You are viewing [info]kris_schnee's journal

About this Journal
Current Month
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031
May. 18th, 2012 @ 11:39 pm Games: Outbreak, SmallWorld
Tags:
Finally got to play "Outbreak" tonight. Oh, hey, it's "Flash Point: Fire Rescue"! Now that I've seen Outbreak (which is older), I prefer it. Outbreak has four diseases spreading instead of one kind of fire; the "discover a cure" mechanic; and random events good and bad. Same idea of racing around a map to stamp out flare-up disasters, "explosions" that happen if you let too much trouble happen in one place, and special character powers like "move other players". The main things FPFR has going for it over Outbreak are the mechanic of dragging victims to safety, and the fact that you can move through destroyed walls (which effectively changes the board layout over time) but destroyed walls are the main defeat condition. Overall I'd say FPPR is a simplified Outbreak, and that you should wash your hands more often.

Oh, and the expansion comes with threateningly-labeled petri dishes to hold the disease cubes in. Nice touch. There's also a bioterrorist mode, which looks like "Shadow of Dracula": one player moves in secret and the rest have to hunt them.

Got to play "SmallWorld" again too. It was based on a game about waves of barbarians sweeping into post-Roman Europe, and this version's fantasy instead. I think I talked about this one already. Someday explorers will wonder at the glorious fortresses of the lost tribe of Ratmen...
About this Entry
Game
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
May. 12th, 2012 @ 10:44 pm Games: Dragon Rampage, Sentinels of the Multiverse
Tags:
Went out to Six Feet Under Games, near Lancaster PA, since I'm in town. (Amish buggy count, this trip: 3.) We played a game called "Dragon Rampage", slew the dragon, and then immediately pulled out "Red Dragon Inn" and played characters as similar as possible.

"Dragon Rampage" is pretty interesting. It's a dice game with a bidding aspect. Basically there are several actions you can take each turn, and you get to do some of them depending on who rolled the most symbols of certain types. The tactics are in thinking, "Can I get enough shields to get the defense power this turn, or should I reroll that one shield to hope for another sword? No one's got a sword yet, so I could get an attack if I roll even one..." There's interesting strategy, too, in that the scoring depends on whether the party kills the dragon, or has someone die, or has someone escape. We were one round away from the rogue ditching us, which would've given him big points, when the rest of us killed the dragon, turning his "closest to the exit" bonus into a penalty.

"Sentinels of the Multiverse" is a superhero game with nice style. The character decks are all done in comic-book style, and the powers have quotes and fake issue references. There are several supervillains with their own decks of powers and henchmen. I got to be Absolute Zero, a power-armor-wearing guy with the power to abuse thermodynamics. And mechanics -- with all his gadgets equipped we had trouble counting all the ways he was redirecting fire and ice damage in one move. Good variety in the characters and strong use of theme. The game balance was carefully done, enough that we were getting destroyed until we took out Citizen Dawn's minions and then finally clobbered her. I had some trouble following what was going on ("do we take damage or not?), though I was sitting in an awkward spot and paying some attention to a "Dungeoneer" set I was leafing through. I'd say the game is worth checking out.
About this Entry
Game
2 comments
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Apr. 1st, 2012 @ 08:20 pm "John Carter"
Tags: ,
A comparison, for fun, between the movie version I just saw and the original novel:

Book: "Here's my amazing story:"
Movie: "Here's a prologue, followed by a pointless framing device..."

Book: "I encountered some hostile Indians."
Movie: "I encountered some American soldiers who wanted me to fight Indians." (At least it didn't outright have him side with them, but apparently portraying Indians as anything but victims is verboten now.)

Book: "I'm basically an upright and heroic guy who will ride into danger to save a friend."
Movie: "I'm basically a loser who can get beaten up four times in five minutes, who's willing to rob people for a can of beans and who runs from danger. I'm only an action hero in low gravity."

Book: "I woke up naked."
Movie: "I woke up fully dressed, because you know, Hollywood is squeamish about nudity."

Book: "I got involved in a longstanding and complex cultural feud."
Movie: "Zodango Bad, Helium Good! Also, secret alien spy ring bad!"

Book: "I spent time among the Tharks learning their language and culture."
Movie: "I drank a magic potion that has no reason to exist, that let me learn the language instantly."

Book: "Zodango was dangerous because of its military might."
Movie: "Zodango was dangerous because the evil boss had an evil raygun."

Book: "I convinced the Tharks to attack Zodango so they could loot the place. They did."
Movie: "I convinced the Tharks to attack Zodango because they suddenly cared about saving the world."

In short, this is the Saturday morning cartoon version.

Also, about the portrayal of Dejah Thoris: it's part of the trend of turning female characters into Xena, Warrior Princess. Which is silly and actually kind of insulting, since it implies that a female character can't be strong or interesting unless they act like a stereotypical male hero.
About this Entry
AI
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Mar. 30th, 2012 @ 11:50 am Stumped?
Tags: ,
On DeviantArt I was looking at two possible novel ideas to write next. One's SF, involving firemen on a seastead. One's fantasy, involving kitsune in Japan ca. 1700. And I'm kind of troubled.

I'd like to write SF: near-future (say now-to-2100), plausible, and upbeat. But I'm having trouble seeing a plausible future meeting those requirements unless there's also some kind of upheaval in America, or the whole thing is set on a seastead where people have the freedom to innovate and create. A couple of stories I've done have assumed either that the innovation is coming from a seastead, or from an independent Texas or something. Not to say that that's the only plausible kind of "good future", but since I have a tough time seeing another, I'm limited in what I can write. I said this in a stupid way elsewhere, but I'm not qualified to write a story where the world's big problem is consumerism.

Why not write fantasy, then? Well, I just got through with a fantasy novel, so it's partly burnout. But also, I keep saying there isn't enough SF out there to inspire people, in contrast to fantasy and far-future SF stories that have no bearing on reality. Yeah, maybe in the year 2600 the Galaxy Lords will grant humans the chance to explore space on the condition of becoming scantily-clad ottergirls, but how does that affect anyone in the real world? I get kind of impatient with that kind of thing, and more so with fantasy where wizards or werewolves have been around forever and somehow no one's noticed. If I did the kitsune story it'd specifically avoid that "Masquerade" trope and lead to an alternate history where Ben Franklin studies fox magic or something. (Do you realize how many people believe in a real "Masquerade" re: angels, aliens, and/or government agencies?) And I don't even like most of what I've been reading in "Fantasy & Science Fiction", which suggests that the kind of fantasy I'd want to write is not what they're buying.

I was also cautioned by a friend that I sounded cynical, by feeling obligated to (1) crank out another novel and (2) make it furry so I have some hope of selling it to a small press. If I don't genuinely enjoy and believe in what I'm writing it's not going to be good anyhow.

So, I'm having trouble figuring out what to write, that I would enjoy writing, that I could conceivably market.
About this Entry
Writing
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Mar. 27th, 2012 @ 12:15 am Novel Is Out the Door!
Current Mood: pleasedpleased
Tags: ,
"Striking the Root" is out to a small publisher as of today, for judgment. I've finished the style edit I was talking about, and will do a much shorter edit in the meantime after I've put the story down for a bit.

By the way, you might be interested in Antilia ( http://antilia-game.com/ ), an anthropomorphic MMORPG in development. They've done some public testing and might do so again. What I know of it suggests that the developers are trying for something other than the standard monster-slaying, grinding gameplay. I've volunteered to do a little writing for them.

And one more thing: "Resisting Arrest" ( http://resistingarrest.net/ ) is the site of a friend who's already got several novels in print. I recommend "Freedom City" in particular.
About this Entry
Writing
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Mar. 19th, 2012 @ 11:15 pm RPG Report: "Exalted: Tomb of Five Corners"
Tags: ,
When I run a one-shot RPG in person, it tends to go horribly wrong, but in an entertaining way. This time it was at Furry Weekend Atlanta. One or two people remembered that I'd run a version of "Exalted" cobbled together from three conflicting introductory rulesets. And they actually wanted to play with me again! This time I printed out the simplest of the actual rulesets instead of imposing my own "non-OCD edition", and used the sample adventure from one of the other rulesets.

( Read more... )
What went right: Players got into the spirit of "Exalted"'s stunt system, between the rules-light system we used and the liberal granting of bonus dice. We got through the quest. The players seemed to have fun; I did. All three steady players got to do something cool.
What went wrong: I failed to memorize quite as much as I should've. A more elaborate map, with miniatures, would've been cooler than my minimalist method of ink on paper. As usual I dithered about exactly what, if anything, I was going to run. The characters... didn't exactly conform to the standards of the Solar/Lunar Exalted. Loot was hard to make special, because I could explain why two swords were different but the rules didn't allow them to have a mechanical difference. Attacks were overpowered even by Exalted standards, preventing any real challenge. (And again, my bad guys rolled badly.)
Next time: I might bite the bullet and try actual 2nd Edition rules. But that requires pre-made characters if it's at a con, due to the complexity of character creation, and for an ongoing game it requires writing up summary rules and/or asking players to buy the book, which I'd rather not ask of people.
About this Entry
Game
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Mar. 5th, 2012 @ 05:15 pm Reminder Of the Double Standard
Tags:
A woman testifies before Congress about her sex life, and demands that someone else be forced to pay her to sustain it, and Limbaugh calls her a "slut". (Okay, fine, the choice of words was inappropriate. Nearly as offensive as what Democrats called Palin. Limbaugh apologized for that. Just not for pointing out that she's demanding that others violate their religion to give people things that don't belong to them.) What's interesting here is the reaction:

1: "Calling a woman a bad word == trying to silence her. That's evil."
2: "Limbaugh said a bad word! Threaten his advertisers and try to take his show off Armed Services Radio. If we're lucky we can shut down his show so that he'll be silenced. That's good."

Should I be assured that the critics of Limbaugh & Co. will stop with words and lobbying to shut them up? These are critics who have no objection to hanging out with self-proclaimed communists and socialists, who are not known for their love of free media.

Nice coverage here and here by the way about one of the president's friends working with the Occupy folks at a seminar about "The Abolition Of Capitalism".
About this Entry
Patriot
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Feb. 21st, 2012 @ 11:07 pm Novel Revision: Style
Tags: ,
A comparison of two story snippets after being given some usefully specific advice about style:
( Read more... )

Basically, the advice was that my wording is confusing because I use odd sentence structures like "Buying an apple pie, he raced to the VIP area and dropped it." ("it" being what, the VIP area?) That might've happened because I was trying to get away from repetitive "Subject Verb Object" structure, or "Phrase A, Phrase B", and went overboard. I'm now trying a simpler phrasing. Thoughts?

By the way, I was presented with two plans for revising this story. Either focus on cleaning it up with minor changes, or radically rethink some things like the personality and government of the squirrelfolk. I'm going with the first plan, but worry that the story might not end up as good as it could be. But then I'm comparing the actual story to a hypothetical text whose pages shine with enchanted ink.
About this Entry
Engineer
5 comments
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Feb. 17th, 2012 @ 06:17 pm Economic Numbers
Tags:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/record-12-million-people-fall-out-labor-force-one-month-labor-force-participation-rate-tumbles-
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

According to our government, unemployment is falling. Great news! Except that the labor force participation rate, ie. the share of people who haven't given up looking, has mysteriously fallen more last month than ever before. And while looking for the first link above, I found this article from 2011 Jan. That one noted that unemployment is falling but the participation rate is falling too, so the same shenanigans have been going on for over a year. In fact, the 2011 article says that "almost 2/3rds of the decline in the unemployment rate was related to the decline in the participation rate."

According to our government, we're making progress on cutting back federal spending. Great news! Except that according to the White House's own figures, the president proposes to increase spending every year. The president claims -- and the media are going to parrot -- that this budget strategy is "balanced" because it jacks up taxes but cuts the deficit by around 2.5 dollars for each buck of taxes. Now, since spending is going up, that means there are spending cuts of $0 in this budget, meaning the tax-hike/spending-cut ratio is infinity to one. (In fact, the president boasts about how he's going to raise spending on a lot of specific programs.) How are spending increases explained as deficit reduction? Easy: by the same weaseling both parties have been doing for many years, namely assuming that spending will rise every year and then congratulating yourself if you raise it by slightly less.

We're also hearing that the government might hit its debt ceiling yet again before the election. Don't worry, though; the accountants will do the same creative accounting they did last time to put off any real need for action.
About this Entry
Engineer
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Feb. 13th, 2012 @ 05:07 pm Missing the Point, Getting the Point
Tags:
A friend pointed me yesterday to this interview with Peter Thiel about politics. (Thiel is an alleged libertarian who's one of the main people pushing seasteading.) I told him that Thiel completely missed the point in his political talk. The man sees conservative arguments as being about economics, saying that the conservative movement of the last few decades is all about the inefficiency of the welfare state. Conservatives think taxes shouldn't go higher because the government can't be trusted with the money. And ultimately we're fighting over a shrinking (per capita) economic pie because of a slowdown in technological growth.

In contrast, this much shorter article gets the point Thiel misses. "Yes, the Tea Party has been about spending and debt, about solvency and prosperity. But at its core, the spirit of the Tea Party has always been a reawakening to the threats today's big-government liberalism poses to our constitution of liberty... that the problem with big-government liberalism is not just that it spends our money, or even that it spends more money than we have; it's that it takes away our freedom."

For a lot of Republicans (some of them named Mitt, Rick and Newt) the dispute really is just about whether we should spend a little more, or a lot more. But others get the point that there's a deeper dispute here, and we're forced to decide one way or another on basic legal and moral principles.
About this Entry
Engineer
Leave a comment
Permanent Link