/var/log/orava

All Christmased out

It’s almost nice to be back at work. Not that Christmas wasn’t nice, it was. Very. It’s just that after multiple days of lounging about and eating way too much Christmas food and candy, you start to feel like doing something else.

I’ve apparently been very nice last year, Santa brought me a huge new 24” monitor (among other nice stuff). 1920x pixels is quite a change after using 1280x for ages and ages. The kittehs also appreciate it: running Dragon Age at that resolution makes my graphics card actually work for its living, which in turn heats up the machine quite a bit, which in turn pushes out lots of hot air out of the cooling vents. Guess where the kittehs like to lounge? Right.

My intention was to do all sorts of useful things over the Christmas break, but in reality I’ve mostly been playing Dragon Age and reading a bit. Oh well.

Minireview: Life on Atlantis (Heavy Gear)

The second-to-last of the Heavy Gear colony books, Life on Atlantis describes the colony world of Atlantis. Like the name implies, it’s a water world; small islands here and there but mostly just ocean. Colonized and somewhat terraformed in the early years by a Terran corporate consortium, then abandoned by the CEF withdrawal, and now stuck in a stalemate war with the CEF forces bent on (re)conquest. Unlike most other worlds, where CEF has either conquered or been pushed back, here the result is a strange form of stalemate. The CEF holds the islands and has space superiority, but the Atlantean locals hold the rest of the world (i.e. the oceans). Based in vast underwater cities, they have underwater tech that the CEF cannot match and the ability to shoot down satellites from low orbit, using submarine-based beam weaponry and distributed sensor nets. The CEF Fifth Fleet, stuck in this situation for ages now, is growing more and more frustrated and crew morale is low. On the other hand, the Atlanteans have little hope of gaining any new ground back. Of course, into this situation enter the Terra Novan strike teams (and PCs, potentially).

It’s a decent book, providing detail on both the history of the world and the current situation. Atlantean tech and culture is described, along with the major underwater cities (only in rough detail, of course). The usual mix of NPC descriptions, plot seeds and vehicle data rounds of the mix.

The book is quite readable, but I was left with a feeling that more could have been done with the setting. Sure, the touches of Greek here and there (result of original colonist language/culture mix) were nice, as were the discussions on life under the waves. On the other hand, it was still mostly just “well, these guys live underwater and use subs a lot”. Also, I’m not sure I quite buy the setup… why doesn’t the CEF just drop some nukes near the cities, the shockwave from even a missed strike should be enough to rupture pressure seals at those pressures. To be fair, I have no idea of the physics involved here; would a nuke be effective at depths of 0.5 - 1km? I suspect yes, due to the uncompressability of water… but dunno. Of course, a valid explanation is that the CEF wants to capture the cities and installations, not destroy them. Still, I think that is something that would have merited some discussion.

Overall, quite ok. Not the best of the colony books, but not bad either.

Minireview: Crypt of the Everflame (Pathfinder)

Crypt of the Everflame (written by Jason Bulmahn) is the first standalone Paizo adventure module to use their new Pathfinder rules (instead of D&D3.5). I don’t currently use D&D or Pathfinder rules myself so to me it looks pretty much the same as the earlier modules ruleswise, but of course it’s a milestone for Paizo. The stat blocks do look a bit cleaner now, and in general the layout is nice and neat. A number of sidebars are included, with conversion notes back to D&D rules and some explanation of new Pathfinder rules mechanics. Very nice job there.

This is a first level scenario, intended as the springboard for a larger campaign if needs be – there are two follow-up adventures in the works which can be linked to this. I have to say I liked the module quite a bit; the end does go a bit more in the stereotypical D&D direction but the first half is pretty damn cool. There’s actually a reason for the PCs to get together and “go adventuring”, and it’s a very good one with lots of extra story potential. Even though the players will of course suspect that things are not quite what they seem, the PCs themselves go into this with somewhat… misguided expectations that have to do with (their own) coming-of-age ritual.

Small warning: the description of this module on Paizo’s site contains some spoilerish info, so if you intend to play this I suggest you at least try to ignore that.

Good crisp layout, nice maps, good story… this one reads like a winner, as far as starter “D&D” scenarios are concerned. I suspect this module will become quite popular with people starting up a new Pathfinder game, or just wanting to run a test game / oneshot.

Minireview: E.N.O.C. - Operaatio Eisenberg

This is a curious beast, a Finnish “ready-to-play” roleplaying game. Written by Miska Fredman (of “Heimot” fame) and Samuli Ahokas, E.N.O.C. - Operaatio Eisenberg is a laudable experiment in easy-to-run roleplaying games. The genre is “paranormal investigation”; the players are members of E.N.O.C (Extranormal Operations and Control), a multinational covert operation that does what it says on the tin. Yes, it’s slightly campy, but I feel it’s intentional – the feel here is far more “Castle Wolfenstein” than “X-Files”. Down to the Nazis, again dabbling with the occult (they keep doing that, don’t they?). I don’t feel mentioning Nazis here is spoiler-worthy, since the cover shows a skeleton in German uniform…

The 74 page book contains a game world overview, the game rules, the scenario, and ready-to-run characters. The game world is mostly just “present day with covert paranormal stuff” and the rules are extremely basic…. but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This thing is meant as an easy intro into pen & paper roleplaying games, so keeping the rules simple is good. I’m a bit puzzled why they chose to go with 10-sided dice, though – those are “hobbyist” dice, it might have been better just to go with d6s. Oh well, it’s not like it’s all that hard to get d10s, generally.

The scenario is the actual meat of the thing, and it’s not bad at all. An investigator has died in Northern Norway and a team (the players) is sent to check out the death. There’s a small(ish) coastal village with some hidden secrets and some fun bad guys to fight. Once things get going there is quite a bit of action, and the feel is very cinematic. Sure, it’s a bit campy in places as noted, but that’s no minus in my book since I think it was written that way on purpose. It reads like a fun scenario to run and/or play, with a nice mix of investigation and action. The art is nice and evocative, and many of the NPCs are featured (always a good thing).

As befitting a “ready-to-run” book, we’re given pregen characters to use which are tailored for the scenario. The book itself contains just a blank character sheet and the character details, which could be seen as a minus (would need some photocopying and hand-copying of stats before the game), but in this day and age that becomes a non-issue since the writers have provided downloadable pre-filled character sheets for all. Just download and print, you’re ready to rock.

All in all, very nice. This is a nice “help, I need to run something and have no prep time!” game to have on your shelf, and I’d assume it would also do pretty well in the intended role: as an intro into roleplaying. Assuming a suitable play group, of course.

Everything here is very basic, including the scenario – but criticizing that would be quite unfair. A more experienced GM can easily throw in more complications and red herrings into the scenario, if needed. In addition, since the game rules given here are ultra-simple, substituting your favorite game system for use here should be trivial.

Minireview: White Apples, by Jonathan Carroll

“When you’re dead they teach you how to make a water sandwich”

White Apples is a very typical Jonathan Carroll book: surreal, romantic (but with a dark tinge) and just plain strange. It’s not his best book, but neither do I think its his worst. There’s a complaint that Carroll’s books tend to be a bit too similar… and yes, it’s warranted. His characters do tend to blur a bit into each other and there are lots of recurring scenes and themes. Some of this is no doubt intentional, and it does work to a point. Still, there is maybe a bit too much style over substance here; the book just sort of tapers of without any sort of real conclusion. Maybe that’s intentional too, but it does leave the reader feeling a bit dissatisfied.

Still, I did like it. There were some quite lovely scenes, and the base idea of what God might be was interesting and quirky. Like many of Carroll’s books, it’s a romance at heart. This time, between one Vincent Ettrich (who has just realized he is dead but yet still walking around) and his vanished lover Isabelle Neukor. Vincent has the rug pulled out from under his feet and tries to cope with the idea that he has been (sort of) brought back from the dead, and that Isabelle features into things in a critical fashion – critical to the larger scheme of things, not just his own life. Isabelle, on the other hand, is a quirky mess, prone to running away the second things look bad… and she’s decided to vanish some time ago.

The story features angels (without calling them that), demons (without calling them that, either), possessed killer children, fractal tilework gods, unborn children talking with their parents in constructed dreamscapes, and something very much like time travel (without actually going back in time). In typical Carroll fashion it’s convoluted, sometimes a bit too much, but still quite lovely and quirky in places. The sum of the parts is a bit less than perfect here, but the parts are still mostly wonderful.

Wintah!

Looks like winter is (finally!) here, the gadget by the door claimed that it was -12C outside this morning. Nice.

Nice quiet(ish) weekend. We’re having a small change of personnel at the house, Niksu has moved out to a place of his own (along with girl & recently-born kid), and Timo is moving in. We went furniture shopping to Ikea on Saturday, and it’s a good thing we had a station wagon along; we managed to just fit everything inside & on the roof, but there wasn’t much space left unused. Two tables, a chair, a shelf, a tv-shelf thingy, and various other stuff we sort of needed. Which meant that the rest of the day was spent in the exciting world of “build your own furniture” land. After lots of swearing and alcohol, we finally managed to change lots of piles of bolts & wood into actual furniture. Go us. The new tv/stereo rack thingy is very nice, we finally got all the AV equipment off the floor and into a neat rack. Wonder of wonders, we even managed to connect the wires correctly, as sounds seem to come out of the thing.

Sunday… I maybe should have done all sorts of useful things, but in practice I made some tuna pasta and played lots & lots of Dragon Age: Origins. Addictive game, and extremely good. More about that one when (and if) I finish the thing; it’s huge.

Minireview: Proven Guilty, by Jim Butcher

The Dresden Files series continues to rock in this eighth book, Proven Guilty. I think it’s the biggest book to date (about 500 pages), and there’s a reason for that: this series is getting more and more complex, with various old and new subplots coming and going. Keeping track of who’s who can be tricky at times, thought Butcher does do an admirable job of keeping the reader up to date. There’s a bit of exposition and reviewing of old stuff here and there, probably so that readers jumping into the story at this point might have a chance of following events… but honestly, starting with this book isn’t a good idea. I builds on a lot of old stuff and introduces new complications which probably make little sense without some background.

Here we have Harry struggling with his newfound status as Warden, and with the sometimes nasty obligations that go with the job. There’s trouble with a friend’s family, he’s getting warnings about impending heavy use of black magic, a local horror movie convention has taken a turn for the bloody, and the war against the Red Court isn’t going too well. In other words, situation normal. And then things get really messy.

Don’t want to spoil things here, so I won’t go into the plot too much, but it’s (another) great book in a great series. One of the best so far, I’d say.