The Core Worlds

eBooks, a subject a little more techy then I usually post here, but I think there is sufficient SF to justify a mention on The Core Worlds, and I have annoying hoops to jump through to post on my other blog due to personal life issues getting in the way of having my staging server connected to the Internet.

Amazon have just released their new eBook reader, and it isn’t as good as one might hope.

It costs a (relative) fortune and is heavily laden down with DRM, an issue which Mark covers in some detail (including some nice references to a couple of works of SF – see, I said it would be on topic for this blog).

I’ve been reading eBooks, on and off, for several years. Previously on my trusty old Palm OS machines, and more recently on a Nokia 770. My main source of material has been the Baen Free Library, which has a hefty collection of sci-fi and fantasy.

Giving away books doesn’t sound like a way to make much money, but having read a couple of eBooks, I promptly went out and bought as much of the two series they were from in paperback as I could. Another one I ordered for a friend one Christmas.

They might not have made money directly, but they made plenty indirectly, and they didn’t need DRM to do it.

If you want an eBook reader, then I encourage you to get yourself a Nokie 770, which can be found for under £100 these days, (or one of its successors) and pull some content down from Bean. 1632 makes a good starting point.

If you aren’t interested in eBooks, then you might want to get hold of a paperback copy of 1632 – it is a very good book.

Friday night and I set off for Nottingham. I started by going south from the office to Oprington to avoid the most expensive railway line in the country. Things would have worked out better if Jim hadn’t got lost trying to find the station.

Still, we got there in the end and Adam was pleased to receive the Xbox 360 that Simon had collected for him. We were saved from suffering through people playing on it all night by virtue of the absence of any games for it.

Saturday dawned.

Several hours later we got up and found some breakfast before recapping York by Night. The trouble with late starts is that lunchtime arrives before you know it, and the pub is far too close to places which sell video games.

Andy prompted fled to retrieve his jumper from the pub, while the game was played.

WoD began in earnest when he returned. I won’t provide any details, since I know Andy is working on a proper write-up, but suffice it to say that it was a lot of fun, and we players were driven sufficiently insane.

Sadly, it was the last session of York by Night, but we’ll be kicking off York Unveiled sometime next year so we spent a fair chunk of the weekend tossing around character ideas (and playing Halo 3).

Sunday was a relaxed wind down with a number of games of Infernal Contraption and a little bit of fighting over Mage: The Awakening books. We finished off the day with Ingenius! but came to the conclusion that we were playing it with too much focus on scoring points and not enough on blocking other players. According to the rulebook scoring 18 on every track should happen “very rarely” but it is how I won the game on my first attempt, with at least two other players coming very close to matching the score.

Sadly the trip home was less than fun. The weather turned so the drive back to Kent took so long that I was stranded in Tonbridge for the night. Happily the commute to the office from there is only marginally longer then from my current address so the major consequences were a slightly more expensive train ticket, and turning up at the office with a large rucksack full of my gear for the weekend. I think this is scuppering my plan to collect some times to take home tonight – I’ve too much to carry already.

Photo credit: Jumping the ‘phant by Neil Crosby, Ingenious! by Jon Bristow

Mongoose have released a playtest document for Traveller. I’ve only skimmed it so far, and it seems to be little more than character generation, skill resolution and combat rules, but what it does have looks quite nice.

Hopefully I’ll be able to put together a group and give it a run through.