cope with violence, they freeze up or panic. What training gives you is potentially some little control, some little ability to analyze what’s going on instead of going deer-in-the-headlights, and some muscle memory that might help you react at the critical point without actually thinking about it much – because in a real fight, or even in a freeform sparring match, you don’t have that much time to think. Time behaves in a strange fashion, and adrenaline does even stranger things to you. In addition, most of your automatic reactions are just wrong, especially with swords or knives.

I still remember the first time I did any sort of martial arts training. It was at Niiniketo’s Jiu-Jitsu school in Helsinki, which was a pretty brutal introduction. Niiniketo is an ex-(kick?)boxer and it shows, he’s a big powerful man and and has a boxer mentality about things. “Pain is good”, etc. Not a place I’d recommend for anyone to train at, but I didn’t know better at the time and that school did teach me some straightforward fight stuff that are probably still somewhere in my muscle memory. It taught me how to hit people so I’d actually generate some power, and how to cushion blows – kickboxer stuff, basically. Luckily I’m so crap at kicks that I stopped that school after a bit over a year and moved on to saner teachers and martial art styles.

Anyway, the first time I did any sparring (not quite full-contact, but not lightweight either) I almost froze up. I was just so totally unused to someone attacking me, trying to actually kick and hit me. It went away quite fast and it was excellent learning material – but I still remember that feeling of utter confusion about being confronted with violence, even in a fairly safe environment like that.

I suspect that mental “getting used to it” is the main advantage people would get from formal martial arts classes with regards to a real fight. 99% of the fancy techniques will probably vanish from your paniced brain, but if you manage to not freeze and potentially get away as a result, it’s a win.

Not that I do or ever have done any sort of martial arts training from a “this will help me in fights” motive, I think that would be stupid. I do it from the need for excercise, and general interest in the subject. Most competent martial arts people I know are actually people who would generally avoid fights, maybe because they know full well how easy it is to seriously injure or even kill someone in a fight. The occasional “budo idiot” is the exception that proves that rule.

Violence is a weird (but understandable) taboo in our culture. Maybe that’s one of the many reasons I found Fight Club to be such a brilliant film.