My regular group has picked up the game for a month before our premier Exalted GM goes off to get married and honeymoon, and after the last session I found myself idling on the train looking for something to do and started typing.

The sun rose over The Lap, a city still showing the scars of the battle that never happened. Some of those instrumental in saving it are still within the city, recovering, training, and helping with the rebuilding efforts.

On the road to the city, Lotus of the Solar Light, loyal worshiper of The Unconquered Sun and member of the rare race know as The Dragon Kings had travelled south from the Blessed Isle, a sense of unease growing within him at the sight of a massive convoy of mechanical vessels taking the opposite route.

You can read the rest on the group’s website under Exalted Series 13.

As for our GM - Ant, I wish you and Ada every happiness.

This is a scary book, it has 500 pages and I can’t find any fluff in it. Most of it is rules, but there is a little bit of advice for GMs thrown in. It does cover everything, and, unlike most games, doesn’t dramatically downplay everything except combat.

The rules for a chase sequence, for instance, involve a series of opposed rolls and an abstract distance between the participents. Each turn the two sides pick a strategy, which modifies their skill roll and provides a number of possible outcomes (such as changing the distance between the two parties, forcing the opponent to drive through dangerous terrain (or loose ground) or giving a bonus to attacks - yes, gunfire can be exchanged during a chase). The winner picks the outcome they want from the strategy they chose (and if they won by a lot, they get to pick multiple outcomes).

Complicated? It looks that way, but I like the look of it, and am looking forward to giving it a try.

As it happens, a couple of friends have moved back to the area recently (from exciting locales such as ‘the wrong side of London’ and ‘Uganda’) which gives me a suitable pool of victims to try it out on. We’ve been tossing around ideas and it looks like we’ll have:

• The tech guy (”Flinkman? No, not Flickman. Like the tech guy from Alias.” “That’s Flinkman.”)
• The martial artist driver
• The stealthy killer
• and one other

It is early days and we just have broad strokes from a couple of emails so far, but it looks like the concept is shaping up nicely.

As a D20 based (in the loosest possible sense) game, Spycraft is almost certainly going to benefit from a battlemat so I think I’m going to have to invest in some more miniatures from the Street Violence range (I’ll take any excuse to buy them, the sets have some really nice figures in them, I just need to find time to attack the ones I have already with paint brushes).

As far as I can tell (any errors are my own, feel free to send me corrections), the time line went something like this:

It all started last night during a game of 4e when the resident Dwarf Fighter swung his warhammer at a goblin and hit the wall instead. (Or, in mechanical terms, when Jim rolled a 1). It wasn’t surprising that he was a little unhappy about this, and exclaimed:

Stupid short things

… which I found amusing enough to repeat in public.

Despite the lack of context, someone enjoyed it enough to respond, and then had an idea.

@chattydm Did you see what @dorward said? Could you not oh great DM come up with a twitteresque world for us to game in?

… and after a little more discussion — he does. I’ll be watching with interest.

(On an entirely seperate note, this is my inaugural post to RPG Bloggers, so thanks for welcoming me to the community!)

Wanting to give it a go, and feeling the urge to GM something on Tuesday Knights, I threw together a five room dungeon and roped a couple of players into giving it a try.

This was my first attempt at running a home-brew adventure for D&D, so a few hiccups were to be expected — which was one reason I wanted to try it out on willing victims before using it to kick off a proper campaign. Lessons were learned:

• Knowing what you want to happen in each area isn’t a good substitute for actually writing down the details and arranging convenient stat blocks that don’t require flipping from tab to tab on a laptop
• The power level in Pathfinder has been upped
• Many weak creatures are rubbish compared to few large creatures, especially when in a confined space without room to maneuver
• If you fail to map a dungeon out properly in advance, you will end up with the final chamber being too close to another room and ending up in a disturbingly phallic shape in order to be large enough for your plans

Despite these setbacks, the game proved to be rather fun. I just need to go away with the above lessons and tweak it somewhat.

I was reminded of the system today by a post from Greywulf, which in turn reminded me that we have a new edition on the way. I’ve got a number of reasons for wanting to be first in line to grab a copy of this when it comes out. I know (and like) some of the people involved in the project. The last book I bought from Magnum Opus Press (The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen) was a bloody good read (and I’m eagerly awaiting my hardback edition from Mongoose). Finally, they have the original author on board with the project.

Sadly, it looks like some of the old adventures are going to fall by the wayside. Greywulf knows where to look to find them, but scans of out of print books do have some prickly legal issues. If you buy the new edition, I don’t think your conscience will hurt too much though.

I suspect I’ll be offering to run it for my Tuesday group almost as soon as the new edition is out. I hope I won’t be alone.

1. When did you start watching and why?

It was so long ago that I was too young to remember. I became a regular viewer during McCoy’s penultimate season.

2. What was your first serial/episode?

I have vague memories of being terrified by Peter Davison fighting his way through the TARDIS in Castrovalva.

3. Which serials/episodes have you seen?

All of them except for Marco Polo, Sensorites, Reign of Terror, Planet of Giants, Rescue, Romans, Web Planet, Crusade, Space Museum, Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, Myth Makers, Daleks’ Master Plan, Massacre, Celestial Toymaker, Gunfighters, Savages, War Machines, Smugglers, Tenth Planet, Power of the Daleks, Highlanders, Underwater Menace, Moonbase, Macra Terror, Faceless Ones, Evil of the Daleks, Abominable Snowmen, Ice Warriors, Enemy of the World, Web of Fear, Fury from the Deep, Wheel In Space, Dominators, Krotons, Space Pirates, War Games, Colony In Space, Underworld, Creature from the Pit, Shada (the original), Twin Dilemma, Paradise Towers, and Delta And the Bannermen.

3a. Favourite?

The Curse of Fenric

4. Are your friends/family interested in the show?

Most of my friends are to some degree of another. Most of my family can take it or leave it.

5. Which Doctor is your favourite?

McCoy, despite some of the awful scripts he had to face.

6. Which Doctor is your least favourite?

Tough one. Purely from a characterisation point of view, I’d say David Tennant - but that comes mostly from scripts that portray him as a hypocrite.

7. Which TV companion is your favourite?

How could it be anyone but Adric?

OK, I’m kidding. Ace, or Romana II, or maybe Zoe.

8. Which TV companion is your least favourite?

Adric, with Tegan as a close run second.

9. Do you listen to the Big Finish audios?

Ooooh, yes.

9a. If so, which is your favourite?

Bang-Bang-A-Boom

9b. Also: which Big Finish companion is your favourite?

Charlotte Elspeth ‘Charley’ Pollard

10. Have you listened to any non-Big Finish audios?

Yup

10a. If so, which is your favourite?

The Faction Paradox series. Don’t make me pick a specific one, they are all really good.

11. Have you read any of the novels or short stories?

Most of them.

11a. Have you written any of the novels or short stories?

There might be a couple of unofficial drabbles out on Usenet somewhere, but they don’t count.

11b. Which is your favourite?

It used to be The Eight Doctors, I was young, its a jolly romp. Now? Blood Harvest, there’s just something special about the 7th Doctor running a speakeasy.

12. Have you read any of the comics?

A few

12a. You guessed it–which is your favourite?

None were memorable enough to leave an impression on me.

13. Do you watch any of the spinoffs (e.g. Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures)?

Of course.

13a. Which is your favourite?

The Sarah Jane Adventures … it tends to have the most mature plots.

14. Is there any particular episode/book/audio/comic you desperately want to watch/listen to/read?

The Daleks’ Master Plan. It sounds fun.

15. Do you write fanfic for Doctor Who?

I’ll wrote an occasional drabble, but that was many years ago.

15a. If so, post a snippet of a work-in-progress (or several)!

No works in progress, Usenet might turn up some of my old material.

16. Do you create Doctor Who icons?

The world doesn’t need Doctor Who icons.

16a. Let’s see a sample!

shudder

17. Recommend a fanfic/icon/fanvid/fancomic/fancreation!

I’ve been out of touch with fan created material for years.

18. Have you been to any Doctor Who conventions?

Nope.

19. Have you ever dressed up as a Doctor Who character?

Nope.

20. Do you own any Doctor Who merchandise?

There is a TARDIS shaped USB hub set up to let leads reach from my PC to my printer, and I have a copy of Battle For The Universe around somewhere.

21. Are you a fan of Russell T. Davies?

I like a lot of what he does (Midnight was very good), and it’s great that he got Who back on our screens … but he can’t write science fiction and Journey’s End was utterly dreadful.

21a. Steven Moffat?

He can do no wrong.

21b. Paul Cornell?

The man who gave us Benny Summerfield. He isn’t Steven Moffat, but he’s the next best thing.

22. What say you to Season 6b?

Works for me.

23. The UNIT dating controversy?

A side effect of the Time War.

24. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect?

A very silly idea.

25. Multi-Doctor episodes?

Let’s just ignore The Two Doctors and focus on the fun ones. Hopefully we’ll get to see an 8th Doctor appearance in the next few years.

26. What’s your favourite Doctor Who technobabble?

“So, if you could keep that box over there and bring it over here, that [bigger] box would fit inside this [smaller] one.”

27. Have you watched other TV shows exclusively because of the presence of Doctor Who actors?

No. I might have given shows a chance that I wouldn’t have otherwise though.

28. Have you met any of the actors?

Nope.

28a. Travelled to any filming locations?

Yes. The Blue Boar in Aldbourne is a nice pub about a mile away from one of my previous homes. It was also The Cloven Hoof in The Daemons

29. What do you think of “The Curse of Fatal Death”?

Utterly fantastic except for the fart jokes.

30. Do you have any fannish opinions that you think are fairly unpopular?

Nothing springs to mind

31. What’s your favourite pairing?

Vicki / Steven

32. What pairing(s) won’t you touch with a really long pole?

Adric / Tegan

Copies are selling on eBay for quite insane prices, so I’m probably not going to be able to relive that particular part of my childhood through that channel.

Happily, Games Workshop have produced some rules that are supposed to recreate the feel of the original game. So, despite my intentions to aid the Green Tide in conquering the galaxy, I might just have to invest in a couple of squads of Terminators and some of those nasty Genestealers in order to build myself a pseudo-Space Hulk set.

Hopefully, it will prove to be a good system for quick games that don’t require much in the way of set up, and keep the measuring down to a minimum. I have quite a few friends who like board games, and this might turn out to be something that will appeal to them.

The introductory session involved rather a lot of combat. As usual with D&D, combat took up most of the session. It was, however, rather more interesting then first level combat in 3.5. Everybody got to do something active each round so there was none of the old “I hide (having expended by one offensive spell of the day)”, and given a choice of attacks the fighter got to do something slightly more interesting than “I hit him with an axe”.

So, combat is, in my opinion, rather better at low levels.

Roleplaying? No problems there, the system didn’t get in the way (or appear to cover it for that matter, skill checks were limited to knowledge rolls).

The one bit that I’m really iffy with is dealing with challenges posed by the environment or traps. I’m sure they could still be dealt with by ingenious use of mundane items, but my impression so far is that magic and skills won’t help matters at all. This, however, is still based on theories formed from glancing through the rules. We’ll have to see what happens when we get actual problems to solve (and I’ll hopefully be able to have a proper look through the rulebook at some point).

So when people suggest a game of Arkham Horror, Order of the Stick or Shadows over Camelot, I’m last to say “yes”, and in the case of SoC I’m usually crying “Oh no, please not Shadows over Camelot”. This weekend, however, I bowed to the will of the group and gave it another try.

It turns out that this game is much better when you aren’t playing as the traitor (the possible random player who works against the group while trying not to look like they are an enemy) during your first go at the game when you are still learning how to play.

It also turns out that if you play after you’ve had a few drinks it rapidly descents into an exchange of pseudo-Arthurian speeches designed to identify which cards have been drawn by the other players.

It would be simple to say “I drew a grail card” or “I’m putting a one point card on the Black Knight attack spaces”, but that is against the rules. Instead we get “Verily, My Lord, I hath news of the Grail!” and “My Leige! The Black Knight hath caught his foot in his stirrup.” Bewards to imbibing too greatly though, else phrases such as “My-th Leige! Thine Blacketh Knight hath caughteth his foot inth hith stirrupth” might start arriving at the table. (Maybe we shouldn’t go to Camelot - it is a very silly place.)

Anyway, we roundly defeated the forces of evil that surrounded Camelot and I was left with a much better opinion of the game.

I’m still not fond of collaborative board games in general, but this is better than most - just so long as you aren’t struck trying to learn it without helping the other players win, as the traitor must.