Author Archives: tony

From Dawn till Dusk

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We went Christmas shopping today.  From dawn till dusk.  Breakfast at Tesco (as opposed to Tiffany’s) then into Nottingham City Centre until 4:00pm, then Toys-R-Us and then back to Tesco (everything that has a beginning has an end) to get some food for today and tomorrow.

We got everything we planned to get, some stuff we didn’t plan to get and some very sore feet.

Woolworth’s was super-mad with a huge sale on and people queueing out of the door, I bet it’s their biggest trading day this year, but it’s too little too late no doubt to save people’s jobs 🙁

We couldn’t believe how empty Tesco was first thing and then the Broadmarsh carpark was pretty light as well, the walk up to Victoria Centre was empty as well (at about 10:00am) but by the time we were leaving Victoria Centre (1:00pm) it was knee-deep in people and town was fully packed.  The Christmas market is on again in Market Square and the smells were amazing.

By the time we got back to Tesco second time around there were 3 trollies left in the trolly bay inside and about a million people buying stuff.

Glad we got it done, glad it’s out of the way.  For everything else, there’s Amazon.co.uk …

Soup!

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Why when you’re ill is soup such a good choice of food?  I always like soup don’t get me wrong, but when you’re ill it’s just that much better?  The combination of hot stomach warming niceness with easy-to-make effortness maybe?  Something about the sight of steaming golden soup and toast evoking memories of being taken care of when you were younger and ill?  Who knows.

I won’t try and spoil the magic by working it out in too much detail, I just know that soup is the best food in the world when you’re ill (3 billion women are now thinking, no it’s not, it’s chocolate and ice cream fool!)

So far, wednesday tomato, yesterday mulligatawny (which partly exploded in the microwave) and today winter vegetable.

Soup, we salute you.

WordPress & Grete

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I really can’t praise WordPress enough.  It’s such a simple install (point it at your mysql server, and it’s done) and although out of the box it looks pretty ugly (in my view), there are so many quality free templates that it can look however you want in about 20 minutes.  Of course, it takes more time to use some plugins and decide on a layout in general, but really it’s so easy to use everyone who wants an web presence but doesn’t want to spend much time should use it.  It’s mainly a blog, but the pages feature means you can certain include a lot of ‘non-blog’ content easily as well.

Anyway, the point of this post, Grete has moved her blog from blogger to WordPress over at her old URL (http://www.darkstorm.co.uk/grete) and she’s slowly moving the content over from her old personal website at that URL, so it’ll be more than a blog in the end (she assures us!)  She’s using the Mandigo theme as well, so I put together a few random headers for her site, she’s not seen them all yet so they may not all stay and at least one of them doesn’t work very well in my view, so I’ll probably get rid of it later.  But I liked them all anyway 😉

Cool game

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Spotted this link over at Critical Hits, and they’re right, you really should check out this cool game.  It’s like a puzzle game with a stream of ‘stuff’ you have to re-direct to fill up meters, but as you do so they play sound and as the levels get more complex so does the music.

You need your speakers on, really, it’s cool.  Play’s fullscreen, so probably not something you can get away with at work.

Movie Memories: Tarka the Otter

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When I was young (I’m not sure of my exact age, my memory for that kind of thing is terrible but this was before 1984 so under 13 years old) the Royal British Legion club, which was situated in our local ‘shopping centre’ (which we called The Top Shops) played films.  I think it was at weekends.  I recall them playing onto a screen with some kind of projector.  My memory isn’t good enough to tell you why we were there (I was with at least my cousin Chris, that much I do remember), if it was just to see the films or for another reason, but I vividly remember seeing one film in particular.

Tarka the Otter.

I strongly remember not really being interested in the story of an otter, no matter how cute it might first appear to be.  I was probably sulking, I was a really sulky kid.  I know you find that hard to believe now when I’m unnaturally happy at all times, but it’s true! I sulked!

I remember seeing other films there, at the Royal British Legion, but I can’t for the life of me remember any of them except Tarka the Otter. I remember the smoke in the air and the stale smell of beer, the red vinyl covered seats with rips and foam showing through.  This was the age of supermarkets that were the same size as todays news agents who charged for carrier bags and still labelled food products with 1/2p stickers, hardware stores that smelled of metal and wood and sold 3amp fuse wire next to spare broom handles, local grocers and butchers who sold far better quality products than those supermarkets but couldn’t compete on price, and real Stotties (from Greggs!) filled with bacon and peas pudding.

I don’t recall if the RBL was showing the movies at the same time as their cinema release somehow, or if they were playing videos on some kind of projector (which seems more likely) and if they had or needed a license of any kind.  It’s just an odd memory of an odd time when places other than cinemas seemed to show films.

blurgh

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So the cold’s back, and I didn’t get any sleep Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning due to being paged at 2:15am and working through until about 5:30am or something.  Took today off sick, I needed the rest, and probably tomorrow too unless the cold miraculously clears up over night.  Hence no blog posts today (or yesterday since it’s now tomorrow), but there’ll be an auto-posted blog post tomorrow while I’m (hopefully) still snug in bed about another movie memory.

Google searches

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As anyone who reads this blog already knows, I’m addicted to web stats.  I’m fascinated by how people find the blog on the web.  Here’s a selection of my favourite searches used to find the site over the last few days.

On Google,

  • SHOULD YOU EAT MEAT AND POTATO TOGETHER (link) (my favourite)
  • can tooth extraction result in another tooth moving down into space (link)
  • LEGO perception (link)
  • tesco superstore halloween stock (link)
  • cracking a rib when coughing (link)

Paw prints in the snow

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Why are they so evocative?  Click the pictures for full size images.  It snowed in Nottingham today, for about 15 minutes, really heavy wet snow which lay and then started to vanish almost as quickly as it had arrived.

Both cats are old hands with the whole snow thing so no sudden flurry of excitement from them, although Fizz did try and eat a few snowflakes as they fell on her.

Heroism and D&D

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I read this interesting article over at Dungeon Mastering website about why we should be thankful for D&D.  I commented over there, but wanted to expand on what I said.  Here’s my comment,

They’re about heroics. They’ve emphasised this in the 4th edition, but the earliest editions were the same (they sort of lost their way a little at the end of 2nd Ed and partly in 3rd Ed). Want to be a hero of legend? What to be able to do heroic deeds? Want to be a force for good, a force for change, to do the right thing with a huge fanfair of trumpets in the background? Want to jump in a save the Prince in Distress or help the Princess reclaim her throne?

D&D is about being a hero, unrepentant righteous heroism. It’s a light in the dark, hope amidst despair. It doesn’t excuse itself, it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s the pulp fiction of roleplaying, for better or worse and it leaves you feeling good.

I guess this depends on the kind of person you are.  I know a lot of roleplayers who wanted to play the sneak, the liar, the bully, the bad guy.  They got a kick from it, a challenge, and that’s fine, I can live with that.  Some game settings thrive on that, and some thrive on trickery or deception.  Some game settings intentionally blur the line between good and bad, that’s how they’re designed to be played.

But D&D, in it’s original form and even more so in 4th edition is about being a hero or heroine.  It’s not about beating up folk and extorting treasure, it’s not about attempting to overthrow legitimate kingdoms and take them over, it’s not even about killing orcs for the sake of it.

It’s about smiting orcs because they are evil.  It’s about recovering treasure from the vaults of evil lizardmen.  It’s about rescuing the good people who need to be rescued and putting down the evil tyrants who took them in the first place.   The world is in peril, the forces of evil stand on the brink of victory, this is your chance.  To make a stand.  To be the light in the darkness.  To shine brightly, for however long it takes to drive back the storm.

Don’t muddy the waters with morals.

Be strong.  Stand firm.  The enemy is upon you.

Now is the time for heroes.

RPG Blog Carnival: Transitions and Transformations

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Introduction

Interesting concept over at Critical Hits about a blog carnival, covering the topic of Transitions and Transformations. I thought I’d have a go at writing a little piece.

Here’s my opening premise.  Roleplaying is all about transformation, the very core of the concept is transformation and growth and transformation permeates every level of the game.

Transformation:
The act of transforming, or the state of being transformed; change of form or condition

Roleplaying is Transforming your personality

At the most basic level, playing a role or taking on another character is a transformation.  Your personality or behaviour is transformed from your regular state to a new state.  The act of roleplaying encourages you to transform your view point, your understanding and your personality to that of another.  Whether this is to accommodate a different mythology, universe, period of time or even a different race or gender doesn’t really make much different, the root action is to transform yourself to another state of mind.

Character growth as Transformation

On top of that we have a basic mechanic in virtually all roleplaying games of progression or growth.  Powers develop and improve over time, skill trees open up, abilities become greater, whatever mechanism the game uses, most games offer some progression or improvement.  That progression is transformation and a necessary skill of roleplaying is adapting to that change over time.  What you could do in the past has changed and what you can do in the future will be different.  While this is true outside of roleplaying games, inside the game the rate of progression is much greater (on the whole) than it would be in non-gaming life.  This transformation of ability at pace means you must adapt to change quickly to bring your new strengths to bear on tougher and more complex challenges.

Social Transformation

Roleplaying is a social activity; a form of interactive storytelling.  In any social situation relationships change over time, another example of transformation.  In order for gaming groups to be successful they have to deal with those relationship changes, and for long running gaming groups this can be a serious challenge.  This transformation can occur in-game with character relationships, as we learn more about our characters and the other characters in the game, our relationships change and morph, and equally it changes in the real world as we learn more about our gaming friends, or add new friends to the group.

Transformation makes the game world real

And lastly a key element for me.  Static game worlds feel fake where-as worlds which undergo transformation feel real.  If characters have little or no impact on the overall state of the world, at whatever level (local town, big city, country, continent, solar system, what ever is appropriate), then we may begin to wonder what the point of our interaction is.  Clearly there are some gaming situations where that feeling of helplessness is core to the game, but even then we would expect the world around us to change as the result of other influences.  A transforming world helps us feel part of that world, and a world which transforms as a result of our gaming actions makes us feel as though our characters have some real presence.

Conclusions

I think the original premise of the Blog Carnival was probably to discuss examples of transformation and transition within games, maybe specific examples, but for me the whole roleplaying experience is about managing transformation.  Transformation of personality, character strength, relationships and world setting.  Those four things make up the changing environment of roleplaying and are the essential elements of a dynamic and interesting roleplaying experience.