Thieving Thursday

Inspired by Tenkar's overdue Kickstarter name and shame roundup and the Dwimmermount updates, here's where I am with Horror Among Thieves. This is as much for me as anyone else, but I thought it might be good to have it be public. I shall update it each Thursday.

Cover - done.
p1-2 - Introduction/Norwich 1625 - done, but needs a rewrite in a less, well, boring voice.
p3 - Norwich map - still to do.
p4 - about the Tenebrous Hand - still to do.
p5 - Tenebrous Hand headquarters map - done.
p5-6 - The Dog & Bastard - maps done, text still to do.
p7 - The House on Cow Hill - maps done, text done.
p8 - "Dear Christina" handout - done, but I'm not happy with it; my handwriting's not the right look for a letter from 1625.
p9 - The Warehouse - maps done, text done.
p10 - The Scribe - maps done, text done.
p11 - The Potter - maps done, text still to do.
p12 - I have a blank page here at the moment, to preserve the double-page spreads elsewhere in the book; perhaps I can put some full-page art here.
p13 - The Butcher - maps done, text done.
p14 - mutant dog picture - done, but I think I should take another pass at it.
p15-16 - The Carpenter - maps done, text still to do.
p17 - The House on Willow Lane - maps done, text done.
p18 - The Casket - art done, text done.
p19 - The Courtyard - maps done, text done.
p20 - The Secret Cellar - maps done, text done, but needs a rewrite.
p21-22 - The Vaults - maps need fixing, text done.
p23-24 - treasure table - art done, text done.
p25-26 - secret double-page image - art almost done.
p27-28 - The Brotherhood of Pus - map still to do, text still to do.

pXX - "Forgive us" art - done, but I'm not sure where it's going to go yet.
PXX - a rival party - still to do.
pXX - "Death and Taxes" bonus adventure - needs a rewrite.
pXX - "In Heaven, Everything is Fine" bonus adventure - needs a rewrite.

Gods, Thieves and Dwimmermount

I wasn't going to discuss the Dwimmermount imbroglio. I didn't contribute much to the Kickstarter and it doesn't seem like my place to comment on James Maliszewski's morals or personal circumstances. That said, there have been a couple of developments of late that have caused me to reconsider.

The first is that I have my own crowdfunded project that is running very late. Horror Among Thieves is far from dead, but I find myself unable to devote as much time to its completion as I'd like. It will be finished, and those who supported the project will be getting something extra to -- I hope -- take some edge off the interminable wait. People have called for James to hand Dwimmermount -- a near-complete manuscript exists, it seems -- over to someone else to manage and publish since he cannot do so himself; I see the wisdom in that suggestion, and it made me look at what I was trying to achieve with Horror Among Thieves and see if I should do something similar. I am confident that completing the adventure is within my abilities, but when that will happen I don't know, though I hope it will be soon. My own lack of productivity on the, er, product annoys me no end; James had a whole megadungeon to publish but I only have a small adventure to write and I can't even get that out the door on time. I feel terrible that Horror Among Thieves is the first project of my own that I can call professional, and yet I've been less than professional in its production; I don't want to be known for lateness and unreliability, and so my hope is that at least the final product will be a good one. Even if not, I have learned some valuable lessons.

James was working on another project alongside but unrelated to Dwimmermount, a collection of minor deities called Petty Gods, and that too has languished in development heck, until now. Greg Gorgonmilk has decided to resurrect the project in James' absence and has put out a call for the contributing writers and artists to get in touch. I'm pleased to see the book's potential return, in part because I'd contributed three drawings to it -- such as Fluxalle, the god of rusted cookware, above -- but also because I like the idea of making use of the inventiveness of the gaming community to produce something fun and free for everyone.

Greg hasn't yet tracked down all of the original artists and writers, so if you are or know one of them, then get in touch with him here. I believe he's also looking for new contributions, if you'd like to get involved.

The Casket

This carved stone object is about the size of a pineapple and feels hollow. It can be opened with a successful Tinkering roll or suitable magic but is quite empty, its contents having already done their horrific work.

A Cleric will recognise the casket as a sacred item associated with one of the less pleasant deities; if the Cleric can roll their level or less on a d20, they identify the item as being dedicated to Bubonica, a minor goddess of plague and disease.

The casket counts as a holy symbol for Clerics of Bubonica and is worth 20sp to a depraved enough collector.

Grubby Tropical Pizza

Local mini-chain Grubbs Burgers is quite famous with the Brighton post-pub crowd, although in almost seven years here I'd only been once, until a friend, knowing full well my love of bananas, suggested I try their tropical burger. This is a standard burger -- vegetarian for me -- topped with peanut butter, a pineapple ring and some banana slices; even with my aforementioned love of bananas, this seemed a bit dubious, but I liked it a lot and began to wonder if it would work as a pizza topping.

It does.

I will give rough measurements here, as everyone likes a different amount of stuff on their pizza. This made one thirty centimetre-ish pizza, enough to feed two persons of medium appetite.

Stuff You Will Need:

One pizza base. I use Hugh Furry-Orchestra-Stall's magic dough as it results in a happy medium between poppadom-crispy and Domino's-spongy; I halved his measurements to get enough dough to make one base and, as you can see from the picture, a few dough balls, because dough balls are ace.
Two or three dessert spoons of peanut butter. I used the Whole Earth Crunchy variety.
Two or three dessert spoons of pineapple chunks or pieces.
One banana, sliced.
Cheese, sliced or grated. I used about half of a 125g lump of mozzarella.

How to Make It:

Preheat yon oven to 250°C if possible, or 225°C if it's weak like mine.
Follow the instructions to prepare your pizza base. I like to cook it for a couple of minutes before I add the toppings.
Spread the peanut butter over the base.
Add the pineapple pieces in as chaotic an arrangement as you can handle.
Add the banana slices, again in an arrangement that best suits your personal demons.
Top with the cheese.
Bake for ten to fifteen minutes until the base is cooked.
That's it!

Wrecked Ambition

I saw Wreck-It Ralph last week. It has its strengths; the subplot involving the old-fashioned Fix-It Felix Jr. and the Gears of War-esque Sergeant Calhoun benefits from strong writing -- Calhoun's nigh-nonsensical nuggets of tough-guy wisdom are brilliant, reminiscent of The Tick in places -- and good performances from Jane Lynch and Jack McBrayer. It's so well done that it threatens on more than one occasion to overwhelm the main storyline, a bog-standard Disney bit of fluff about acceptance and being true to oneself.

The biggest problem with the film is its chronic lack of ambition in terms of visuals and design. The civilians -- non-player characters? -- of Ralph's world have the limited animation and movement of 8-bit sprites, as is appropriate, except they're not sprites. They're smooth, generic cgi, just like every other character in the film and every other character in every other post-Toy Story animated feature. It's a shame because the animators show -- with little touches like the way those NPCs move, or the pixellated blobs of cake icing splattered across the walls after one of Ralph's rampages -- that they've got some sense of how to make the visuals memorable, but they never quite get there. There's even a joke at one point -- in which Felix compliments Calhoun on her high-resolution curves -- that falls flat because Felix himself is rendered in high-resolution cgi. It's so disappointing.

I suppose it's easier, quicker and cheaper to produce animation in such a way, but when there's stuff like Paperman out there turning heads and winning awards based in no small part on its unique look, Wreck-It Ralph looks even more bland in comparison. As such, sticking the aforementioned short at the beginning of the film was probably not the cleverest thing Disney could have done.

I ♥ Monsters

Over at his blog, Martin writes about how monster books are his least favourite role-playing products. He then goes on to describe the kind of monsters that inhabit the campaign setting he's been using for fantasy games for a number of years, and presents a good argument for why monster books are of little use to him.

Unlike pretty much every other gaming blogger, I've never attempted to put together a fantasy setting, aside from when I ran a short Fighting Fantasy campaign, but in that case I was making it up as I went along so I don't think it counts. When I was younger, most of my gaming time was spent on Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu, and in recent years I've only played in existing published settings, so it's never come up.

Even so, I love monster books. I have a stack of them here with me; most are for games I don't play while others -- like the beautiful Beasts and its sequel -- have nothing to do with gaming at all. As such, I don't get any practical use out of them, just as Martin doesn't, yet I love them nonetheless. There's something wonderful about a big thick book of exotic and impossible creatures; I have often spent an hour or two leafing through these volumes, reading the descriptions and -- above all -- admiring the illustrations. They are beautiful, despite their utility, or lack of; I doubt I'll ever make use of it in a game again but you wouldn't be able to prise Out of the Pit from my grasp as it's full of monsters drawn and painted by the likes of John Blanche and Russ Nicholson.

(That's Out of the Pit in the image above, with an Iain Mcaig shapechanger; also pictured is Tony DiTerlizzi's Medusa from the Monstrous Manual for AD&D2, and Frank Stockton's Yuki-Onna from Beasts! Book 2.)

I remember some rumblings a while ago about putting together some sort of community monster book, drawing upon the talents of the writers and artists who've sprung up to blog about games in the past few years. It hasn't happened yet, but if it will include things like The Guardian of the Palace of the Perfect Moon, it's nothing less than a great idea.

Two Minutes of Terror

My presentation is tomorrow and I am more than a little nervous. I know that there's no sense to being frightened, because I have to do it, frightened or not, and it's only a two minute piece, but this fear does not back down in the face of cold logic. It's weird -- and if I weren't in said state I'd find it fascinating -- because in general I'm not frightened by things, but the idea of public performance fills me with a cold, dark terror.

I've come up with a bit of blather about an aspect of technology -- I chose The Gimp as it's something about which I know at least a little -- and after some practice I've got it to fit into two minutes with a little wiggle room if I need it. It starts with a joke -- oh dear -- and ends with some blatant tubthumping for the open source movement, and with any luck I will never be asked to speak in public again.

It's only two minutes; what a sissy I am.

Yup

Petting the Black Dog

You've seen the movie. It probably had Paul Rudd and Drew Barrymore in it, or if you were really unlucky, Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston. You've got the two friends who are more than just friends but haven't done anything about it, then something bad happens to one of them in the third act, so the other tries to comfort them, as friends do, they get closer and BOOM! There's a kiss, the music swells, the gay best friend cheers, and the credits roll as some inspirational pop classic plays. Well, that was more or less my Tuesday in a week that was -- for lack of a better word -- nuts.

To be clear, there was no you-know-what, not even a kiss, but the unspoken was spoken, let's put it that way. It was good, it felt right, but afterwards I was mortified and felt that I'd betrayed my friend's trust. I saw that friend every day that week, and we went out again on the Thursday -- to the same place, no less -- and I have not been so confused in a long time. I feel like a teenager, and as everyone knows, teenagers are idiots.

Then on Friday I couldn't get out of bed. I know what you're thinking, you filthy deviants, but I was alone; save your high-fives. I've had cases of depression -- or what seems very much like it -- before, but I've just sort of got on with things; this time I was unable to move and made myself two hours late for work. Again, mortified. I don't think it was related to the romantic entanglements of the days before, rather it was something that had been coming for a while. It had passed by the afternoon, but the depth of the funk is still quite a shock, even in hindsight.

So that's where I am right now. I've been keeping myself busy and diving into some outstanding work, as that seems the best way to take my mind off things; having everything go a bit bonkers seems to do wonders for one's productivity.

Changing My Mind

Back during the original console wars, I was a Sega boy. This meant that I got to play Streets of Rage and Sonic the Hedgehog but it did also mean that I missed out on the classic role-playing games of the era. We got the Phantasy Star series and Shining Force but we didn't get Dragon Quest, or Breath of Fire, or the big one, the Final Fantasy series. It didn't help that even Nintendo owners only saw half of these games, if that, released in Europe.

With the release of the PlayStation and Final Fantasy VII Nintendo's dominance of the genre faded away, so it's somewhat ironic that the best rpg of recent years -- since Final Fantasy XII on the PS2, I'd say -- appeared on the Wii, which, as everyone knows isn't a proper console for proper gaming, no siree.

Monolith Soft and Nintendo delivered Xenoblade, a game that looked much better than Wii games are supposed to look and played much better than any rpg in years, despite some wonky menu navigation. It combined the best aspects of both online and offline rpgs and if it had come out on the other consoles too, it would be regarded as one of the best games -- rpg or not -- of the current console generation.

Yes, I do mean to suggest that it's better than Skyrim, and it looks like there's a follow-up on the way:



I wasn't going to get a WiiU, but Nintendo may have just changed my mind.