| [Movies] The Dark is Rising |
[01 Jul 2009|06:55pm] |
Picked this up for £3 and watched it last night. Wasn't worth the price. I don't say a film is rubbish very often, but I started with low expectations and was disappointed.
I've read the books and didn't especially like them. I know a lot of people do. This is one of those film adaptations that uses odd elements from the original - character names, the Signs, the Rider - but otherwise has very little to do with it at all. Now sometimes those can be entertaining in their own right, and I'm pretty good at going along for the ride. Here, though, there are bits of not-quite-happening drama strung together in a way that's kind of unclear and disjointed. Maybe there was a half-decent miniseries left on the cutting room floor, where each thing that happens gets enough time, but I doubt it.
|
|
|
[01 Jul 2009|06:49pm] |
Well, I received the Jaws copy with the revised cover from Lightning Source yesterday. Definitely more appealing - if it were easy to fiddle around with the colour balance a bit more I'd be tempted, but I'm not paying for the privilege.
Looks like I'll miss out on the free setup offer after all, though. When I tried inputting an order to check the price it turned out that my account hadn't been set up to print in the US for US destinations, even though I'd picked the options to say that was what I wanted. So until that's sorted out - no idea when - the postage is too high to go for (and free setup depends on ordering at least 50 copies within a certain period).
Not all the speedbumps have been at the LS end, but if I'd known what the process was going to be like I probably wouldn't have bothered.
|
|
|
[29 Jun 2009|08:11pm] |
Took a sick day today, due to the dregs of this cold/throat thing. Still congested, and if it feels stuffy at home the office will be nigh-unbearable, especially in this warm weather; plus tired, due to bug-fighting and not-so-great sleep. So I pretty much bummed around the house today, with small napping and domesticals.
I've kept getting sucked into David Eddings books for the last while. The power of suggestion when he died, I think. Keep grabbing one of the six Sparhawk books off the shelf and reading a bit rather than doing useful things [tm]. They are just very very readable.
Must clear some space in the garden to put these courgette plants in. They're getting antsy. But today was not the day.
|
|
| 15 books meme |
[26 Jun 2009|06:02pm] |
"Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."
I cheated by looking on the shelves to bolster my memory. Counting series as a single entry. No particular order.
1. The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy - Guy Gavriel Kay
2. The Riddle-Master trilogy - Patricia McKillip
3. The Harry Potter series - J K Rowling
4. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen/The Moon of Gomrath - Alan Garner
5. The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher (now it's grown on me)
6. The Collected Ghost Stories of M R James
7. Wizard's First Rule/Stone of Tears - Terry Goodkind
8. Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu (various translations)
9. Book of Milliganimals/Silly Verse for Kids - Spike Milligan
10. Nine Princes in Amber series - Roger Zelazny
12. British and Irish Mythology - John and Caitlin Matthews
13. The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
14. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
15. The Authority: Relentless - Warren Ellis/Bryan Hitch (for getting me back into supers comics with a bang)
|
|
| [Movies] Red Cliff |
[26 Jun 2009|12:43pm] |
Ah, I saw this back on Monday after work. Very good. Reminded me a little bit of Mahabharat. There's certainly some implicit stuff about Chinese concepts of the perfect gentleman in the two characters who turn out to be the central ones. I loved how the scholar character got to do cool stuff, and was arguably the pivotal character in the whole thing.
This was the 2-3hr version combining two original films. I'll look out for the whole thing on DVD, but actually this works pretty well for a UK audience. There were occasional jumps where an edit had been made, but there wasn't anything obviously missing from the story. My one quibble was that the second half had a bit too much burning and exploding, to the extent that I got a bit bored and wanted to go back to the characters.
One thing that'd be interesting in the longer version is to see if it's clearer whether there is any supernatural stuff involved - so far I'm thinking maybe (manipulating the weather, extraordinary hearing, jumping up buildings) but probably not. It's not a bad match to a building block of my Albion RPG actually - the idea that if your skill is good enough you can do things bordering on magic.
The landscape was there as an extra, but not stressed so much as in other recent Chinese drama movies; and maybe I'm getting (heh) jaded through seeing it so much. Plenty of big action scenes and other things for characters to do. I thought a couple of times that it seemed a lot had been going on and they were packing a lot in. Not sure whether the ending was entirely satisfying.
I wanted to get the soundtrack, but Amazon is unusually unhelpful.
|
|
| Jaws of the Six Serpents - 3-month sales |
[19 Jun 2009|10:35pm] |
It's approximately 3 months since this was first released. Here's how it's done as of right now.
RPGNow/Drivethru - PDF - 112
IPR - PDF - 9
IPR - print - 78
Lulu - print - 11
That's a total of 210 copies sold. A good start!
|
|
|
[15 Jun 2009|06:43pm] |
I often say I'm bad with time. Mainly cos it's true.
But I do seem to get at least my fair share of helpful coincidence, like this one.
A few minutes ago: I get home.
Now: outside = night-time in a waterfall.
Yikes. We praise the inventors of roofs and windows.
|
|
| Weekend |
[14 Jun 2009|11:54pm] |
Pretty relaxed, doing bits and bobs as it turned out I had no engagements. Walk round nature reserve. Bit of gardening, ripping Big Bad Grass out. Need to keep going with that, as I've some courgette plants that'll soon need to go in. Loads of ladybirds around.
Kind of fell into working on Albion's renown rules, and went with it. One of the bits that needed pinning down better, and I'm happy with the new version to go into the feedback stage. Spent some time wrestling with the Jaws cover file for Lightning - feedback at Games Expo last weekend was that it did need re-doing, but I'm somewhat hampered by the CMYK divide, knowing that it won't look like what I have on screen. Following helpful feedback from Mr Robin Elliott (who knows about such things - check out Hellfrost!) and a lot of fiddling I think I have a version that'll do. Of course the only way to know is to upload and order a copy, and LS charges for revisions.
Have also been following the breaking news about Fred and Christie's new arrival. A well publicised baby, but then we'd expect no less!
Better turn in or will be yawning in the office again!
Damn, just looked up and seen how many insects have come in to check out my light bulb. It is a fine and expensive natural light spectrum affair, so they show some taste, but yuck.
|
|
|
[12 Jun 2009|04:20pm] |
UK Wind Week starts tomorrow.
...
Not actually due to eating too much cabbage, but I thought I'd give you space for humour-related activities. It's actually about renewable energy, a more desirable thing altogether.
|
|
| Albion art |
[08 Jun 2009|05:53pm] |
Got my first commissioned pieces for Albion, my Celtic-themed fantasy game. These were done by Mark Huffman, who was a pleasure to work with. They show a druid, a bard and an artificer - the pieces will sit next to text about these key character types.
|
|
| Games Expo 2009 |
[07 Jun 2009|07:12pm] |
Good way to spend a rainy weekend. This convention in Birmingham covers board games, card games and miniature games as well as RPGs. It's probably the biggest in the UK. Gencon UK's been declining for years - apparenly last year's was a bit of a revival but it's not running this year. Expo is certainly very well organised. It's definitely focused on sales, with three decent-sized halls full of stands. There's a reasonable programme of RPG sessions to play in as well, and a decent variety, though they're hidden away in windowless, airless rooms that are not pleasant places to spend several hours.
Saturday was pretty much eaten up by playing, in two things I'd been wanting to try. Hellas in the morning - Jerry Grayson and Aeon's mash-up of ancient Greece and sci-fi. That was fun, run very loosely with the capacity to try pretty much anything regulated by simple rolls. Characters seem to be pretty capable. We sought and boarded a rogue ship in the equivalent of hyperspace - which has air and weak gravity so we just jumped out of our hatch. I was playing a big snake-person oracle with mystic powers.
In the afternoon, Savage Worlds - Hellfrost. This is Triple Ace Games' big new fantasy setting. The game was fun enough, but the GM was filling in at short notice for someone who was unwell and didn't take the time to say a lot about the world. We also got stuck in a very long bopper-type fight, which wasn't really anyone's fault and is (people said) unusual for SW. The loss of my character's magic due to 'the Siphoning' didn't help - instead of power points, bad things happen if you fumble - I think the setting intends you to be much more cautious than I was. It felt a bit more generic fantasy/D&D than I'd hoped.
Hotel was OK if basic. Slept poorly as the fire alarm went off in the night, just long enough to get me staggering for trousers and kick me into being awake mode.
On Sunday I walked round the stands to see what was there, and chatted to folks I knew, including ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) angusabranson and the guys from Triple Ace and the Collective Endeavour. In the end purchases were limited to the Hellfrost book and a couple of small bits. (Hellfrost is very pretty, but the gazetteer and bestiary are further books - coming soon - and the lack of that content might prove frustrating. Don't think there are any beasties at all, but only skimmed so far. However, there are handy self-contained adventure PDFs.) Would have got Hellas if it'd been in stock at the opportune moment, but managed to put it off. Had a conversation that might have unlocked my confusion about sales channels and format for Albion - must ponder.
PS - think my keyboard's going, notably the T. More expenditure on the horizon.
|
|
| Local election result |
[05 Jun 2009|08:54pm] |
So Nottinghamshire's gone to the Conservatives for the first time in 20 years. Looks like the electorate took its support away from Labour big-time and spread it out among everybody else. Looks like the Tories have enough to push through whatever they want - like cutting support for additional tram lines.
My ward also went from Labour to Tory, by a narrow margin. I'm feeling very slightly guilty about voting Green. The Labour guy was a good representative, by all accounts. The Conservative guy sent round an election flyer that was at least 3/4 about what he felt was the burning issue of the day: the state of the pavements. So finger on the pulse there then.
|
|
| No witty titles on Thursdays |
[04 Jun 2009|08:28pm] |
Just voted in county council and European elections. Found I was pretty disconnected/disinterested really... I think sooner or later we'll move away from the current political party system - it'll be a bit of a discontinuous jump, and hard to effect, but there's definitely an air of disillusionment now. The most interesting thing about it was the 13 parties listed on the EU ballot paper, many of whom I'd never heard of before. Maybe half of them are substantially about protesting against the EU. I think I saw "the Christian Party". I've had flyers about a number of these recently. The BNP has been making a push.
One of the artists I've been talking to for Albion has been motoring on with the first three pics of freestanding character types. Exciting to see those taking shape, and he's very keen and responsive. Hope to show those here soon. Another one is being enthusiastic and proactive about generating picture ideas from the background material I sent, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes.
Going to the Games Expo convention in Birmingham on Saturday. In the end I haven't booked a hotel - I'll see how it looks, and if I want to go back on Sunday the trip is short and cheap enough to be do-able. I think before I've felt a day was enough to do Expo, which is quite sales-oriented, though I am booked in to two games so that'll eat Sat daytime.
[EDIT: Ah, Sunday train services are actually rubbish. Maybe another plan is better... aha! Found a hotel at £20. So can be around on Sun and go when I feel like it.]
Have booked Monday off work, so hopefully get some writing done over the weekend. Also need to tidy study - things in piles have accumulated to produce an unhelpful work environment.
|
|
| The Day After Ragnarok |
[02 Jun 2009|09:19pm] |
So, Ken Hite has written a setting book for Savage Worlds. It's now out in PDF, with print coming soon. If anyone had any doubt that Ken is a magnificent lunatic, (a) it's about time they started paying attention and (b) they might want to check this out. Let me summarise the premise.
It's World War II. The Nazis attempt to bring about a Ragnarok from which they alone will emerge triumphant, by summoning the great beasts of Norse mythology. The Midgard Serpent rises from the ocean depths. Its head is 300 miles across. It starts laying waste to Allied fleets. The plane carrying the first atomic bomb is dispatched and rides right into the serpent's eye, burning out its brain. The serpent falls. Its vast bulk simply destroys large areas of Europe. Its head covers Egypt. A massive tidal wave destroys the east coast of the USA, laced with mutagenic radioactive Serpent venom. Now the (remaining) nations of the world have to work out how to move forward, given the revised map, difference in resources, and awkwardnesses like mythic giants wandering in yawning and stretching and wildlife that's Not as it Should Be.
And now some goblin from my backbrain is suggesting that you could use the setting with Cold City/Hot War for a somewhat different game.
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
