Pandering, Pondering, Pillaging Pointlessly

[Reviews from R'lyeh] Our Ladies of Sorrow

2009-11-08T20:46:18Z

http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-shall-we-three-meet-again-in.html

Sent to me by a friend -- thanks, Tom.

2009-09-16T21:06:34Z

Eye have a spell checker, it came with my pea see.
It marques four my revue, miss steaks eye kin not sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word and weight four it two say,
Weather eye am write or wrong, it will show me write a weigh.
As soon as a miss steak is maid, it nose bee four two long,
And eye can make the error write, it's rare lee ever wrong.
Eye halve run this poem threw it, eye am shore your pleased to no,
It's letter perfect all the weigh, my spell checker told me sew.

pwca @ 2009-09-14T15:49:00

2009-09-14T14:49:21Z

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

What the Publisher thinks...

2009-09-13T13:42:03Z

Normally I do even hear back from a publisher about a review. Today I heard back from a publisher -- in public.

You may have read my review of Age of Cthulhu Vol. II: Madness in London Town (http://gamecryer.com/2009/09/06/madness-in-london-town/) at GamerCryer.com, but you will not have seen the publisher’s response at yog-sothoth.com on page eight of this thread (http://www.yog-sothoth.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=173506#173506).

At this point I am still thinking about my reply.

Alex's GCSE Results:

2009-08-27T17:35:54Z

Geography C, Art and Design A, Art and Design (Textiles) A, Art and Design (3-D Design) A, D&t: Graphic Design D, English B, English Literature A, Mathematics C,
Science B

She is disappointed to have only got "A"s for her Art, but I think that she did very well given some of the teachers she had.

pwca @ 2009-07-22T20:46:00

2009-07-22T19:46:45Z

The Wii is a fun console, but these peripherals are just too much...

pwca @ 2009-07-22T19:26:00

2009-07-22T18:26:29Z

Interesting article on the resurgence of the board game.

I am not knowledgeable enough to really comment, but as much as I enjoy Blokus, I wonder if it is enough of a game to attract an audience in their twenties. It is a good family game, but it lacks the complexity to keep others coming back to it. The other games mentioned in the article offer more, and to be honest I think that is where the article should have expanded into.

pwca @ 2009-07-22T19:05:00

2009-07-22T18:05:59Z

DaveL came over this afternoon and we tackled some board games.

He did bring Race For The Galaxy, but he had not read the rules, so we went straight into a couple of games of Gambit 7, which Alex seems to like a lot. Alex won one game, while Dave won another. Dave was impressed enough with the game that he plans to pick up a copy for use at school.

I had Toboggans of Doom to try, but we got stumped at the rolling of the dice. Just needed clarification of the rules, which I will look for on line at another time. So we jumped straight from that to a game of Pandemic, which we played at the moderately hard setting with five Epidemic cards. It was a hard game with Dave thinking that we were going to loose, while I thought that we might be lucky and win. While every role has its place in the game, we had a great combination of Medic, Researcher, and Scientist, managing to stave off the four diseases at three Disease cards per round (just shy of four) and six Outbreaks. Still a great game, but we need to try with Alex in charge instead of us bossing her around. In this instance, Davel and I have already booked our flights to the International Space Station.

Lastly Alex said that she wanted to play Alhambra, which she has grown to like very much. Unfortunately I managed to build a fantastic wall and trounce both of them 146 points to 115 each.

pwca @ 2009-07-22T00:10:00

2009-07-21T23:10:38Z

Terrors From Beyond review for Call of Cthulhu

pwca @ 2009-07-22T00:08:00

2009-07-21T23:08:02Z

Well, it is over. It was not terrible. It met my expectations because I did not set any. Which makes it easy for everyone.

pwca @ 2009-07-21T09:28:00

2009-07-21T08:28:30Z

Can you have too much Radio 4?

I apologise for those you without access to Radio 4 as you will miss the humour of the conversation. I also have to apologising for being condescending and feeling sorry that you do not have access to Radio 4.

pwca @ 2009-07-20T21:39:00

2009-07-20T20:39:26Z

The Wizard Of Oz in the Iron Age of comics: http://bit.ly/CnKBC

Snerk...

2009-07-20T19:06:01Z

The Onion does it again with this marvellously redone front page.

...Butterfly...

2009-07-20T17:12:44Z

Butterfly, butterfly...
Why do you stay?
Butterfly, butterfly...
Please fly away!
Butterfly, butterfly...
Escape this very sad place!
Butterfly, butterfly...
Fly. Fly, fly away!
...Before it's too late.

pwca @ 2009-07-19T19:17:00

2009-07-19T18:18:02Z

Struggled through my review of Terrors From Beyond the latest supplement for Call of Cthulhu.

2800 words of me not being happy with it.

pwca @ 2009-07-15T23:03:00

2009-07-15T22:04:02Z

Been out tonight to see the Michael Mann directed Public Enemies and discovered why mobile phones were invented.

It is so that everyone involved with this film could call their performance and involvement in the film in from where ever they were at the time. Probably doing more useful like being sat on the toilet.

Now I do like Michael Mann as a director and I like his films, but with Public Enemies has managed to make something that reasonably good looking and probably well shot, but is other dull, boring, and utterly lacking in characterisation. The point is, we know what happened to the main character, John Dillinger, but in this film we are told nothing about him beyond the fact that he is shallow, but loyal. So the film is not a character study, nor is truly a historical piece because so much of the film is wrong, such as who kills who and when.

So, what I want is for Michael Mann to give my money back, to give me back my time, and apologise. Then I will let him make another movie.

Of course, if it was the director Michael Bay wearing a Michael Mann costume and attempting to make a film without explosions, then I am the one who owes the apology.

In the meantime, neither myself, lulucthulhu, or dinkybruiser enjoyed this film.

It gets 2/10 for cinematography and costumes.

pwca @ 2009-07-14T23:55:00

2009-07-14T22:55:43Z

My review of Days of Steam is up at Gamecryer.com.

pwca @ 2009-07-05T01:07:00

2009-07-05T00:07:23Z

This afternoon we had a small board gaming session. DaveL came over and together with lulucthulhu and threetrees, I got three games out on the table.

The first was an old favourite to get us into the mood. It is a while since we played Red Empire and I had intended to showcase the game at Games Expo, but did not manage to get it out of the bag. So we played a lot of Pandemic instead. We were quickly into the swing of things, with only two changes of presidency (between me and DaveL), and we managed to deal with all but one of the Crisis, ending the game by exhausting the deck. We got in a little table talk too. I managed to win 65 points to 49!

At DaveL’s suggestion we introduced threetrees to Pandemic. We set the game at medium level, so had plenty of Epidemic cards to deal with, and we had the Medic role (threetrees took this role, as it is the easiest to play), so it was slightly easier. We got threatened with Outbreaks several times – we only got as far as four, but the number of cards we had to draw each turn went up to four too! We had the Researcher and Scientist too, as well as the Dispatcher, so I got to move everyone around. We won, but it was a close run thing, the draw deck not quite exhausted.

We ended the session with a new game, Days of Steam, a game that I picked up at Games Expo. This is a train game, but a relatively easy one. It involves you laying tracks and towns, collecting the goods from each town and delivering them elsewhere. The game has a nice balance between the need to lay track and the need to build up steam to drive the trains so that goods can be delivered. The game plays well and looks very nice, although the rulebook does need a polish.

pwca @ 2009-07-04T14:26:00

2009-07-04T13:26:35Z

The second RPG I tried at Games Expo was the (now) Origins Award winning Mouse Guard. This was first thing Saturday morning, with DaveL and I rushing to get there, and not be distracted by everything that was new and on sale! We did not even have time to visit the face painter and get our faces done as mice. Which would have been very silly, but funny all the same.

We had a group of six and were playing the “Deliver the Mail” scenario from the core book. I only know this now because I am currently reading the core book. I also know that we were not playing the game as written, there being no adversarial division in the game between the GM and the players. So instead of the GM’s and the players’ turns, the game was played more as a traditional RPG.

One very nice touch was that the GM has finger puppets for each character, complete with the right colour cloak and weapon. This was because Mouse Guard is regarded as an introductory game – it is and it isn’t, being slightly too complex for that, but in the hands of a good GM it is – and while we did not use them as finger puppets, we did use them as miniatures. Although a comment was made that we could play the game in one-to-one scale right there on the table, mice not being all that big.

Despite not adhering to the turn structure we all had fun. I kept arguing that we needed to deal with problems that were coming up before rushing off to deliver the mail, and that actually developed into an argument. I lost. In the end though, I was proved right. We had to go back and deal with a major threat to one village.

What was interesting was our having to adjust to thinking down to mouse scale. Nature became much, much more of a threat.

We were all very brave and clever where it was needed! I attacked a ground squirrel and stuck it with an arrow before DaveL dived in and drove the arrow into the creature’s skull with his spear. I gave him the name “Nosestriker” for that! Lastly I defended us against a snake by striking it from the inside! I had to be cut out and I was battered and bruised.

It was a fun game and I do hope that DaveL runs it. I just hope that dinkybruiser will like it.

pwca @ 2009-07-04T12:41:00

2009-07-04T11:41:12Z

This is traditional.

Happy birthday tax-dodging, religion dissenting...

REBEL SCUM!

pwca @ 2009-07-04T12:39:00

2009-07-04T11:40:07Z

If you are going to say happy birthday America, say it with fireworks. North Korea did.

Which was nice.

pwca @ 2009-07-04T12:35:00

2009-07-04T11:35:47Z

So Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska is going to step down and not run again.

lulucthulhu has been wondering if her next career move will be as a Tina Fey impersonator?

pwca @ 2009-07-03T22:23:00

2009-07-03T21:24:06Z

I did manage to get some roleplaying at Games Expo. On Friday I tried the new fantasy RPG from Triple Ace Games, Hellfrost, which is inspired by Scandinavian/Northern Europe cultures. This is set in a world of encroaching winter, and the cold influences all aspects of the game. The scenario I played will probably be available soon, but it can be best described as a tournament, in which the prizes were a village’s best girls. The competition came in three stages, the first being a storytelling session, the second a drinking contest, before ending with an egg hunt.

It was a fun scenario, although it felt not unlike the scenario from the back of The Legend of the Five Rings, which itself ended with a giant egg hunt. I had fun and I was very competitive, doing reason ably well in the storytelling, and holding out in the drinking contest by supping strong ale rather than going for the brandies and other spirits that the others drank in a drunk or glory bid. For the egg hunt, we faced rival competitors, bandits, an enticing ceremony, and a riddle setter. I did well on finding eggs, but decided to buy more from the others, having won various bets in the tavern the night before. These were on two arm wrestling contests. In the first I bet that a weedy elf could beat the champion – and he did! The second, I bet against a soldier against the champion, and he lost!

Armed with a sack load of eggs, I did indeed win the competition. I choose to take the first bride, who was very pretty and vivacious. Unfortunately she was demanding and penniless!

So I lost. I should have taken the alternative cash price.

pwca @ 2009-07-02T19:37:00

2009-07-02T18:37:11Z

We have tickets to see I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue in Birmingham in September.

Hurrah.

REMINDER

2009-06-30T20:11:28Z

Torchwood - Asylum is on Radio 4 tomorrow afternoon.