pengshui_master

ROTFL

Thu, 01 May 2008 08:45:00 GMT

User friendly used to be my daily web comic fix - but I don't read it these days. However as the link shows yesterday's was great. - It's a RPG joke so no special tech knowledge needed for this one.

Thanks to gridlore for the heads up.

Choice of language...

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:27:44 GMT

Last year I joined the ACM , which for those of you in blissful ignorance is a American professional society for serious geekery.

I received a letter from them today announcing among other thing a new class of member ship Senior Member for I quote "who have demonstrated performance that sets them apart from their peers. "

I know quite a few seniors whose performance when using computers sets them apart...

Larp physrep's of total awesomeness.

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:26:35 GMT

I think these are absolutely great.

The fact that they were built and designed for someone's game makes them even better, and apparently it is not the first time they've done it. ( I think the game is more treasure hunt than LARP but still).

I now really want to do something similar. I only need the round tuits and the idea - although I tend not to be too short of the latter.

Of course the game I'm working on at the moment is Victorian era so it not the best place to mine for this but ideas are like buses....

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:32:14 GMT

Taste - the good, the bad and the ugly in 18th century Britain

It's a little bit early for Railways but certainly worth listening to I suspect.

Sillyy..

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:30:34 GMT

I heard about this on the radio this morning.

Belgium! Man

But seriously person they interviewed suggested the only things the Flemish and the Waloons have in common was "the King, the Beer and the Chocolate". He didn't mention the Frites.

I could only think of wanting to run a free form set in Belgium so a Player could shout..

For the King

For the Beer

For the Chocolate

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 18:37:36 GMT

Grokked from Gridlore...

I'm a God!! Cool.

Sign this....

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:53:05 GMT

Grokked from ffutures' LJ .
Petition to Posthumously pardon Alan Turing.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Pardon-4-Touring/#detail

I'm just back recombination , and will post more about the con later.

Games, games , games ...

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:46:09 GMT

We went to twistedanimator's for a games afternoon and evening .

We played a quick-ish game of Citadels while waiting for everyone to else to arrive which saw me winning Horrah. by a it a luck - and stealth points totals, followed by a fun werewolf variant.

However the game I just have to mention is the epic War on Terror: The Boardgame . I say epic because the game just went on and on and on . Despite this it was fun to play and had many of almost literally rolling on the floor in laughter.

The designer's suggest a ordinary victory can be achieved it a reasonable evening's play to to be honest I doubt that it is possible with 6 new players of the game. The terrorism mechanic is just to seductive. You start to use it and the everything goes pear shaped.

I think if I was working on the rules I'd add some sort of end of the world or other mechanic because about the only end that the game guarantees you will reach is that every turns into a terrorist.

If for no other reason that any player can turn terrorist at any point - but cannot ever turn back. I suspect though in a game where most of the players have played before and are looking for a victorious empire (that illusory 'ordinary' victory I mentioned earlier) that deals etc could be made which would make it more likely to come the the desired conclusion. If for no other reason than the other player would be more alert to want the full consquences of terrorism are having played before.

Of course our game must have been unusual because we went about 5 full turns (eg 30 dice throws) before rolling the 'Spin the Axis of Evil' result (it happens a single result of a D6)

As a result of not having a axis of evil player meant the early part of the game to more powerful terrorist cards weren't in play for a while..., until one players was knocked out. Then the game turned deadly.

Suddenly everyone realised you couldn't beat terrorism in the war on terror, and turned terrorists give the terrorist's the victory.

Which was surprisingly satisfying

Am I being unreasonable.

Fri, 25 May 2007 17:57:09 GMT

I've having discussions with a web designer who doesn't seem to understand revsision control.

I've put the website they are developing into revision control so that chnages made can be tracked, and so they don't need to develop on the live site.

But judging by the emails I'm getting from them they seem to having some trouble with the concept of revision control. I haven't actually asked them to drive the VCS driectly yet , I've been quite happy to commit their changes for them and propagte the chnageset on to the live site.

Is revision control really unusall in this space?

One of my colleges says yes, at that revision control is unique to the Unix development environment and that web and windows developer rarely (read: practically never) use it.

But I still think they should be familiar with what a VCS p=tries to achieve even if there haven't used one.

x-posted to itprofessionals </B?

Heirachy of RPG mechanics.

Wed, 23 May 2007 20:48:11 GMT

I think I've got some ideas sorted out for a investigative RPG mechanic which is intended to improve on Gumshoe(R).

In working thinking through what the dice mechanic should be I came up with the following realization and easy way to further characterise "roll and add" systems. Technically "Roll under skill" systems are very close, but my guess is the fit into the hierarchy about one half to one dice under there actual dice use.

If it not clear already I'm characterising systems by there dice, specifically the number of dice rolled on each test so GURPs a 3d6 system would come under 3dice, althouth I would expect 2-2.5 dice better represents it. Similarly D20,Rolemaster and the unisystem all come under 1 dice, while Classic and Megatraveller are both two dice systems.

On further two dice system which is worth mentioning is the Babylon Project in which you roll (1D6 - 1D6) ie rolling a positive and a negative dice. Statistically this is no different from rolling 2D6-7.

So know we to which class or system falls into what does this tell us about the system - well I've made the following pretty basic observations, hopefully they aren't revelation to the serious gamers out there , but on the other hand I don't think I've seen
anyone put it down in print (or html) before.

1 Dice Systems
I think of this as being essentially random - the random element of the result come from a flat distribution so you are as likely to get a good result as a bad result.

One way in which the designer can affect the way this works if by tweaking the range of skills v, the range of results from the dice.

If the range of skill level available to the players is much wider the the range of values from the dice then skill predominates the result, but if the opposite is true then the dice are in control which is great for using the dice to add thrills and spills to a story but can be problematic.

2 Dice Systems
I think of two dice systems being good for high fantasy and wide ranging space opera. As yet we are not seeing a bell curve but we do have a triangle shaped distribution - eg, the sides are linear.

As the higher successes (and failures) become decreasing likely (in a linear fashion) we are putting more meaning into the specific skill level a player may have . Given a good balance of skill level vs. die results as we mentioned above , we see the characters begin to tend to a mode in their ability to perform .

It is now possible for a player to rely on a base level of competence of their PC but good results occur often enough to keep the story flowing and alive with surprises.
3 Dice Systems
At this level a recognisable bell curve has formed. I see this category as for 'realistic' games. There is still a large enough variance to expect outstanding results reasonably often but you there is a strong basis towards the mean.

In some ways this is a useful mean position for a system to take and then use other characteristics to push it down to Gritty or up to high fantasy.
4 Dice systems
I'm currently not aware of any specific four dice systems, except those with variable dice in which 4 dice tests exists. I see this as being only truly suitable for gritty roleplaying. It will be rare that you roll an outstanding success or failure. Your character is good or bad at what he does, and it's rare it she out does herself.

This is probably the biggest weakness of this level - how often do you want to play a nobody trying to be a hero. On the other hand this seems tailor made for Film Noir

Well there it is , take or leave it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts.

Oh and since I started this about talking about a new systems (which currently only exists in my head) I'll let you know that modulo playtesting I believe I have working 2 and 4 dice conflict mechanics for it , as such it can be used it a variety of genres.

But please , I'm not suggesting you mix these two mode in a single campaign - that would be stupid.

Esoterrorists et al

Mon, 21 May 2007 12:33:11 GMT

Sunday's game was good fun and quite revealing over the Gumshoe system. We had another Gameforce without our usual Serenitity GM, I had stepped up to run the Esoterrorist demo from the rulebook.

After some discussion about what we would play - during which I was berated for not mentioning Esoterrorists is a Robin Laws game , it was finally decided we should play Esoterrorists.

As usual the players did there best to not follow the module like been written in any way - including trying there best to get lost on their way to the mission breifing.

The team seemed to decide that subterfuge was the best way to find the clues, rarely telling anybody even what their cover identity was and generally keeping me on my toes.

The as a result I found the Gumshoe concept of a core clue important to keep the action moving as if I saw the players were likely to reach a dead end I could make sure thay had the core clues ready by manipulating the storyline allowing them to get it - even if the module wasn't originally written that way.

The only place this was much of a stretch was when I had to change to character of one of the NPC's (Barry Milk) to be more forthcomning than he might otherwise has been.

Overall I have got a number of interesting impressions of the Gumshoe system which I will be putting together in a later post , but in short we too hit the 'impression of railroading' problem - which may come from fact he system makes it hard for a GM to hide the system workings, ie. how can you indicate to the players there is a spend available without coming right out and saying it.

The players said they felt forced to make a spend if there was one there to make. Obviously in a longer game the players can see this as a resource management problem - but it doesn't hide the awkwardness that the Players will know where the 'unfound' clues are. I think this problem is greater that the just ooc/ic information problem - If I know I've not got a clue an I am struggling with a investigation , I'm going to assume the missing clue is important whether it was or not. I'm worried then taht this can distort the game's feel.

Also it when you look at running it, the system seems to have 3 different resolution mechinacs. ie. automatic,point spend, and roll . The players kept assuming that they would have to spend points even when some of the clue where automatic.
But perhaps I didn't explain the system well at the beginning which given it was quite noisy where we were sitting, I can understand that the players may not have heard everything.

I would like to think all the players enjoyed themselves though and the mechanic certainly didn't get in the way of the story , and their simplicity allowed me to concentrate on keeping the story moving which is all good.

I have some ideas about an interesting variant on the system which may work slightly better (IMHO) but I'm going to need to give the whole think a bit of thought as file the edges off.

On the whole - hats off to robin_d_laws and simonjrogers for a thought provoking game and system.

Bl**Ding hell, it looks cold.

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:05:52 GMT

Ok, So here am I in the office with the fire Full on and getting a headache. Which normally means there isn't enough fresh air (CO2 levels I hope, I'd hate it to be CO levels but I don't have access to a meter these days).

So I open a window, turn the fire down and make myself a cup of tea and wait for my headache to clear.

SO what happen's we get a blizzard outside.

A real honest to god blizzard .As in I can't see to the end of road through the sleet and I certainly cant hear myself think over the sleet and the rain on the window.

And the draft round my feet gets colder...

And now having posted this its all stopped again.

Make yer mind up.

Question for the geeks..

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:27:24 GMT

Is it possible to write a javascript thingy so that can change a the xslt stylesheet which is use to view a xml document on the fly.

Eg, I link to sa foo.xml which normally uses foo.xsl as it stylesheet, but via the magic of javascript I can force the browser to reprocess it and display it with the bar.xsl stylesheet instead.

I could obviously do this with a round trip to the server but I'd like to avoid that if possible. As the projewct I have in mind for it is quite lightwieght and I could avoid all server side cgi if I could do this. This strikes me as the sort of normal stuff ajax apps do surely...

Cars , and the things people do.

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:13:51 GMT

I'msurprised nobody else has mention this.

27 Books, heh. How many orignal plots? At least 2 - High Hunt is difficult to compare to the fantasy stuff.

IN other new my new posh vechile has developed a rather troubling sounds. Having sent someone who understands engines under the bonnet, thay came back with something that looks suspicously like something which was once a seal (or at least a PTFE O-ring).

It was trapping between the engine block and the cover.

So the car need to be booked into to see a professional.. So I'm prolly going to relaint on borrowed trasnport for the next week or so.

Ho Humm.

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:15:29 GMT

Perhaps in the excitment of getting a new car, and tacking it into work on Tuesday - I completely overlooking picking up my phone . This means it's left at <lj user="ravenrigan>'s and I'm not going to have it back until Fridray . Most importantly of all this means I cant think about diplomacy in the car on the way into work. But then I seem to have drawn the driving straw this week - partly because my brothers car needs the brakes fixing and he managed to leave the key at work yesterday so it couldn't be fixed today. Anyway the git also dsicovered that the new car has a 6disc CD changer I hadn't noticed, (it was hidden under the drivers seat) .

Clumsy, clumsy..

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:32:47 GMT

I'm having a bit of a quiet day today. Partly because I've left a chunk of the paperwork from stabcon with the notes of changes I need to make to the adventure back at home, but mostly because I managed to pour a glass of wine into the my laptop keyboard yesterday.

Unfortunately I know that wine is in fact one of the worst thing in a keyboard , as it appears to attack the conductive tracks on the membrane quite aggressively. On the other hand I turned the laptop upside down and shook it immediately - followed by pulling the power and rinsing the keyboard (after taking out the rest of the laptop).

So I know the laptop core is working and there is no chance of any data loss. I should still be able use it with a PS/2 keyboard (no tested yet).

I'm quietly confident about the keyboard but it needs to be left to dry out quite thoroughly. Which is why it is currently looking little lost clustered around the bed linen in the airing cupboard.

Bored at lunchtime

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:52:06 GMT

So I tried a few not very random googles...

I nthe process of this I found bytepilot is the only one to come up with the idea of pirate squirrells.

If the idea appeals to your own personal brand of madness then thes link my causes hilarity.

http://othersideoftheplanet.com/?p=46

The first image here looks better here (which has a poem too).
http://www.scarysquirrel.org/phlinger/pitstop/scout1.html

xmas, stabcon and stuff...

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 21:00:13 GMT

Given I haven't posted in about month I thought it was time for quick update.

Christmas as relatively quiet with a few small presents.
ravenrigan joined me for a few days included the shopping trip for new clothes which resulted in a substantial number of new jackets. Now I've just got to remember to wear them.

the new year was seen by a wonderful party at bytepilot's

Last weekend was stabcon. It's the first time I've been to stabcon and I didn't entirely know what to expect.

We arrived in good time , unpacked, then joined the gaming throng .

First call was the bar and while I was ordering beer there was a groups who trying to work out the rules for citadels - I was offered a place in the game since I had played before and me and ravenrigan had played before.

After that we wandered round a bit and hand some food, and didn't really find a game I was much interesting in playing. So kibbutzed on a game of shadows over camelot during which bytepilot and thalinoviel arrived. I sat down and had a chat with thalinoviel and joined her friends in a game of St Petersburg, which I won despite being a game I normally do quite badly at. This one I managed to win by one whole point - due to some lucky availability of nobles in the last turn. This was followed some serious "Are you a Werewolf".

I advertised a rpg game which seemed to have slow signup which left me a little down - I'm enjoy boardgames but a con of just board games I find a little repetitive, In the end how all was not lost as I got enough signups - I played ravenrigan's Dying Earth on Saturday Afternoon followed by my own Gurps infinite worlds adventure which will be tidied up and improved for Recombination.

Sunday saw us playing Phil Masters' 'Meme Thing' Transhuman space adventure which I really enjoyed - following by debugging some interesting game concepts from various members of the Crowther family.

All in all I quite enjoyed stabcon - but I'm not sure it's a must go for me.

On the way back, I managed to get involved with a traffic accident as lorry ran into me as I try to join the
A14 .
The drivers door is seriously dent and I am without a drivers side wing mirror. Additionally my windscreen wipers have stopped working. - This linkage broke - I spent this evening trying to fix it in the dark - but I don't know how long it's going to last.

And tomorrow I have to with the insurance. Poo.

Dragonmeet 2006

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 17:37:53 GMT

I played a couple of games , starting with gbsteve's Gamer's Wives 2 , which meant
me and ravenrigan spending at least an hour co-ordinating outfits in the morning before we left.

Also because there we a chance of a costume change during the larp I had was wearing more clothes than usual and was getting quite warm .

I've found Hans (my character) can be quite difficlut to play - I found him a little harder to play than in the previous game.

I think part of it is my interpretation of him as the 'Nice Guy' who won't stoop to the level of the other characters. He also isn't the charaismatic sort who is `hot'¹ very often. More problematic was in this game I felt is powers where not quite right for the character I just don't see Hans as someone who throws 'Hissy fit's. On the other hand the obvious power to resist other peoples powers (which others did have) wouldn't have actually helped either as nobody used their power on Hans either.

Getting towards the end of the game there was a charity auction in which the opportunity to sing with the space girls was sold, - this was the opportunitity for my costume change and the bidding immediatley went over the amount of money Hans started with. At this point it looked like most of my objectives had where unreachable so I just started having a bit of fun with the character - letting him see how much of a arse Stig - his wandering partner - really was just as the vote of no confidence came up in the game as it happens.

Supporting Melissa Dracul was in Hans intersests anyway as she had f pledged support for the PinkGaming group on the basis she didn't have to actually have to wear pink

Finally I realised Collete and Nigel seemed to have had a falling out and since Nigel had won the auction for the chance to sing she was a natural ally. So we formed an alliance and she arranged the dirty deed while I disappeared for a costume change. Steve intercepted my on the way back form the change and brought me as a surprise at the appropriate moment.

.
So Two of my characters objectives achieved then. And the second one rendered irrelavent by in game
machnations.

After the game I changed in some much more confortable clothing - athough the costume change itself had made me quite a bit more comfortable as I was at least wearing a more usual number of layers. Then I went round the trade hall and purchased a few bits and pieces that looked good (including esoterrorists - more about later), before playing gbsteve's (again) esoterrorists demo.

I found the demo a little short to really explain why the Gumshoe mechnic works properly but more in a later post when I will a review of the system next based on reading the supplement in full and the demo. Unfortunately I don't see a chance to playtest it soon.

After that we had a couple of very enjoyable games of Are you a werewolf before watching and bidding in the charity auction.

All in all a very good day out, lot of people on the Trade hall when I spoke about my various campaign's in development seemed to liek the ideas too. A girl on the Collective Endenavours stand was quite enthuastic about my Cthulu-Matrix ideas too.

1: 'Hot': One of gbsteve's game mechanics which means more News (in the Hello! sense) worthy characters get more powers.

Yet Another....

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:26:36 GMT

Random name generator

There are loads of these utlities on the net, and most of them leave a lot to be desired. They are often
reasonably usable if you are generating fantasy names - but often leave quite a lot to be desired if you are
buliding science fiction names - which are the whole tend to bear some resemablance to modern names.

Since I'm running a sci-fi campaign at the moment, and in fact the players are about to arrive on a new
world which I need to populate with all sorts of people this problem was exercising my mind this evening.
Worse off I have a good few personalities and characters already built - all apart from the name.

But after another exhausting day at work thinking up lots of names seemed suddenly difficult , and I
suddenly realised I could just chose nice names out of a list. One of the list of Surnames or Given names
collected from various internet sources seemed a good palce to start.

SO my random name generator was born

Take gander at it output:-

namegen.pl 10 given surname
Florina Fresson 
Reilly Sarin 
Eastreg Workman 
Georgann Roots 
Namhi Boggan 
Julio Perez Documentation-Grp 
Clare Weathersbee 
Torre Neville 
anita Drake 
Hmm, Ok Perhaps "Perez documentation-Grp" is a somewhat unlikey surname, but Perez is Ok, and I don't
 intend this to be used wihtout a brain behind it.

Lets try someting more complex
namegen.pl 10 myth greek surname
Perimedes Olympus IC 
elenna Cephissus Pitton 
portunes Schoenus Rieber 
Mimas Dulichium Spitz 
rahu Chalcis Zavala 
sahab Latona Terence 
twrchtrywth Deisenor Harrington 
homocane Ianassa McCalister 
Cleopatra Scheria Westman 



That's pretty good, it what wanted 4 useable names "Cleopatra S. Westman"," H. Ianassa McCalister " 
and "T. Deisenor Harrington " ,"Elenna C. Pitton"  out of ten is good going for a random generator. SO 
these people have middle/first names they are assumed off. Makes it more fun.
 

This last is not so good though:-
namegen.pl 10 myth 
apocrypha 
Epistor 
icevortex 
Phalces 
Arceisius 
chac 
Orchomenus 
Lesbians 
eros

Memes..

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:47:23 GMT

Went to Liz's party (a friend of ravenrigan) and met lots of gaming chums and other LJers last night.

Anyway I feeling slowish today. So after sending few responses to other players in a PBeM diplomacy game..,

So i played with those quiz things... I got this.

You scored as Storyteller. The Storyteller is in it for the plot: the sense of mystery and the fun of participating in a narrative that has the satisfying arc of a good book or movie. He enjoys interacting with well-defined NPCs, even preferring antagonists who have genuine motivations and personality to mere monsters. To the Storyteller, the greatest reward of the game is participating in a compelling story with interesting and unpredictable plot threads, in which his actions and those of his fellow characters determine the resolution.

With apologies to Robin Laws.

</td>

Storyteller

95%

Character Player

70%

Casual Gamer

60%

Tactician

45%

Specialist

30%

Weekend Warrior

20%

Power Gamer

10%

What RPG Player (Not Cha racter) Type Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

I'm quite chuffed, I've always thought of myself as a puzzle-solver with pretensions to be a storytelller. And I tried to be scrupulously honest in answering the questions.

Of course I'm not sure the questions it asked are very good at distinguishing these types, it possibly better at distingishing the power-gamer/storyteller/weekend warrior/charater player - archetypes.

Edited: Found the missing quote which did something mad to html parser

Once upon a weekend....

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:31:46 GMT

Friday was ravenrigan Birthday and amongst much nashing of teeth and much trying on appropriate costumes were found and worn for our long awaited (by us!) debut at B-Movie.

And indeed a great time was had indeed little nashing of teeth was actually done.

The theme was Bride of the Monster

Somehow at sometime in the depths of my mind this became a short story

Chapter 1, part 1

It was a dark and stormy night - stories like this always start this way don't they - and as the thunder cracked the men in the local village tavern edged closer to the fire.

Suddenly the door swings opens and in comes a young woman , her clothes mud stained and torn .
As the murmur of the pub grind slowly to a stop she makes her way to the bar , everyone can hear her ask for a room over the new silence which fills the tavern.

One of the the barkeeper starts to tell the woman the price of his room's when his wife pushes her out of the way and says of course she must stay. After the "poor thing" clearly needs a warm bath and hot meal.

Chapter 1, part 2

In which the back story is revealled

Over and surprisingly bubbly bath given this is a fantasy world , the woman tells her story while sitting in a wooden bathtub in the bar-mistress's own room in front of the fire.

It seems that the womans home and the entire village was destroyed by a rampaging dragon , the dragon had demanded food and valuables - on pain of burning. The village gave all they had but the dragon kept demanded more, until it started buring down houses as encouragement but the village still could not meets the dragons demands. Eventually the last remaining house was destroyed - The womans she only managed to escape because a few men ahd stayed to try to slow the dragon down and stop in chasing the women..

Finally she has told her story and the woman steps clean out of the bath to reveal she is truely rare
beauty.. , her arrival in the village will break hearts.

Chapter 3

Slowly the woman finds her place to work in the village and wee see the men folk start to woo her and
her flirting back , particualy with the largest and best fighters in the villages .

CHapter 4

Another night the is a large crack, and explosion even - which wakes the village the men and many of the womenfolk rush out of there houses to see the barn where the last - for it is now spring - of the winter vegetable where stored on fire - how it caught fire is no mystery for a large dragon stands next the burning building. The dragon is forcing everybody to keep their distance by the simple expedient of small puff of firey breath towardsanybody who appoaches - the heat of this breath beating them back.

With most of the village waiting, watching outside now the dragon speaks and delivers an ultimatom. The village shall leave at least one sack fill of silver or jewels, and one pig or cow at the top of the nearest hill - or the dragon will start to burn down more of the cottages

Chapter 5
The villagers are in uproar, town meetings are held fingers are pointed everywhere including at our poor heroine, but eventually the villagers decide the simplest thing is to surrender to the will of the dragon.
Some of the menfolk want to ambush the dragon but our heroine tells them they'll be killed. - One of the rasher men though is gone to follwoing morning he had promised not to fight the dragon but his sword is found on the hill .

Our heroine is more often in the presence of two of the biggest men in the village they seem to vying for her attention, and she is flirting outragousely with both.

we start to her the other women folk in the village including the tavern keepers wife start to spread nasty rumours aound about our heroine, they seem jealous and uncomfortable with the way she is easily monopolosing the men folk.

Chapter 6
The villages is running out of livestock and valuables, so after yet another weeks load is not enough to satsify the dragon , someone shouts up at it "We have no more, What will it take to make you go away?".

"Just one beautiful maiden.", the dragon retorts .

Again a town meeting is held - can they ask some to scarife themselves - is it fair - who will it be . The meeting is not calm, there are people standing shouting, it descends in total chaos - but suddnenly one voice cut across the chaos - the tavern keepers wife - her arm is outstretched point at our heroine - "Her." she says, "She brought it here. She can get rid of it".

There is still shouting but the tide has turned, our heroine tries to escape , but she is held tightly in the grasp of those men she was wooing. It has been decided.

Chapter 7
OUr heroine is chained arms held above here to a stake in the ground, placed at the top of the hill where the dragon goods have been placed.

We see the sunset on our maiden

And then as the suns last rays disapper , and we see the villages retire to the tavern for revelry no they have got rid of the dragon.

But we alsi we see the heads of one,.. no two of her champions lift from the ferns before our maiden
and look up at her in her predicament. "Do you really think we should?" , one aks the other.

"Yeeersss". The voice does not sound nice nor is the lear in his expression.

He stands up , and surprising our maiden who draws a breath to cry out in happiness , but she cannot cry out - for our man has already stepped up to her and cover her mouth. His other hand reaches down, and then comes up her leg inside her skirt. "I'm going have me some fun., get what you've been keeping from me", he informs her.

CHapter 8
It's not clear whether our man he going to get what in came for or not , for suddenly there is a flash as bright red scales as the dragon swallows him whole right in front of our heroine.

"Uggh. I hate when you do that."

"You must be losing your touch , they're late this time." replied the Dragon.

The dragon flicks his tail and the chains securing the maiden breaks, and in a smooth movement the Dragon lifts the maiden on to his back.

Finally the second man , release that he ought tto be running not gauping and turns an start to flee into the wilderness, presumable not having the presence of mind to go to the village.

Our Maiden Kisses the the dragon behind ears, before throwing her head back and callling "hunting time"....

have amazon invented time travel....

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:16:15 GMT

This is just due out for a while ( like until 2015 ) is it?

They seem to have volume seven as well!

Erm Do some people read different books?

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:54:13 GMT

For one reason, which with probably get documented in the other place . I've been mugging up on the linux kernel interfaces again.

There area couple of device drivers I plan on writing. One simple - the other less so but most of the work has been done for other drivers already.

So there was I checking out amazon to see if Rubini has been brought up to date (my old first ed, copy being woefully out of date.) when I came across this.

It's not just me is it?. I mean how can that review be of that book?

Boggle

Wibble....

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 23:17:32 GMT

I always get my best weird ideas when listening to the news on the Radio.

Take today for example when almost fully formed the idea for a campaign which I will call for the sake of it...

CSI: Arkham

It's going to be more work than my usual campaigns
, but could be really quite fun.

So if you'll likely to be at Gameforce next time and an to play CSI:Arkham or one of the others , add a comment so I know what to prepare.