Last weekend, I went to Furnace 2009, a roleplaying convention held at the Garrison Hotel in Hillsborough, in Sheffield. Furnace has rapidly become my favourite convention for a number of reasons, not least of which is that "It's all about the games".

But surely all gaming conventions are "all about the games", you ask? Well, the honest answer is no – and yes. Each con has its very own focus and uniqueness. Continuum always had a strong Gloranthan and Freeform vibe, Dragonmeet a strong games market feel and so on. So why is Furnace unique? I can't put my finger on it exactly; maybe it's about the setting (the old Garrison building, effectively a castle, with games run in former cells and armouries, or maybe its because the pretension that plagues other conventions is missing. At Furnace, D&D 4th edition rubs shoulders with the Collective Indie chic, the "Fast! Fun! Furious!" ethic of Savage Worlds and the ever-elegant grace of one of my former loves, d100/BRP.

I've been to every Furnace so far (since 2006) and this was perhaps my best. So, what did I do?

I nervously looked at a real copy of Graham Spearings' Wordplay, the game I did the layout for, and watched it sell well over the weekend. As anyone involved in the creation of things such as this will know, I also grimaced at the (fortunately very few) glitches in the book. But it was a real buzz to see a real game I'd turned from an OpenOffice file into an actual book with the help of Lulu.

I always miss the first session, and use it as a chance to catch up with people. I'd hoped to meet John Ossoway and discuss his forthcoming SF RPG River of Heaven, but unfortunately events conspired to prevent him coming to the convention. I had a good natter with Tom Zunder, and a few others, visited the Patriot Games and other stands, and made a bee-line to go and pick up a copy of "Beat to Quarters", Neil Gow's excellent Napoleonic Naval RPG. Absolutely lovely, and I hope that he forgives me for the later atrocity. So that was Slot 1, ended with a trip to Morrisons for supplies.

Slot 2 on Saturday afternoon saw me run my first game, a Wordplay engined SF adventure in the Singularities universe I've developed for the forthcoming deluxe version of the core rules. I'd run the adventure once before, at a TomCon, and the story evolved in much the same way as before. Most amusing point was when two of the players who had played at TomCon tried to sign up before they released that this was, in fact, the previously unnamed scenario that they'd previously played. Nanotech swarms, Duplicitous AIs and STL starships combined with a hick frontier world intent on celebrating the arrival of the first starship in nearly 40 years to create carnage. One of the players has subsequently described it as "Dallas meets hard SF". I was a bit worried that some of the players were getting lost, as the game is heavily influenced by Banks, Asher, Stross, Reynolds and more and if you haven't read the new wave of British SF it can be a shock to the system, but everyone seemed to have a good time. The one thing I'm still not satisfied with is the new take of the variant scale rules for Wordplay I was testing, but it was a lot closer to what I wanted to achieve than the first playtest.

Saturday evening, Slot 3, saw me make a grown man call for help. Neil Gow had foolishly decided to set a game of "Beat to Quarters" on the Irish Rover (of Pogues song fame) and he got everything he had hoped (or feared). The plot ranged widely, with missions from God, the whale-with-the-grail, drinking, wenching, a wide sargasso sea, sea monsters, shipwrecked pirates (from the Dutch Antilles) and a huge volcano, but the Irish Rover broke with the tradition of the song and made it to New York. One of the amusing parts for me was the way my character ("Johnny McGurk") was picked on by Mick's ("Malone") and a bitter rivalry erupted, to the point that my character had the personal objective to make sure Malone looked like a fool. In the end, he was transformed into the Goat Captain! I loved this game; Neil handled it just right, but I think he was horrified with the monster he created. So that was my one chance to play a game and it was brilliant, a definite high spot. It also convinced me about the "Duty and Honour" and "Beat to Quarters" rules mechanics, which handled everything that could be thrown at them and more. I look forward to the special supplement that Neil must be duty bound to create.

I headed back to my hosts house, and Tom and Nathan and I stayed up a little longer drinking tea and eating scones and putting the gaming world to rights.

Sunday dawned almost too early, but in reality it was a lie in for me. Slot 4 saw my now-traditional Indie-special. I ran "Wilderness of Mirrors" by John Wick, which is tagged as a 'better spy game". It has some interesting tricks, including handling the core of plot development over to the players, and a clever mechanic to reduce their chance to succeed as time goes on. Highlights of this include one of the players using a special ability of his character to finish off another character (brutal but oh, so clever) and the horror of the players about the plot that they created. Certainly, by the end of the game I wasn't sure if the characters were actually worse than the terrorists that their spies were after. I'd like to run this again, perhaps at a TomCon.

Slot 5 on Sunday afternoon was the game I'd put the most preparation into: Runepunk: Broken Dreams, a Savage Worlds game. This was set in the Runepunk setting, and was the sandbox scenario from the DarkSummer Nights supplement loaded with accelerant and handouts. The setting is a Neo-Victorian Metropolis dominated by magic and steam power science, with a very definite vibe. The most clear analogies in fiction are Mieville's Perdido Street Station and In Viroconium by M John Harrison. Lovely stuff. The scenario is rich and layered, and I was worried that the players may have got bogged down. But they didn't, and they ran a tight investigation which got to the right answer. We finished 25 minutes early; had we had 45 minutes, we'd have got to the final denouement, but the characters actually completed the mission that they had been set. The final twist was that they managed to play Savage Worlds for nearly four hours without a combat, which is a first for me for that particularly crunchy skirmish based system, yet seemed to really enjoy the game. I also enjoyed riffing with some of the players in character.

Sadly, the whole convention soon wrapped up after this, and I headed home, managing to get back before Jill and Nathan who had gone across the Pennines for the weekend. I had a great time, and I can't wait until next year's Furnace to be back again!

Tom Zunder has posted an interesting article on his blog about what the games are that he like to play casually to loose some time. At the end, he challenged us to respond with our equivalents, so here goes.



1. Brainpipe.
Currently top of my pops, Shrapnel Games’ Brainpipe is very strangely addictive. The blurb in the link describes it as “an addictive endurance run” game. It has no violence, except if you crash as you travel through the pipes in the game which will eventually finish you off. It reminds me very much of Tempest 2000 without the shooting, and much more trippy music rather than thundering techno-beats. It is available for Windows and Mac OS X, and has a playable demo. It’s only $15 if you do get hooked.


2. Defcon.
If you grew up at the end of the Cold War in the 1980s and early 1990s, then Defcon will have a strange attraction to you. Ambrosia software have produced a game of mutually assured destruction which is strangely hypnotic and addictive. It supports network play if you register the game, but I quite like the demo version which lets you play against the AI. You build and position your forces, and then decide when and if to attack. Obviously, a multiplayer game allows for alliances and doublecrossing. It’s Mac only, and $25 if you want to register for the full game.



3. Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space
For my third choice, I return to Shrapnel Games and the Digital Eel team. Weird Worlds lets you play out a complete space quest in around 30 minutes, and is wonderfully addictive. You are either a merchant, an explorer or a military commander on a mission to explore space and find as many treasures as possible. The only part which doesn’t seem to be very survivable – aside from flying into a black hole – is combat, but if you’re smart you’ll avoid this. Great fun. Again, there is a playable demo you can download, but it’ll cost $25 for the full version.

That’s my three, what are yours?

Background Image is (Creative Commons), references by clicking on it.

On Friday night I completed the first draft of my theme, Singularities, for Graham Spearing's excellent Wordplay RPG. It weighed in slightly longer than planned at 15,000 words rather than 10,000 but I'm really pleased with the outcome. Graham has sent it to the editor with the rest of the book, rather than asking for a cut in length, and I await the outcome somewhat nervously.

I've got some reasonably ambitious plans for this if it survives playtest and proves popular, as I'd like to publish it as a standalone game. This means some more playtesting and writing later in the year, after I've done the layout work for the core book for Graham. The picture above is a mock up idea for a standalone game cover.

According to Robin Law's quiz, I am a storyteller gamer...

Well, Furnace has been and gone and I really enjoyed myself. Highlights as follows:

* The way the players really ran with the whole 1950s B-Movie SF in the Savage Worlds game. Andy's character's attitude to humans (who are obviously beneath contempt!) and the big robot's approach were absolutely sweet and really a pleasure to GM for.

* The Mythic Russia game, where I accidentally ended up with the Ice-Queen over-achieving feminist noble envoy and it was such fun! Mark Galeotti had a fun murder mystery with Pagan / Russian Orthodox Church clashes and I had a great opportunity to be really pushy and stroppy. The game had drama, hilarity and some dark moments too!

* Sufficiently Advanced let me have the fun of watching very high tech Sf play with the heads of the players again. The game was as much fun as the first time I ran it, and probably had one of the most epic results of any that I've run (15 star-systems sent nova to prevent an Alien Inhibitor menace!). This was so not-Traveller it was untrue.

* "The Fall of House Atreides", my Conspiracy of Shadows game had me breaking into a cold sweat when one of the players pulled out The Dune Encyclopedia, only for me to find they just wanted to remind themselves of a detail on their characters.

* The fact that the game had Paul Atreides as the traitor. Having had Jessica in the same position in the first game at Continuum, I was pretty shocked at another core member of the family being the main threat again.

* It was also cool that a number of the player who tried my Conspiracy of Shadows game last Furnace came back again form more. I hope they enjoyed it.

* Playing Wordplay again, this time in the Faded Suns SF universe. I enjoyed this, but ended up with another pushy noble whom I inflicted on the rest of the gaming table. Good fun, but in some ways I preferred the Conan games I tried previously, probably because they were much more fresh to me as I've read a lot of Faded Suns before.

* Having a good natter with Mark Galeotti, who I have great respect for as a gamer, author and general media tart on programmes like Today and PM.

* Neil Gow's excellent 'Duty and Honour'. Respect is due! He has set a bench mark for the layout of Wordplay.

I had a great time and can't wait until 2009's Furnace!

Furnace 2008 is tomorrow in Sheffield, and I'm looking forward to it immensely. I'm running three games, and just have the final read through left for the last one now. It's one of the most game-centric conventions I've been to and I've enjoyed the previous two iterations.

I'm running a somewhat varied mix of scenarios; a B-Movie 1950's Sci-Fi game for Savage Worlds, a re-run of the Sufficiently Advanced game at Tom's the other week, and a re-run of the Conspiracy of Shadows 'Fall of House Atreides' Dune based game I ran at Continuum in August.

Should be fun.

Been a strange few days, with Nathan 'suffering' from Chicken Pox, and me adjusting to Jill not working at the same place as me for the first time since we started going out. I've also had some time to consider the gaming session which I had just over a week ago, which was good.

Firstly, Nathan. In some ways, aside from a few small spots, you'd never know he was unwell. He's been a riot of energy today, and Jill was quite worn out tonight when I got home. The picture below is during a short walk we took him on to get some fresh air as he was getting frustrated being cooped up. You'd never know he had the lurgy...



Hopefully, he'll be back up to normal soon.

Jill not being at work is taking a bit of getting used to. I expected it to be strange, but I'm missing the company at lunch. Got pretty annoyed at the weekend, as I got called by someone from work with questions about stuff I haven't done in four years. Thing is, it was Jill's remit before we restructured and I think it was pretty insensitive and out of line to be making that kind of call. Anyway, I helped as graciously as I could and discussed it with the individual involved today, putting across my feelings and pointing out that there are other people in place to handle that kind of call. I hope that is now sorted.

We're just working our way through the fourth season of the new Battlestar Galactica. The problem is that, thanks to the US Writer's strike, the series ends at episode 10, and we've probably got another year to wait until we see the last 15 episodes. Quite frustrating really.

I mentioned running Sufficiently Advanced at TomCon September 2008. It was very different, and great fun. I've decided to do it again at Furnace later this month. It was strange to have a game which started to shift into a philosophical debate more than an action adventure, but I think that's very reflective of the best hard SF, which the game is meant to feel like stylistically.

I'm also being very impressed with Slipstream at the moment. This is a plot-point campaign for Savage Worlds, which is one of my favourite crunchy systems at the moment, and is a pure Flash Gordon serial style fun, and a total contrast to Traveller or Sufficiently Advanced! I also read Greg Stolze's Film Noir RPG, A Dirty World, which finally delivers something with the ORE system that I want to play, unlike Reign.

On a final note, I've really been enjoying listening to Fish's latest album, 13th Star, over the last few weeks. It is definitely a return to form, and possibly his best since Suits or Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors. I'm also getting excited that Happiness is the Road, the 15th Marillion album, is due in the next fortnight. Can't wait for my pre-order!

Currently feeling: Relaxed
Currently listening to: Flash Gordon (Queen) Blame Slipstream!.
Currently reading: The Second Book of Lankhmar (Fritz Leiber) & Slipstream (RPGs).

Sunday really made my time at Continuum. Firstly, I got to play in games rather than referee them twice, which was great because that's why I go to Continuum. Secondly, I managed to sell most of the pile of stuff I had ready to eBay in the Bring and Buy sale. Sure, it may not have reached the prices that eBay may command, but I got a reasonable return on it all and recovered a lot of time at home which would have been spent preparing stuff for auction.

The first game kicked off at ten o'clock in the morning, and was one which I was familiar with; Graham Spearing's excellent Wordplay. The game was another playtest of the system, and was set in Robert E Howard's Conan universe. It was a direct follow on to a game I'd played at a Tomcon earlier this year, and by an accident of luck for me, and probably bad luck for Graham, I ended up with the same simple Turanian Tribesman (okay, sorceror) as I played last time. I had a real blast, especially as I got to play with the excellent Mark Galeotti, writer of much HeroQuest material that I admire such as Mythic Russia. His character was a librarian and gladiator, and I suspect our scheming may have been a little hard on everyone else. However, the system worked beautifully, and we nailed a few more of the awkward questions which you can only find by playtest.

After lunch, I ducked out of playing, as I wanted to see what would happen with the auction, which I had two items in, and also sort out my bring and buy stuff. I managed to persuade Neil Ford to run a demo game of 3:16 during the early evening. I should hang my head in shame here, as I was meant to be running it as well, but had dropped it with the extra game of Conspiracy of Shadows I ran.

The 3:16 game was an absolute blast - basically, it's a cross of Aliens and the film version of Starship Troopers. You play a squad of soldiers taking part in Terra's Xenocidal Crusade to make the universe safe for humanity. The group really got into character and although we only played for 90 minutes, we got through character generation and a complete mission. We'd have happily played more if the closing ceremony hadn't started. I got a surprise in this; all the GMs were asked to come up and pick up a game book as a thank you for running, which was unexpected and very kind.

After the closing ceremony, Graham, Duncan and I dug out my copy of Iliad, which is a superb card game of the Trojan Wars. What is fantastic about the game is that it has strategic and tactical elements which make it quite difficult to call as you jockey to achieve 12 victory points. The key one is that, although you start with 12 cards, you only replenish your hand with 3 each turn. This adds a real resource management challenge to the game. The next challenge is that there are two types of conflict in the game - Thanatos and Gorgon. Thanatos rounds are the standard games, which you don't want to loose as they cost you victory points if you come last. Gorgon rounds are brutal on resources as you have to keep playing to stay in. You can't pass and stop committing cards in the same way you can in a Thanatos round as stopping means you fold from the round. So you need to be very, very careful about whether to commit to them. Thanks to some luck on my part by winning a battle for Helen for Troy (5 victory points) and my conserving resources while Graham and Duncan went hell for leather at each other, I managed to win the game in a Gorgon round. I really enjoyed the game, and definitely want to play again with a bigger group.

After this, I went to bed. I had a relaxed morning , and then had the long drive home.

I really enjoyed Continuum, and want to be back in 2010. Highlights ranged from meeting old friends, to playing games with new friends, and just generally escaping from the usual way of things. Lowlights? Missing Nathan and Jill, the heat in my room, and the general scramble for games. However, I had a good chat with Graham on the latter (as he was Games Tzar) and we came up with some good potential solutions.

A great long weekend.

I really enjoyed the second day here, albeit I was pretty tired after Friday night and some of the shenanigans earlier in the week with Nathan having a couple of disturbed nights. I didn't play in the first gaming slot of the day – instead, I made sure all my stuff was in the bring and buy properly, and also helped out getting some other people's material into it as well because filling in 40+ entries had kind of made me an expert. It seems to have been worth it, as the books are moving pretty well, and I'll hopefully not be going back with anything which will save me a lot of time preparing material for eBay. It'll also make Jill happier! I've put some older material into the auction (White Dwarfs in binders, Tales of the Reaching Moon in the same state, so I'll look forward to the outcome of that with interest.

I also had a good chat with Tom, and then a mouch around the trade hall where I amazed myself with my restraint. In doing this, I noticed that the next slot had no free spaces again, so thanks to the wonders of the internet, and a scary encounter with M$ Vista in the committee room, I printed out characters to run the 'Blood Opera' game I ran last time I was at Continuum. This went down well, with the players all getting into the mock Russian/Eastern European accents and vibes, and ended nastily as usual, with everyone seeming to have enjoyed it.

In the evening, I ran the second Conspiracy of Shadows 'Blood Opera', a game that I'd worked up over the last fortnight called 'The fall of House Atreides', which was a riff on the book 'Dune'. This also went well, but very differently to how I imagined it would. It felt more like a freeform, and the tension was built from players taking each other away from the table rather than the Doom mechanic used in the game. However, it was great fun.

After a much earlier bed (proceeded by Graham and I doing compare and contrast on our MSI Wind and PowerBook G4 12" respectively), I've woken refreshed and ready for another day.

The only thing that this convention has disappointed me with is the the mobile phone access, as I can't get a decent signal here, which means I'm missing Jill and Nathan. A quick 2 minute call was the only fix I got yesterday.

I've been let out to play this weekend by Jill and Nathan and have come to Continuum 2008, set – as ever – at Leicester University. The hall we are in this year (John Foster Hall) is significantly better than any we've been in before in terms of compactness and facilities and it's already shaping up to be a good con in terms of friends and acquaintances old and new who I've caught up with. In no particular order; Martin, Dr Moose, Tom, the 3 Bears, Neil, Graham, Loz, Newt, Nickey, etc. etc.

I had a bit of arm twisting from Tom and ended up running the Traveller scenario "This Fear of Gods" which I've been working on for BITS and it went well. The ending was another TPK (Total Party Kill), but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. For some reason, most of my Traveller scenarios seem to have potentially vicious endings. Tomorrow night I'll be running my Dune scenario for Conspiracy of Shadows, "The Fall of House Atreides", which will be interesting.

Had a good chin wag with Dr Moose at the end of the game, and then headed back here to the room for bed. I really love this con, but I've got to confess I'm missing Nat and Jill already. Anyway, it's late and time for bed. Until tomorrow.

I had a really good discussion last night on Skype with Graham Spearing about his forthcoming RPG Wordplay. As a game, it's best described as the bastard love-child of HeroQuest and Burning Wheel, a great blend of traditional and narrative styles. I'm privileged that Graham would like me to lay out the project, which is giving me a great excuse to properly learn how to use the copy of InDesign CS2 that I have on the computer.

We had a really good natter about how the game will look and feel, and before I knew it an hour and a half had passed. It left me feeling really energised about gaming and writing again, and perhaps will be the motivation for me to start back on the Traveller scenario, Power Projection and other projects that have been sitting on the backburner!

Currently feeling: Relaxed
Currently listening to: My mum, dad and Jill.
Currently reading: The Complete Chronicles of Conan (Robert E Howard).

The weekend just gone was a fun one, as I got to play games for the first time this year (in honesty, for the first time since I went to Furnace last year). Tom kindly hosted a weekend of gaming, starting with the boardgame Twilight Imperium (second edition) on the Saturday, and following up with me running my Savage 2300AD RPG conversion for the second time. It was great fun, and I really hope to make several of these weekends over the next year, even if it's only for a day at a time.


From Tom's Gaming Weekend album...

The position above (taken by Tom) shows where we where at the start of the End Game period. At this point, Tom's son Matt (white colour) and I (red colour) both started major aggressive moves against our neighbours. The end result was that I won, but only because my technology and trade base outstripped Matt's more expansive empire.

I last played the game around 2000, with Andy Lilly and some of the BITS crew after a Dragonmeet. It was great fun then (except for the fact that I was knocked out very quickly in that game). I'd traded up to 2nd edition after the game, but it had sat around gathering dust for the last five or so years. I'm glad that I got to play it, and would love to do it again. It combines politicking with trade and resource building and major space battles. What more could an SF fan ask for?!

The 2300AD game was also fun, but felt somewhat more like a dungeon crawl than the last time. I'm not certain if that was me, but the more times I've run the scenario, the more frustrated I've become with it. Savage worked like a dream and I was really happy running it.

Tom discusses this some more on his blog if it interests you for a second opinion! He and his wife Ann were absolutely gracious hosts, and I came home feeling more relaxed than I have for a while. It was a great escape from work etc. Now I just need to keep my fingers crossed that Jill's friends finally agree a date for their pamper weekend so she can get away too!

Currently feeling: Happy.
Currently listening to: The Fan on the G4 PowerBook.
Currently reading: Avenues & Alleyways (a|state RPG) and LA Confidential (James Ellroy).

I'm kind of feeling like I'm living in a gaming desert at the moment, as every time I try and organise an RPG session the whole thing falls apart at the last minute. Last night I was meant to be running my Savage Worlds game, They Came From Beyond Space, which is a spoof on the old 1950s B-Movies. This was the game that was cancelled back a month ago because of the bad weather from the flood in Sheffield (see post here). Tonight, it was cancelled due to a broken Skype headset and a family commitment. The negative side of me feels like this is never going to happen. I'm certainly getting fed up of preparing for a game and then canceling it at the last moment. Aside from this I've not played a game since Furnace last October, and it's starting to nag at me. Hopefully next time...

I guess on the positive side, I had a lovely day at the Great Yorkshire Show with Jill, Nathan and my parents last week (photos soon) and this Monday saw me playing badminton for the first time in a year. I ached somewhat the next two days. Work isn't at its best at the moment, with a number of set backs. Fortunately, Jill and Nathan keep me sane, especially when he smiles. He's just discovered his fingers. And he's threatening to crawl as he gets more mobile. Could be fun.

Currently feeling: Down/Tired.
Currently listening to: Delerium / Poem
Currently reading: Qin - The Warring States (a Chinese based historical RPG).

I was going to play my first roleplaying game since Nathan was born tonight, but you may have noticed that it's somewhat wet. Initially, I'd thought that it wouldn't be a problem, even though it took me twice as long as usual to get home from work because the A58 was closed because of flooding.

However, the game was to be a virtual one, using Skype's conference call system. That's were it all went pear shaped! Along with the rain and flooding, power has gone out in a number of areas around Sheffield, including the house where two of my fellow players, Tom and Matt, live. This completely scuppered using the internet. Anyway, I guess we'll reschedule.

This was to be a big experiment for me in more than one way; I was planning to run the Savage Worlds game system for the first time tonight, with a one-shot scenario based on 1950's B Movies. I'd wanted to do this because I've committed to run a Savage 2300AD game conversion at Furnace in October. I wanted to get some familiarity with the system as well as have some fun!

The 2300AD game has had me getting ready early, and I've been preparing some miniatures for use in the game. It's the first time that I remember painting 'little soldiers' rather than spaceships etc. and I'm pretty pleased with the results so far:



The shot is a macro one with the FZ-50, and shows the miniatures in progress.

Currently feeling: Slightly Disappointed.
Currently listening to: Maximo Park
Currently reading: 'Reign', an RPG by Greg Stolze

Some of you may know that I spent a fair bit of time in the first half of 2006 writing StormQuest, which was a conversion of Chaosium's excellent Stormbringer RPG into the HeroQuest system. I'd worked through this with the help of Lawrence Whitaker and several of the other top folk at the Tavern Bulletin Board and was really pleased with the result. We playtested at Continuum 2006 in an excellent game run by Graham Spearing and the plan was to publish the conversion (which had grown to over 17,000 words) in the con-book. We also briefly suggested getting a bit more ambitious and publishing it as a Chaosium monograph, or as a supplement for HeroQuest's forthcoming generic 'Questworlds' book.

However, the rumours started after Continuum that Mongoose Publishing had bought the rights to Stormbringer off Chaosium. I'm not privy to the full details of the business deal, but this is the case.

Anyway, we've done some investigation, and now there is no way that StormQuest can be published in the con book, in a proper book, or even as a free PDF to download. I'm pretty down about this as it was the biggest bit of writing I did in 2006.

To quote the end of the original novel by Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer: "Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!"

I'm pretty pleased because the latest RPG book I wrote was released at Conception 2007 last week. The picture above shows the initial print run which was for sale at the convention. I'm waiting here excitedly for my copy to arrive in the post. Nick Bradbeer did an excellent cover for the new book.

I've taken a load of photos this weekend, and once I've gone through them then I'll post them. 99% of them are of the usual suspect (Nathan!) and some of them are already up on Flickr if you want a sneak preview. Anyway, instead of the normal blog, I thought I'd add some pictures of a little project that has been kind of on hold for 12 months or so, as a recent email exchange with Nick Bradbeer reminded me of it.

I started painting miniatures some time ago, once I was on the route that would lead to the publication of Power Projection. I always wondered what fleet I'd do, and was hankering after something different. I do have a great selection of GZG's Full Thrust miniatures, but I wanted something different. One of my friends suggested that I take a look at some of the Games Workshop models, but most of those were to chaos-death-spikey to consider for use in a reasonably hard SF game. And then, Forgeworld was mentioned to me.

Forgeworld is Games Workshop's specialist minatures shop, using resin casts rather than metal. I found the Tau starships and fell in love with them. With some minor modifications, they'll do nicely for the Solomani Fleet in my Traveller universe!


The first ship is a modified Emissary Class (inappropriate features removed).


The second ships are a Warden Class Gunship and a Manta Class. Sadly, due to the fact that I have just seen the Forgeworld site again, I've spotted some more ships that will look really good and help flesh out the fleet a bit more.

Anyway, that's pretty much all for tonight. Hopefully Nathan will be ready to sleep now. And I must price some more RAM for this laptop sometime soon. Playing with large image files is really slowing Rapidweaver down on the Powerbook with 512Mb in a way that the 1Gb equipped iMac doesn't, and the Powerbook has the faster processor!

I recently noticed a thread on Gaming Report which mentioned a sourcebook called 'Pulp Egypt' for any RPG. As two of the games that I have recently bought and like are Savage Worlds and Spirit of the Century, this looked too good to be true. Well, I had to take a look, and I'm glad I did. This is a sourcebook by Peter Schweighofer which costs $20, and is a 176 page PDF packed with information on Egypt (some of it in a similar manner to the Call of Cthulhu RPG Cairo Sourcebook) to support pulp campaigns. Having quickly skimmed the PDF, there are suggestions on how to run archaeological, espionage and crime based campaigns, and some excellent material for reference. I think that it will be easier to integrate with Savage Worlds rather than SotC, as the latter is more free-form and co-creative. However, it will add to both if you fancy some Indiana Jones style adventures.

If you feel that $20 is too much to spend on something you've never heard off, there are a number of free scenarios on the site which give an idea of the quality of the material. I recommend this. They can be found at Griffin Publishing Studios' site.

A few weeks ago, I emailed about my quest to find some proper Fudge dice to use with Spirit of the Century. I had made some home made ones, but wanted something better. Anyway, I ended up in a position where I had two sets coming to me, one from the USA and one from the UK.

The shop in the UK – The Gameskeeper in Oxford – was excellent. They didn't have any dice in stock, but managed to track some down in the USA and special ordered them. Their communication, service and speed was excellent and I recommend them wholeheartedly. The website mightn't be the most modern, but they more than make up for that with their approach! Kudos and a big thank you!

Also worthy of mention was Patriot Games in Sheffield, who tried to get some dice for me but had no luck with their contacts. Likewise Leisure Games.

And now to the villains of the piece! It gives me no great pleasure to 'name and shame', but I have to denounce RPGshop in the USA. Their shipping of the Fudge dice was prompt, well packaged and a pleasure except for one small fact. They lied about the costs. When you place the order, they take a $25 deposit and the agreement is that they will only charge cost plus $3 for shipping, refunding or charging extra as appropriate. The shipping cost $9.15 according to the stamp, plus $3 makes $12.15 in normal maths. No refund. No response to emails. So I give them a big thumbs down. I'll more than happily post an update if and when they refund the money they owe me. I object to paying more than a hundred percent premium on shipping!

I have a really bad habit with roleplaying game books. Unfortunately, because I tend to use them as well as read them, they tend to get trashed. Now, if you asked my mother or father, you'd know how much that this goes against the grain for me. I hate damaging books, probably because of the mental scars I received from my father (only joking!) when I damaged some of his when I started to read SF.

I've tried to get around the damage done by either covering the books with sticky back plastic, or by buying hard covers. However, not all books are available as hard covers, and unless you are a black belt sticky back plastic expert, you can pretty much guarantee bubbles or creases somewhere on your favourite book.

Anyway, my mum works as librarian at my old school, and she made a fantastic suggestion which I'm kicking myself that I didn't think of earlier. She gave me the details for the company that sells the plastic slip case book protectors she uses for paperbacks. I've gone and bought some, and they fit well and are far better than sticky back plastic. The picture above shows my Burning Wheel books and copy of Cold City now that they are protected. I 'm really impressed, and my mum tells me that it a lot of cases the paperbacks in these protectors actually last better than hard covers. Well, I'm sure I'll do enough damage using the books to see if this is the case!

Spirit of the Century, the pulp RPG which I'm reading at the moment, uses a game system called FATE. This is in turn derived from a game system called FUDGE. For the gaming literate amongst you, FUDGE and FATE both use a ladder system of ability ratings for skills and the success and failure assessment. This is used in combination with special D6s (normal dice to non-gamers) which are marked with 2 pluses, 2 minuses and 2 blanks. Four FUDGE dice are rolled together at the same time, giving a distribution up and down the ladder system of +/-4 steps. Simple and elegant.

Spirit of the Century has a real buzz about it on the various roleplaying forums, and rightly so. It's elegant, well written and looks like a load of pulpy fun. If that means little to you, think Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, Indiana Jones, or The Mummy to get a feel for the genre. I suspect the buzz has resulted in me not being able to find FUDGE dice anywhere in the UK. Anyhow, I've ordered some from the USA and, in the mean time, have improvised using a marker pin and some guidance of a website. I'm particularly proud of the red dice! They may be Heath Robinson, but they work well!

(I know that the Deryni Dice are FUDGE dice, but I wanted some colours, not just black and white!)

Furnace was excellent, but partial marred by a bad headache over the Saturday and into the morning of the Sunday. Sadly, this wasn't alcohol induced as I was driving both days – I suspect it was just general tiredness catching up with me. However, this was resolved through the wonders of modern chemistry, and by mid-Sunday afternoon I was back my normal self, if a little tired from the lack of sleep.

I had a really fun time, playing 5 different games (4 of them RPGs) over the weekend and getting to meet up with friends who I more usually hang out with virtually. The venue was superb including the cells – from the building's former role as a jailhouse for the garrison – which we used to game in. They were pretty close and intimate, as you can see from this picture that Tom Zunder grabbed of me running on the Sunday afternoon.

The five games I played were Iliade (a French card game set in the times of the Greek & Trojan wars), Burning Wheel (Graham's excellent take on Middle Earth with the system), Chaosium Basic Role Playing (Loz's demo of the excellent Gwenthia setting), Blake's Seven (run by Nathan, using a rare set of rules) and my own Traveller game. If you're interested in more detail than this, then have a look at my brief comments at The Tavern, which I wrote pretty soon after I got home.

I'm hoping that I'll be allowed to go to this convention again next year! The organisers – Tom, Graham, Darren and Newt – deserve a lot of credit for making this a great gamer's con. Next year, Furnace will be on 20-21st October 2007 at the same venue.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend, when I'll be going to the northern gaming convention, Furnace. This is the first iteration of this convention, but it's being organised by a group of people who I know, and whom have also been involved with the ever excellent Continuum.

I know I'm running two games - 'Blood Opera' for Conspiracy of Shadows (a repeat of Continuum and very much a player driven game) and 'This Fear of Gods' for Traveller. I've just finished the characters and plot for this, and am feeling quite relieved! It was harder work that I thought, especially when I was trying to put together some shorthands for the players by giving photos and pictures and saying that they are 'like such and such a character'. I kept on drawing a blank, but was fortunately helped out by Graham Spearing, who gave me a few minutes out from his charman's preparation for Furnace.

Playing-wise, I've asked (GM's can pre-sign) to sign up for Graham's 'Burning Middle Earth', which is a Burning Wheel adaptation to Middle Earth. This interests me a lot, because I loved the setting but have gone a long way since MERP. The other game I've signed up for is Loz's 'And Stones', which is a Gwenthian BRP game. i've heard nothing but good about games that Loz has run, so I'm really looking forward to this. I was tempted by the 'Ultraviolet' TV series based HeroQuest engined game, and Newt's Mythic Russia and Gloranthan games (especially the Pavis one), and also 'My life with Sauron', but they didn't quite have the draw as the others did. So, if all goes well, four games, and hopefully some games of Iliade and Mag*Blast for a bit of fun. Should be a good weekend.

Of course, when I get back I've got to get into the nightmare of moving the study into the old smallest room, as the carpet arrived this morning! Not looking forward to this as there is too much *stuff*, and I've also already halved my RPG collection in the last two years!

Hoping to see you at Furnace!

As the Burning Empires Wiki doesn't have a planetary web play aid up yet, I knocked one together with OmniGraffle and exported it as a PDF. You can found it on my download page for games.

On the downloads page I have added a PDF crib-sheet to help run through the combat sequence of Contested Ground Studio's excellent A|State RPG. Enjoy - it compliments their excellent PDF download GM's screen which you can buy here at RPGNow. I've put it here (with permission) as they originally planned to use it on the Screen, but I guess it didn't fit.

I'm finally getting to the end of the build for the BITS website revamp, so I decided to dig out the metal I need to build for the Power Projection. I've also got contact details for Techsil, who make the Tufloc Superglue that Jon Tuffley of GZG recommended. I should get that ordered this week, and then I shall get things moving.

I've got a number of different projects running at the moment - the new BITS website (the biggest Rapidweaver project I've attempted), StormQuest (a Stormbringer HeroQuest conversion for Continuum) and Power Projection: Reinforcements (the new fleet book for BITS' Traveller miniatures games). I'll try and get some more regular posts here as it will encourage me to get moving on them!

Well, I've been patiently waiting, and finally, Rapidweaver 3.2 is out. And it feels faster and even more together. Altogether excellent. I'm going to have to check how easily I can update some of the custom 3.1 themes I've made, but that shouldn't be a problem.

RW3.2 adds a lot of features, such as the ability to include inline graphics more easily (scaling and rotating!), and more scaleable pages. As an example, here is an image of Neptune from NASA/Hubble imagery.

I've just finished my first customised RapidWeaver site, and it was surprisingly easy. Far more easy than I thought it would be. The customer is pretty demanding (my father-in-law) but seemed reasonably happy with the end result. The site needs some developing yet, but you can judge for yourself how good the final result is. I guess that this means that I really need to start on updating the BITS and Power Projection sites now!

I use Macs at home, and have done since 1996 when I got fed up of Windows and all the messing about to keep the system optimised that I used to have to do. It was fun when I was a teenager, but I reached a point where I was fed up and just wanted to focus on using the machine rather than making it work.

Anyway, I'm just about to upgrade our iMac G4 (with a gorgeous 20" screen) from OS X 10.3 Panther to OS X 10.4 Tiger and decided to check that absolutely everything was compatible. As usual, it turned out that most software had patches on line (which would work with the older Panther) with the exception of Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus 9, which needed an upgrade to the new version 10.

Now, I expected this. It'd happened with AV8 when Panther came out, so I went and followed the links to the Symantec site, and selected the upgrade, which would then only give me an option to upgrade to the version I was already on!! After two emails to their support (based in India by the looks of the email) I'd found the correct links. These showed that you could only buy a physical package rather than a download. I was annoyed (I wanted it now!) but ordered it anyway. Three days later I get an email saying it's on backorder. Their *own* software.

It's times like this that I wonder why I bother. So far, in 4 years, there hasn't been a virus on OS X (and I've used all the releases from OS 10.0!) – I mainly have the anti-virus to make sure I don't send on viruses to my PC friends. I know that Norton has a bad reputation now with the Windows world, but it's the most commonly updated and supported version for the Mac. If there was an F-Prot I'd use it as quickly as I could!

So, by my reckoning, there are four reasons to be annoyed with Symantec;

1) Poor website link software for upgrades.
2) Lack of a downloadable version.
3) Poor stock control.
4) Lack of a simple patch to move between versions.

But I guess I'll carry on using them until I can find anything better.

Well, it's two days since I started trying RapidWeaver, and I've probably spent five hours playing with it to get this far. In reality, that time was split into two hours getting the old files and FTP login details and stripping them out, and three hours actually getting used to the program.

I'm pleased with the result, although the clouds do remind me a little too much of Windows for comfort. The next step will be modifying a theme for my father-in-law to have his societies website. I'm hoping that this first one can be done just by opening the theme package and dropping in a replacement graphic the same size, but if the worst comes to the worst I'll use the CSSEdit program. However, I was hoping to leave that for site number three...

It's a very different feel to web development, using RapidWeaver, compared to GoLive. Mac360 described it 'as a whole new metaphor'. They've got that right on the ball.

I'm waiting to see how long it takes my dad to notice this site has changed!