Topics

91

History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / Cryogenics

« on: July 08, 2023, 06:09:16 PM »

Not that I was a huge fan of cryonics/cryogenics to start with, but this article of horror stories about the practice is a) somewhat nightmare fuel and b) quite interesting in that regard:

https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/

92

Ren: The Girl With The Mark / Ren Series 2 Trailer

« on: June 25, 2023, 11:05:08 AM »

Just dropped yesterday, looks like good fun

93

Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Nightfall: Uni-Verse Anthology Four

« on: May 28, 2023, 09:08:35 PM »

The Uni-Verse, the University of Vienna creative writing society, recently released its fourth anthology, Nightfall. I thought I would post about it because a) it's very pretty and b) I have a story in it. This is a tale of Tercaresse, a half-orc ranger with an adorable pet badger called Hrut who was my character in my playthrough of Neverwinter Nights. There's also lots and lots of other stories and poems in there which are very well worth reading

94

Food Discussion - The Jolly Boar Kitchen / Asparagus with ham & pastry wrap (good tapas/small food)

« on: May 21, 2023, 11:21:18 PM »

This worked pretty well!

Recipe:

• Take asparagus spears
• Wrap in serrano/parma ham
• Wrap further in pastry
• Brush with milk for glaze
• Add salt and herbs on top of glaze

Before cooking:


After cooking:


And served:

95

Cepheida / Cepheida: The Exploration Game

« on: May 18, 2023, 07:24:56 PM »

So I've been mulling over what to do with Cepheida recently, with a round of new thoughts sparked by James Holloway's recent Monster Man episode on the creatures of Rogue Trader, in which he discussed the problem of wildlife and local hazards in wargaming and skirmish gaming and how early Rogue Trader sort of assumed a GM/DM system for a wargame, something that probably fell out of favour for reasons of practicality. So I was thinking through alternative approaches to making games focused on exploration, and returned mentally to the same rough system I've used for exploration systems a ton of times before - a blank map with tiles and diceroll-based exploration charts and making that the core of a game. I've used this system for multiple Warhammer Fantasy campaigns (now run about fifteen years ago which is scary to think of) and also most notably for Hetairos, my Greek underworld dungeon crawling game.

So I've been thinking about how to make a Cepheida game based on a similar system - hyper simple and quick for combats, few and simple stat checks, keeping the focus on the map exploration side. It will probably be a bit more involved than Hetairos in some respects - having different "factions" instead of a character list, I think probably also a campaign system, and a bit more setup for determining what kind of planet and biome the players are exploring which might affect the exploration charts somehow? I think maybe also some kind of creature generator system could be fun, I've always played Hetairos as a "just grab whatever cubes are around" game which I know limits its appeal but I think this might end up with similar systems.

I still sort of have the idea of a Cepheida skirmish game or computer game/RPG sometime, but I think this idea of an exploration game might make a lot more sense as a completeable project (I say - we'll see if I get anywhere with it).

Thoughts welcome!

96

Exilian Bards' Club / EFDSS & Reimagining Folk Music

« on: May 08, 2023, 12:48:30 PM »

I found this a really interesting piece, discussing some of how modern folk dance is rebuilding fusions with contemporary dance and music. I like this a lot even if the fusion stuff is not my own preferred dance/music style: I think it's much better that folk traditions are actively kept alive with the way that people today engage with this stuff. And the Morris Dance/Indie Rock thing does look fun.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230507-the-london-venue-reimagining-british-music

97

Hetairos / Hetairos, a 2nd Edition?

« on: May 07, 2023, 10:34:22 PM »

I've been mulling over producing a second edition of the game. The first edition rules are reasonably fun, but I don't think I've ever managed to get people to play them in games I wasn't running myself, and they're not very pretty and have some obvious holes especially around monster movement rules and how to adjudicate where monsters should "choose" to go, which needs some more detail.

So this is my list of hoped for changes:

• Rearranging rules sections to flow better with how the game is actually played, including a better description of how turns and action points work
• Improved monster movement rules
• Scenario balance changes: I want more scenarios to scale better to the number of players
• More examples in the rulebook, ideally with diagrams
• Proper formatting and layout, not just the old word doc style
• A pretty new cover for the whole thing

Not sure how far I'll get with this but that's the theory. Hopefully more updates to come, questions & suggestions for things you'd like to see in a Greek underworld dungeon crawling boardgame/RPG hybrid welcome!

98

History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / Troll Station and Troll Time

« on: May 07, 2023, 03:12:16 PM »

So, I was looking at Google Calendar earlier and scrolling down alternative time zones, because I needed to put a meeting in for when I'm in Georgia and putting it in for 2pm Georgian Time rather than attempting the conversion seemed sensible. This involved me scrolling down the wide array of such time zones, and thus encountering the existence... of troll time.

Yes, Troll Time is an actual thing, it's a real time zone: it operates a winter time of CEST (+2), and a summer time of GMT (+0), leading to an unusual two hour daylight savings oddity. Why? Because Troll Time is the time at Troll Station. Which besides being another "yes that's a real place", is Norway's permanent research centre in the Antarctic, which by all accounts they built partially to secure their claims to participate in the various Antarctic treaties. In the summer Troll Time uses the actual local time zone, which would be GMT, and in the winter when it's dark and there aren't any flights they just switch to using Norwegian time.

Anyway, I thought that was an interesting curiosity Apparently also Troll Station is so named for the looming pillars of rock nearby, which definitely is some kind of Scandi-fantasy or possibly Folk-horror tale waiting to happen.

99

History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / The Perfected Curriculum?

« on: May 07, 2023, 02:35:52 PM »

So I thought this was an interesting thought experiment, sparked by Psyanojim and Richard's discussions at the last meetup on how much better it would be if we counted in hexadecimal.

The idea is this: if you could restructure education, without having to consider things like how society currently actually works, what would you teach people? What methods or systems or knowledge that are currently under-used would go in, and what would we discard as obsolete? Are there foundation blocks of how we teach and think that we could actually wildly change if we put in different keystones from the start?

I of course don't actually think that education should be one-size-fits-all anyway, but I thought it was an interesting thing to think about. I'm not sure what my own answers are yet, either, but I thought I'd throw it out there and see if anyone else had thoughts.

100

General Chatter - The Boozer / Upcoming Pubs (May & June)

« on: May 07, 2023, 12:22:57 AM »

So the next few months are a bit chaotic, but should be OK for schedules. This month should be a Thurs as last month was Friday, so I think that makes it May 25. And then June really only has Friday 23rd as an option as I'm not back from the Caucasus until the 22nd. How would that work for people?

101

Hetairos / Test 25 April

« on: May 01, 2023, 11:58:58 PM »

So, had a rarity - a win with a two-player game. One of the things I want to do if I make a new edition is make the scenarios balance better.

We played the bounty hunters scenario, with me playing a philosopher (who, in a vain attempt to produce a bounty hunter/philosopher pun, first became Bobagenes Diogenes and thereafter somehow Bobbity Dobbity, with TP playing a cyclops who, in Diogenes trivia references but also excellent cyclops naming, became The Barrel. (I think I choose to believe that the name Bobbity Dobbity is in fact The Barrel's invention).

Our early game was very much dominated by finding too many small tunnels that Barrel could not fit down, and then eventually finding a village of kobaloi who tried to slit Barrel's purse only to find it empty.

We then found an Olympian Shrine, followed by a nest of Stymphalian Birds. This meant that we had essentially stumbled across an unusual situation where there was a clear dominant strategy: The Barrel was strong enough to punch the birds flat, so it was basically a case of wait, punch, capture, repeat, until we had enough birds that we could cart them slowly back to the kobalos village and deposit them to win the scenario.

I'm not sure if there's a good way to prevent this kind of dominant-strategy run in some multiplayer scenarios: the randomness means it'll just happen sometimes, I think. I also suspect that with more players we'd have explored faster, and the occasional simple winning game is fine.

102

General Chatter - The Boozer / Exilian Pub Out Of Context

« on: April 28, 2023, 07:31:47 PM »

A thread for quotes from Exilian pubs, contextlessly

103

Food Discussion - The Jolly Boar Kitchen / Savoury strudel

« on: April 23, 2023, 03:07:53 PM »

I think savoury strudel is the best way I can explain this thing: I thought I'd put some instructions for making one, anyway. It's a simple pastry dish that's very easy to make with pre-rolled pastry.

Things needed: pastry, sour cream, an egg (optional), whatever you need for filling (in this case mushrooms, dill, garlic).

I started with a pastry sheet and then covered it in sour cream. I also used a bit of egg for the glaze, so I put the rest of the egg in with the sour cream too at this stage.



Next issue was filling: I went for cooking mushrooms and garlic, a very standard and good flavour combination. Unfortunately in this case my hand slipped when I was adding a small amount of dill for taste, so this one tasted a lot more of dill than I'd intended. I think you could do lots of other fillings for this, any vegetation that cooks OK should do: I've done onion and red pepper in the past, for example, which you can see at the end of this post. You could probably do a bit less pre-cooking of the filling than I did here.



Then, shock, combine the two:



Then roll it up: this is a bit finicky to ensure that the filling doesn't just fall out as you roll. The rolling up is what makes it a strudel (which is derived from an old word for whirlpool). I went for a corner to corner rolling strategy but straight on is probably just as good. Once it's all rolled up, brush the rest of the egg on. If you don't want to use egg, milk will give a bit of glaze effect, or if you don't want to use either, it doesn't actually affect it much beyond how pretty it does or does not look after cooking. A quick google suggests that vegans among you can use coconut oil or a mix of agave nectar & almond milk for a glaze, but I can't vouch for either having not tried them.



And, well, voila! The cooking at about 180 to 200 celsius takes maybe thirty or forty mins, basically keep an eye on it, longer is better to ensure the inside is properly cooked and heated as long as it doesn't burn.



Can be served hot or re-heated later, freezes well, generally good all-round utility food and a bit more interesting than yet another pasta night

104

History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / The Homoromanteion - An Ancient "Oracular" Aphorism Randomiser

« on: April 23, 2023, 02:43:06 PM »

On Masto, Dr. Kirsten Dwiza was posting about the Homoromanteion, which I'd not come across before so I thought I'd share it here. It's essentially an ancient magic/divination scroll, but it seems to work according to a 3d6 dice table and gives you an appropriate passage of Homer for answering your query. Which feels amusingly modern, in that it's basically an aphorisms/inspirational quotes randomiser.



There is, doubly enjoyably, a fully online version complete with translation that someone made back in 2016, available at http://www.homeromanteion.com/

May it tell you some useful fortunes!

105

Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Dwarf Gothic

« on: April 22, 2023, 11:38:33 PM »

This is really a TTRPG (or possibly boardgame, or computer game, who knows, though I think my first envisioning of it was TTRPG so it's going here) setting idea without anything attached to it yet, and I don't know if I'll use it for anything, but here's the pitch for my own notes as much as anything, thoughts welcome!


Humans have dominated Hovaz for many years. Their empires held sway upon the surface, and even into the high mountains and deep woods their fires burned. In among them, dwarfs were little communities of tinkers, who were spat upon, moved with their masters, and perhaps sometimes told stories of half-remembered times when they held their own halls deep beneath the high hills: but these they told only to themselves.

But now the world is fracturing: the exhaustions of war have caused the world to creak at the seams, caused corruption and banditry to spread across the fields and the lowlands. Muskets are being used as clubs because of the scarcity of gunpowder, and the depradations of war are causing spirits to stir that should not have been awoken. And little by little, the dwarfs built spaces for themselves: little places and times where they found that they could take time and space for themselves. And so they met, and so they told their stories of half-remembered times, and so they took their tinkerings and tales and they made of them... something new.

The world is fracturing, and it may be up to the once-humbled dwarfs to decide what sort of age the future will be. Inventions built as a way of opting out of a breaking society might now be needed to save it, or complete its destruction. How will mankind react to the heavy tread of golems and the rattle of carts along the dwarfs' new iron roads? Will the dwarfs manage to bring torches back to long-empty halls, and will what they build there be a rebirth of tradition or something entirely new to shape a different sort of existence altogether?

Will the dwarfs be able to deal with the monsters that lurk in the shadows? What about the ones that lurk within themselves?


There's various ideas I'm batting around with for this. One core premise is sort of exploring what happens when people who've formerly been oppressed find they can turn the tables: it's not really an industrial revolution story in my mind, and I think I want to keep the dwarfs' technology quite artisanal. But I think focusing on problems like "Well all our stories from 400 years ago say X, now we actually get to decide on that, are we going back to that? Do we trust these stories, and who are we if we don't?" is quite an interesting one re playing with shaping belief. And I think putting it from the Dwarfs' perspective makes it a potentially hopeful setting: the world is being reshaped anyway, it can't be "defended" or "protected", it's just about deciding what sort of world it will become.

I think it also works aesthetically in my head. Like, I sort of imagine the movie trailer for this involving a caravan of bicorne-hatted or floppy-hatted dwarfs edging nervously through a forest, perhaps with a golem-pulled cart or early steam engine, with human bandits with rusty swords watching from the shadows - and then as night falls, both the humans and dwarfs find themselves losing members of their party to an unseen assailant. Or possibly a scenario with dwarfs returning to a mine mentioned in their songs and finding humans living in the upper caves who've actually now been there for several generations: how do you deal with that? Who has what rights? Are you coming to put a king back on a mountain throne, or do you find new compromises and ideas?

Anyway, just something I've been mulling over. We'll see if I add any more thoughts to it!