| Silat Movie! |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
Awesome.
This deserves some Indorock:
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| Murder at the End of Time |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|10:07 pm] |
Back to Indigo. Tonight the characters were on Terra Prime at the Fleet Syndicate's Gibraltar port: two gigantic ziggurats holding many ships like theirs. Thse crew dispersed throughout T-Prime -- to Kiev, Bablyon, Easter Island and elsewhere -- to perform research, say hello to family or just relax.
Captain Stensky was murdered by a member of the Davinci artists' syndic while he was writing a psychohistorical paper in Freiplatz, in the area immediadtely around the Gibraltar zone. There are no solid laws, so they had to let the Davinci go. Like all Davincis, this one looked like a living, breathing version of the Vitruvian Man. Stensky suffered brain damage so reconstruction will take time, though it won't be impossible. Without black box technology, creating a real mind is very tricky.
(This means that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kearsley, who was away, can return as Stensky at any time.)
The characters were shocked, but couldn't do much about it. They were tempted to obliterate the Davincis' island off the coat of North Africa but this *would* be illegal. They moved forward, decided the X-O would advance to captain and continued on their assignment to find out what happened to the FSV Communard, lost in unexplored territory Sphere-South of them.
They arrived just outside the last known location and discovered a large storm -- and unknown Transapient-origin nanites. In the nanites' zone they could detect many, many derelict vessels and after careful trial and error discovered that they either destroyed or rendered inert many high technologies. The Antipodean's diamond-positronium hull is held together with nanoscale gravitostrong generators and these nanites attacked these materials, though not ordinary nanomanufactured diamond.
As a result, the command locus planned to manufacture a propellor-driven plane. They'll fly it into the danger zone next session to look for Communard survivors. |
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| Rocky Balboa, HumFtr20 |
[May. 31st, 2009|02:10 am] |
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I enjoyed the movie, which was an odd mashup of character drama and comic book reality. Thus, I'm saving the Rocky of this movie as a model if I ever play a high level fighter. |
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| Must Eat Egyptian Food |
[May. 18th, 2009|03:52 am] |
Watched No Reservations tonight. They went to Egypt. Almost all of it looked good, and I only say almost because I'm irrationally squeamish about eating testicles.
At least Kushari is a decent entry level dish. |
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| Just Edited the FList |
[May. 18th, 2009|03:21 am] |
If you think I removed you mistakenly, or I have not added you even though you have an active LJ *and* know me:
1) Professionally
*or*
2) Face to Face
. . . please comment below. I've had this thing for like eight years so I have trouble tracking everybody. |
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| Tackling the Issues of the Day! |
[May. 15th, 2009|04:43 pm] |
OK, let's get all these out of the way at once.
Avatar Casting
Yeah, that was pretty dumb, but the "Inuit=parka" business was dumb too. Not as dumb as all the white people, though.
Avatar Casting Part 2
Did you know that there are Asian people who are not from China, Japan or Korea? Did you know that not every brown person in the world has something to do with the fallout of the US Civil War?
Dev Patel was obviously cast partly out of image management, but the comments that he wasn't "really Fire Nation-y Asian" were idiotic (and yeah, a little racist, but in a manner aceptable to the anime-nerd set). The idea that the Fire Nation is now all South Asian does have troubling colour-coded symbolism, but what's at least as annoying is that we have an entire fake culture colour-coded according to the casting of one guy.
RaceFail
I am conflicted, because I have a nuanced position to share, but this is the Internet, where someone will quote it out of context and repackage it in various inaccurate ways. Elizabeth Bear sure should have known this, which was the beginning of her problem.
Let me *try* to explore this topic:
1) Obviously, everyone has reflexively bigoted positions that they don't hold out of malice. The moment someone like Elizabeth Bear forgets this, and assumes that those positions are merely ignorant, rather than active, damaging agents, you have problems. Opinions about identity are not blank slates - they're black bug rooms. When you open the door, people are gonna see something ugly because it is ugly. Everyone is ugly. An ugly position expressed in the context of unequal power is even uglier.
2) On the other hand, absence of malice does count for something. It means that this ugly thing ought to be confronted with some compassion - but still confronted firmly. There really is a difference between malice and ignorance. How should that translate into what someone says? I'm not sure and it's not my call. It should just be in the equation. A lot of the time it was -- but sometimes it wasn't.
The RPG Pundit
His real name is John Tarnowski. He's not really trying to hide his identity (he uses his real name in Spanish-speaking circles) as much as maintain his persona, or I wouldn't say anything. This business with him and his name is kind of like insisting on being called "Elfstar" after you finish playing D&D. |
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| What, are you stupid or something? |
[May. 12th, 2009|03:06 am] |
Somebody wrote a book where they pretended there were no people in North America before white people, so that she could have magic animals.
What?
No, what? Really? Seriously?
Now I can accept that somebody might brainstorm this and just make a mistake, and not notice how dumb this is. But writing a whole book?
What?
No seriously, is this a joke? I mean, was this spat out by Lulu as some 4chan/other internet jerkhole prank?
I have looked at that link three times now. I want to you know there's no pretense, and I am genuinely dumbfounded that this made it through so many hands and so much time to press without somebody, I don't know, saying something? Addressing it in a press kit? Something? What?
Now I'm thinking there's maybe this American tendency to think of Native folks as a vanished people or something, so this person figured Mastodon=First Nations.
And now, I'm rereading the above sentence as the most reasonable hypothesis for the thought process that produced such a book that I can think of, and thinking: What the fuck man?
What is going on? |
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| The Antipodean's Pre-Sidereal Culture Group |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|05:41 pm] |
Like most FSVs, the Antipodean has various interest groups that meet by brane and pursue independent projects ranging from the useful to the silly -- and sometimes, the silly elements are useful, too. Due to the ease of tracking discussions and projects through brane droplet computing and local mistnets, most crew members belong to anywhere between a dozen and several hundred groups, though they may send an aliased expert to deal with trivial interaction. Even nonmembers can scan public access brilligs (brane logs) and briks (user editable common branespaces) for for fun.
The PSCG is a very popular group that most Antipodean members belong to. While the current captain is more of a serious history buff, most of the crew are interested in cultural productions: film, pre-AI computer gaming, music, fashion and so forth. This has several effects on shipboard life. For instance, by consensus the ship's default interior skinning is a faux-Victorian style more reminiscent of Jules Verne and 20th-20th ACE (Asymmetric Common Era) "steampunk" than history.
Science Fiction is obviously held in some regard by the crew, though most enjoy it as an exploration of alien (pre-Ekumen) values writ large instead of in its historical role as the precursor to modern Romantic Media. Really, they don't like to overthink it. These so-called "Trashfans" are responsible for most classical cultural production, and the faction is active across Commonwealth society.
One representative Trashfan product is the t-shirt. These are nonprogrammable, utilizing vintage technology (such as "silkscreening" and "inkjet printing") whenever possible. For instance, in the wake of Operation Strident Compromise a few wits with an interest in classical SF theatre and politics printed shorts with this design. There are a few variants featuring instantly recognizeable archetypes like Pierrot, Spock and Lady Di, though obviously purists prefer Spock or the default image.
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| D&D and Indigo |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|10:59 pm] |
I rolled two natural 20s in a row tonight for Twin Strike, laying some heavy crits on the bad guy. I'm playing a Warforged Ranger in our 4e game. That kicks ass.
The Warforged article in Dragon has a nonsensical, badly edited racial encounter power and positively drips with excuses for why you cannot pick a Warforged to play anything like the guy people would pick a Warforged to be. So I'm stuck with the encouter power in the MM, which is weak, but at least makes some kind of sense. I think I may write a proposed redesign.
(The article isn't all bad, since it made my character's implanted hand crossbow official. But still . . . not an auspicious experience with DDI material for me.)
Once you have the minis and a full selection of PCs going 4e runs quite well and I'm pretty pleased with it, but it is occasionally chafing. There need to be more effective things you can do with skills, for instance (I wanted to Crocodile Dundee a dire boar but we discovered that by default, this was a time consuming skill challengey thing, not something I could do to avoid just whaling on the monster in mid-encounter).
Indigo is going marvelously. The characters decided that to reconcile the land and aquatic civilizations they would just kill the leaders of both (psychohistorical projections listed this as a workable option), but the characters started to have doubts. So they argued alternatives before the ship's collective (they're brain-linked via Auntie, the ship's expert), making social rolls to determine who was the most persuasive, and reached a compromise to merely kidnap key figures from both governments. They asked for help from a Protection-focused ship called the Vengeance of Spartacus, who agreed to perform the snatch on land.
On their end, the PCs mounted an underwater assualt of the aquatic legislature using two wire-guided shuttles, two mecha and a few hardsuited characters. There was a brief tussle with several genetically engineered armored battle squid that had poisonous antipersonnel spines. Once character got hit and was on the fun end of poison and the bends, but they still accomplished their objectives.
The system is gradually drifting away from its Adventure! origins. I've used ideas from an upcoming WoD book to streamline combat and get rid of initiative, as well as institute a system where I can smoothly run person-scale and vehicle scale action. On the setting end, the combination of Trek tropes, transhumanism and anarchism works great. It's a sandbox (they picked this tecton out of five choices) and with the anarchy I don't have to worry about the strictures of military SF. Strangely, this makes leadership matter *more*, since the crew really can tell the PCs to fuck off if they express a plan badly. The artificial nature of the world (which owes a lot fo Stross Missile Gap lets me indulge Trek-y contrivances. They decided on this situation, but they could have visited the Neandertal tecton, or one where the Second Crusade was in full swing.
So gaming's been going great. That's it, really. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|06:50 am] |
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I've got doubles of the Horror Recognition Guide and Night Stalkers for Hunter, Seers of the Throne for Mage and Dancers in the Dusk for Changeling. Willing to trade for anything . . . interesting. |
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