Duke Street Alley

We're running the bring and buy stand at Gaelcon again this year. If you're in Ireland, and have games or gamer-y stuff you want to get rid of, please let me know. 20% of the sale price goes to charity - you can give more, of course - and the remainder back to you. Gaelcon's charity fund basically goes to children's charities of one kind or another, so it's a good cause.

Gaelcon happens on the weekend of the 24th of October, so let me know soon if you have stuff.

(If you're abroad, and willing to post stuff, let me know that too.)

I've just finished setting up a new blog. Yeah, I know, I do that every few months, and you're all getting bored with it. However, in this case, it's new and different because it's not for me, it's for work. Check out the Elucidate Blog, add it to your feedreaders, and prepare for an onslaught of about a post a day on Stuff Drew Thinks About The Internet.

Any statements about post frequency here are aspirations, not promises. There will be contributions from other writers as well.

So a kid - a teenager, to be fair - in a school uniform got on the Dart this morning. He looked a bit unwell, red-eyed, pale. He started to sneeze just as the train moved off, and I swear, there was a tidal wave of people moving away from him. He looked around and said, "Dudes. Hay-fever."

A bloke I follow on Twitter (@JohnBatDell) posted a brief competition today - tell him why you're the biggest geek, and win one of these: http://www.dypce.ak.com/html/products/gaming/rocker100/

I replied, concerning Shakespearean MMOs, and the next I know is there's a message saying I've won. Rock!

The date for our annual summer party - now with brick barbecue - has been settled. You should be making your way to our place on the Sunday of the August Bank Holiday Weekend, that is, Sunday the 2nd of August. We'll be starting to cook in early to mid-afternoon, will refuel the barbecue a few times during the day, and will keep going until such time as people leave or fall asleep.

Elucidate are doing a survey of business changes in 2009 in Ireland, and we'll be circulating the results at the IIA congress next week.

If you're in business in Ireland, we'd love to have you fill in the survey.

And feel free to pass that around to other people as well - the more data we get, the more useful it will be!

So, like many people, I'm debating what to do with the DW account. I have it for two reasons before any others; to grab my usual username before anyone else does, and to be able to subscribe fairly easily to other DW accounts.

I could mirror LJ here, but I'm finding I abhor mirrored content. I have enough constraints on my reading time; I do not want to end up reading things twice, and that's what happens if, for instance, I'm reading someone's twitter feed, and they're posting stuff via Loudtwitter or the like to LJ. Mirrored LJ posts from blogs I read in Google Reader are likewise irritating.

I already have blogs for almost any purpose I can think of, and generally speaking, I want my non-personal writings to be out there on 'real' websites, not on services like LJ and DW where, apart from anything else, I can't earn any money from them.

So - for now, this journal will be kept for reading and commenting. If a majority of the people whose journals I read on LJ transfer to here, so will I.

evilrobotshane does a gaming podcast. It's rather good, and I'm not just saying that because he and his co-host had me on to talk about K2. But they did, and if you feel the need to hear about K2 (or just hear what I sound like), have a listen.

It appears I don't hate the sound of my own voice anymore, which is nice. I can't place my own accent, though...

So, sometimes I am more than half convinced I'm in some sort of music video.

This morning, crossing Baggot Street, I was passed by a black convertible sports car, trailing cherry blossom from the raft of the stuff on the bonnet, driven by a woman wearing a white wedding dress and dark glasses, blasting out Bryan Adams[1] at top volume.

Thirty seconds later, a robot dog ran past me.

Now, the robot dog was pursued rapidly by three film students[2], one with a camera, one with a remote control, and the guy with the remote was shouting "fucking thing won't stop!", but still... it was a nicely offbeat start to the working day.

[1] (Everything I Do) I Do It For You
[2] I assume they were students; they were all wearing identical UCD-branded polo shirts.

If you're not playing Legends of Zork, you totally should be. It's what Kingdom of Loathing could be if it laid off the juvenile punning.

And before you dive too fully into it, take a look at my 4 Quick Tips for Legends of Zork.

So I've been feeling coldish ever since we got back from K2 - had a few days late last week when I reckoned I was better, and was promptly proven wrong. After spending last night feverish and coughing, I went along to our nearest doctor today - who turns out to be about eight minutes walk away, actually within the estate, which was useful - and was told I have bronchitis. "All the way down", apparently, and a bit worse on the left. So I have some antibiotics, which are huge pills, and steroids, which are tiny pills of which I have to take lots at once, and special cough sryrup. And I'm to stay home until Monday, at the very least.

Which is a complete bugger, because we're already mad busy this month in work, and there are things I need to have finished by the end of quarter. I can do some from home, but not all of it, and in any case I'm hampered by the fact that I get stupid when I'm ill.

This post brought to you by half an hour's careful typing and typo removal (if there are any left, please be merciful), while listening to the BritAsia music channel, which is great.

Several people in the last week have said they'd read something on my blog, and looked puzzled when I asked which one. So here, for your edification, are the blogs I currently run:

• The Wizard of Dukestreet - scifi, fantasy, and gaming


• House in Ireland - DIY, interior decoration, and gardening


• Firefly MMO - because I live in hope


• A Political Education - my sadly neglected politics blog


• Woodwork Ireland - my even more neglected woodwork blog


• Tython Council - the new Star Wars MMO


• Winter in the British Isles - my winter blog, soon to go dormant for another year
  

And I sometimes post on inannajones' Rocking Grass.

Do you have other, non-LJ blogs you reckon I might not know about? Tell me, and let me put up links.

So, while walking in Donadea Forest Park (which is great) today, we saw a bat, out in daylight - around 16:00-ish - flying around and apparently catching insects. Is that in any way normal? I've never seen a bat in anything other than dusk or night time before.

I woke up about 20 minutes ago with a few bits of writing in my head - some game stuff, and some serious social media thinking which is more for work than for anything else. shandri_cat informed me that since I was awake, I could let him out. So I trotted down sleepily to the front door at the bottom of the stairs, and opened it, and he and I stood there and gaped at the unexpected snow.

I mean, I follow forecasts obsessively, and I know that last night, it was to be cold and clear, and that was it. Indeed, when I was going to bed about seven hours ago, there was a hard frost, and ice in places.

So I bounded back up the stairs to tell inannajones, and she woke up with admirable good grace for soon after 08:00 on a Sunday, and now we're going to have breakfast and go out and walk on the campus before it all vanishes again. This is snow when I have time and leisure for it, and it pleases me immensely.

SNOW!

Not many people seem to realise, or remember, if they know, that I read a lot of fanfic. Fanfic gives an alternate point of view on an existing world, sometimes one that I know very well. I've written some, in my time; it was vile and has now, thankfully, been lost.

Here, though, is a set of Narnian fanfic, not yet complete, which makes me want to write in that world: bedlambard's Dust in the Air. It's an AU around the era of The Last Battle, and it's absolutely brilliant. It helps, of course, that I never liked The Last Battle, but I still think bedlambard's version is better.

Gamers! I am going to K2, and I will be cooking. On Saturday morning (well, 12:00, which under K2 conditions is morning) I will be making pancakes. Pancakes will be free to all comers, but I'd like to have a rough idea of numbers. I will probably have some maple syrup and golden syrup for them, and if anyone wants to bring other stuff to go on them, go right ahead. I hear some strange people go for lemon. I will also grill bacon for them if a) it's handed to me, and b) you'll accept me taxing a slice.

On Sunday afternoon/evening, I will also cook something. The options are rather more open here, and I'll be looking for contributions from them as wants to eat. I could do one of:

Roast beef - a huge roast, with potatoes, some vegetables, gravy and a a Yorkshire pudding on the side.

Beef stew, which will contain beef, potatoes, onions, carrots, turnip unless someone talks me out of it, celery, and whatever other vegetables look good at the time. If the potato content in it looks insufficient, I may do more potatoes on the side, and will also have bread.

A red onion and tomato risotto, with smoked bacon on the side. This is technically vegetarian, but I like to have meat with it, hence the bacon. It's rather good, even if I do say so myself.

A jambalaya. This is a rice dish, with chicken, prawns and some other stuff in. It's spicy (though not very) and I usually try to have flatbread to serve with it, although I may resort to pita bread if numbers are very high. Because this dish takes several forms of protein, it's a bit pricier to make, hence the higher subscription.

Majority vote from people going will carry the Sunday dish, and I'll post another poll later to gather actual numbers for supply buying.

[Poll #1337236]

A couple of gaming-related links I want to look at later, and which might of interest to other people:

Diaspora

Spirit of the Blank

I am a very recent convert to the whole podcasting thing. I tried it some years ago, when I first got any sort of MP3 player, and didn't like it much. Because I read very fast, I get a bit frustrated with pure audio for information; it's too damn slow, and there are no secondary cues to follow, like body language in conversations, or the whole visual thing if you've video as well. And at the time, many podcasts had poor production quality, and all the ones I could find on topics I was interested in were done by... there's no nice way to say this. They were done by people with no skill at ALL for the spoken word.

However, late last year, I was pointed by a co-worker at the podcast done by Wiggly Wigglers, an online shop selling composting, wormery, and small gardening goods. It had interviews, discussion, was well-presented, and had fantastic British accents to listen to. I was an immediate convert.

Since then, I've come across a few more podcasts that I think are worth listening to. From "absolute favourite" down to "this is great!", with all the crud removed, they are:

The Game Master Show: (link)This is produced by a bunch of gamers in... Chicago, I think? Anyway, there are six of them, and five of them run games on a regular basis. The sixth guy seems to be a combat monster. Some of their episodes are three-hour-plus recordings of games they're trying out, others are reviews and discussions of general topics in GMing. It's a fantastic show, made good by the passion they invest in their discussions, as occasionally made evident by heart-felt uncensored swearing.

Van Hemlock & Jon: (link)I found these guys via EVE Online blogs. The podcast is about MMOs and video games in general, but it's made excellent by the complete cakes-and-ale Britishness of its presenters. They alternate themed shows with news ones, and have lately started to combine the two. Listening to these two is like a good pub conversation.

Wiggly Wigglers: (link) This is the one that changed my mind about podcasts. It's done by the owner of the company, Heather, and features various employees (the primary one being Richard - I suspect he was the original prime mover for the podcast), her husband Phil, who runs a small-medium farm in Herefordshire, with some appearances by their son, Monty. It covers a huge range of subjects, but all focussed on countryside and environmental issues. There's plenty of personality, and plenty of good discussion, particularly between Phil and Richard, who seem to have something of a clash of personalities.

The Alternative Kitchen Garden: (link) Emma Cooper is a softspoken freelance writer who lives in Oxfordshire. She has chickens called Hen Solo and Princess Layer, so is clearly the right kind of people. The podcast is about growing vegetables, and various other aspects of organic gardening, permaculture, and natural history. My only quibble with her podcasts is that they're too short, averaging out around 17 minutes.

Warp Drive Active: (link) An EVE Online podcast, probably of no interest to anyone who doesn't play. Winterblink is Canadian, Urban Mongral is English. I think they do the podcast on Skype. It's not up there with Van Hemlock and Jon in terms of enjoyment, but they cover more material, and of course, are more focussed on a game I play.

I've no doubt I'll add more over time - evilrobotshane is looking to get one off the ground, for a start, and I'll do another recommendations post when I accumulate some more.

So, with all the year reviews, etc, out of the way, let's look at something I'm really interested in: games.

2008

I got in a good amount of gaming last year. I wound up Locksmith's Folly, continued A Thousand Ships, started The Living & The Dead, and have continued with some mini-campaigns in Davon, mostly around a vague theme of examining the long-term effects of historical events. I played some WoW, early in the year, a good bit of EVE (though not, I feel, enough - more on that below), and some WAR, late in the year when it came out. I also tried a few other online games, but nothing really grabbed me. There were a fair few boardgames, and I even got to play some tabletop games - I never really got started in evilrobotshane's short-lived Cyberpunk 2020 Silhouette game, but the newer and hopefully more sustainable Spirit of the Century got off to a good start.

2009

Looking forward, A Thousand Ships is going very well indeed, once we get past some scheduling issues. I'm starting to think that three schedules are the maximum you can really expect to be able to convene on a regular basis - that is, couples who are living together can be treated as one 'schedule', and once you get past three, you're starting to run into problems with other regular activities, be they evening classes, other games, other hobbies, or work requirements.

The game itself is well underway, with one long section (a season, if you like) completed, and the second going strongly. There's a lot of plot engagement, and the players are driving events very well. I'm not sure they quite believe me when I tell them that the massive pilgrimage that made up the bulk of Season 1 was wholly their idea, but it really was. I'd love to see more player-driven events like that in games ("Let's invade Burgundy!") but it's hard to make things like that available while avoiding railroading - which of course is exactly the opposite of what you want. I reckon Fate lends itself more to this than more traditional rulesets, but I also think we could make much more use of the player-control aspects of that than we currently are.

The Living & The Dead has just started, really, and is coming up on the second 'Episode'. It's not at all clear yet how that's going to shape up; we've three experienced players and one complete newcomer, and a very developed setting. I need to work more on matching game events and plotlines to characters, but that takes time, and really can't be rushed.

I have, as usual, lots of games I want to run, and almost certainly won't have enough time for. Here are four current concepts.

One concept, which is fairly well-developed in my mind, and which I've been doing research and reading for, is an Arthurian game, set in a fairly dark age early in the Old High Kingdom (for those who know the campaign setting). I'd really like to run this, but the overlap of interested players and available timeslots isn't working out very well.

I'd also like to run a short 4th Edition D&D game ("short", for me, is 6 or 8 sessions). I have a setting in mind for this too, with which I'm fairly pleased, at least in concept. It's not connected at all with my established world/continuity.

I'm also mulling over the concept of a long-term 'simulationist' game. This would be one in which the interest is not in a grand long-term plot, but more a sandbox-style, what-will-happen-if situation. It would still involve a lot of politics and secrets to be discovered, etc, but wouldn't have the actual GM-provided core plot. This might possibly be merged with the next idea.

And that next idea is a space-opera game, set in a huge, galaxy-wide, Vingian- or Banksian-style crossover of cultures and species. I'd like to run this in Fate, although if it's also the Sim game, I might possibly opt for something a bit crunchier. Maybe. I'd also like to start this off with characters who don't know much about the setting, so that it can be a whole discovery thing for the characters as much as the players; this has been something missing from recent fantasy games as either the players or the characters know the setting very well.

Online, I'm going to be continuing with EVE, which is entertaining me a lot at the moment for sim/sandbox thinking, and WAR, which is excellent for toe-to-toe PvP action, and adequate in PvE. EVE is getting most of my online game attention, because the more I play, the better it gets, which is not a curve that always happens in MMOs. I'm concentrating on manufacturing and trading on Atrakus at the moment, which is going well, and have got a second account (Artemisia) to train up for missioning (some) and PvP (hopefully lots). Atrakus is currently skilling up for invention, and after that, he's going to be working on maxing out his trading skills.

I'm aware that the PvE game in WoW is much improved in Wrath of the Lich King, but the more I see the game community I know there obsess over raids, the less interested I get. Mass-effort high-organisation gear-dependent PvE is right at the very bottom of MMO features, as far as I'm concerned, and might even be on the list of bugs instead. RP efforts have more or less vanished, and the only real interest left in the game is the PvE levelling (which I'll grant looks good, insofar as single-player-with-other-people-around stuff goes) and the crafting/trading aspects, which are interesting indeed, but not enough to pay 35 quid plus 15 quid a month for. Not to mention that Blizzard keep messing with the trade aspect, and completely resetting it with every expansion. So for now, I'm leaning heavily on the side of can't-be-bothered with regard to WoW.

In small bits: I am watching the news about Darkfall Online with interest, but don't really anticipate buying it unless the one-month-in reviews are very good indeed. I'm poking Wizard 101 when I want some overly cute stuff (although I have to admit, the gameplay is actually VERY good). I bought Civ IV Complete, and have played maybe three hours of it. I'm playing no CCGs at all, really, although I'm hanging on to my EVE cards for future games, and in boardgames, I have Game Of Thrones and Arkham Horror, both unplayed, and in need of playing sometime this year.

Happy New Year, one and all. Make this one work out the way you want it!

I'll try to make this coherent, but we're just in from tobogganing (well, plastic bagging, if you want to get technical) down dedicated slopes near the local elementary school with inannajones' mother, and I'm a bit stunned by that and the shower.

So, Christmas in Finland is a routine I know by now. Like any such thing, it's never quite the same two years in a row - there are different members of the family around, the weather is different, and there are small changes in the local landscape as bits of forest are harvested and areas I've only known as open land begin to produce new forest. There are elements that are always the same, though. We will always decorate the tree on the morning of Christmas Eve, always go to the graveyards with candles at dusk, always go to the sauna when we come back, always eat a staggering huge meal, and distribute presents afterward.

This year, inannajones' uncle Jukka has finished building a gorgeous new house next door to her grandmother's place, where he and his new wife (Mira) and new child (a daughter, Inga) are living. There was snow this year, which hasn't been the case for a while, and temperatures below freezing, but still comfortable. inannajones' cousin Janni has got to the stage where her English is now confident (it was probably perfect last year, mind), so I can hold a conversation with her. She's not-quite-fifteen, and if she comes to visit in the summer as planned, I may have to get a shotgun to keep the boys at bay. She has a horse, who we went to visit at the stables on Christmas Day, where he galloped in circles and snorted and posed and was generally a fine example of equinity.

The Big Black Cat, Kalle, had been missing all summer and well into the autumn, and was presumed to have met a bear he couldn't handle (an unlikely prospect, I felt). He turned up about a month ago, demanding food and warmth for the winter. He is, if anything, denser, more muscular and more panther-like than ever, and I reckon he was actually off working with the Justice League for the summer. His stay-at-home counterpart, Killi, menaced my legs during the nights, and slept on the bed during the day. Killi always looks like a peaceful cat, but after a savage attack on my feet at five in the morning about four summers ago, I treat her and her dagger-like claws with respect.

I have a working theory about inannajones' family. Her grandmother claims to be from Karelia, but I reckon she's actually from Faerie. This is evidenced in the way the family can regress in age whenever they want. Her grandmother herself is in her early eighties, and still chops logs when necessary. As far as I can see, she has shown no signs of aging further in the nearly ten years I've known her. Her uncle had grey hair and looked old two years ago; he's now back to blondish hair (right down to the roots, before anyone points out the miracles of hair dye) with some grey streaks and a sprightly attitude. And her mother, in her fifties, was the one leading the charge on the playground facilities when we were out walking last night, and is the undisputed champion plastic-bag-tobogganeer. I reckon she's got younger while I've known her as well. Not to mention the party games she comes up with. Like I say, fey blood.

I've had a slight cold, which has slowed me down a bit, but it seems to be pretty much gone now. I've cleared inannajones' mother's front yard of snow twice, walked about six miles in total, examined bird and mouse and hare tracks in the snow, taken photographs of falling snow against trees at night, and seen the way in which birch branches look red in the distance.

Great-aunt Hellä brought over some photographs, and two more boxes were produced as well, some very old indeed. I was fascinated by some old school pictures, from which you can construct an easy chronology, and see that clothes and hairstyles didn't change at all in the 50s, and then had begun to change rapidly in the 70s.

I'm still processing some bits and pieces, aided by the very deep sleep that I usually enjoy here, and no doubt they'll make appearances at later dates.

We are in Finland. It's hovering above freezing outside, and it's been snowing for about an hour. The snow looks like it will continue through tonight and much of the next couple of days, and temperatures are forecast to fall well below freezing on Christmas Eve, and down to minus double digits on Christmas Day. This is how things should be.

The last few hours have been chaotic. Some people moved out to find and intercept the "big boy", and others seemed to interpret the orders of the King in different ways. The end result has been that the other boy has been found and brought back to the ship - and he doesn't seem all that much bigger - and while there has certainly been discomfort for him, he has also provided a lot of information.

A few things have become clear. First and foremost, this is not your world. Or perhaps it is, but if so, you've jumped forward in time by a huge amount, so that all the civilisations, all the kingdoms and empires, are forgotten, and most of you look like monsters to the people of this time. Even a great many of the gods have changed. The only thing that seems unchanged is the language of the dragons, which many of you use for spellcasting. The other boy understands a few words of this, and confirms it's still the province of dragons and spellcasters. You're familiar with timejump magic; you've used it before on operations, but this is beyond anything you've experienced.

Your ship, now that some of the logistics people have had time to look at it, has crash-landed in an uncultivated valley. It's at a slight angle, but the decks are nearly level, and it's possible to use it as a base until it can be repaired - although what it'll take to repair it will take some work in itself. To the locals, the stone ship probably looks like a streamlined castle.

The King, though, is going to be a problem. He is currently engaged in making members of the group march in lines and circles, and let him try to lift and use their weapons. Nobody is at all clear how he came to be recognised by the spells as King, and things are not helped by the older boy's confusion about things as basic as the time of year; he thinks it should be wintertime, when it's plainly around Midsummer. The King now seems to have forgotten completely about the other boy.

There seems to be a consensus that some investigation of the area and situation is necessary.

[Poll #1302615]

If any of you have specific questions for the King or the other boy, leave them in comments below.

inannajones and I, assisted by giftederic, and bluedevi and Dan-who-has-no-LJ on Saturday, ran a bring-and-buy stall at Gaelcon this year.

The deal was that we'd sell the stuff we got from people, keep 20% for the Gaelcon/IGA charity fund, and give them back the rest. Some people opted to give more to charity than 20% - as much as 100% in some cases. We had some stuff going in, culled from my collection, giftederic's, mr_wombat's, puritybrown's, and dualpurpose's. We got a few extra bits on the day, and then this one guy arrived in with SEVEN SUITCASES of books, plus three large shopping bags more. So all in all, we took in more than €3500 over the three days, of which something over €1700 has gone (or in some special deal cases, will go) to the charity fund. There was some slight worry that the other traders (who couldn't possibly match our prices) would meet us outside with pitchforks and torches, but the stock overlap was very small, and any I spoke to seemed fine - and indeed, some of them bought stuff. It remains to be seen if they growl at the convention organisers, but I hope they don't do so - aside from not wanting to annoy people, I'd like to run the stand again next year.

I didn't get to see a lot of the rest of the convention, but it seemed good for most folk. I did wander by some of the "real" traders, and we went to the charity auction. I had diverted a limited edition Game of Thrones RPG from the B&B supply to the auction, because it was far too nice to just sell at the table, and then spent €400 getting it back for myself. It's a very nice book indeed, and the money is all going to the charity fund. The auction itself came in at over €20,000 for the fund.

I bought some of the D&D Miniatures game minis from other stands, and from the stuff coming in to ours, I bought the Game of Thrones board game, ARIA, Nobilis (and a supplement for it), Sorcerer, and some other odds and ends. inannajones got real (as in not pre-painted) miniatures, and a castle from the auction for them to live in. One of the nice things about running the stand is that I effectively got first refusal on all the goodies coming in, and I think I was remarkably restrained.

I really, really enjoyed running the stand, and I'll be looking forward to doing it again next year, with some optimised organisation. And special thanks are due to inannajones, who put up with this as she does with all my other schemes, and did a LOT of driving and hauling over and above the stand-standing, and to giftederic, who gave lots of good advice, and helped immensely, especially on the boardgames end.