Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
19 April 2014 - Saturday
Still no brain.
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18 April 2014 - Friday
Tiny brain. Tinier than the walnut brain of a cat.
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17 April 2014 - Thursday
Heartbleed excitement continues, but it's okay because I have
Avalonhugs.
Unwrapped Sky (Rjurik Davidson) is far future New Weird. It
feels very much like Numenera,
actually, with the vast underground structures full of incomprehensible
machinery and the strange ancient creatures. Also, minotaurs and labor
disputes.
The excuse used by Hexcommunicated (Rafael Chandler) is
that being transformed into a fake vampire or werewolf causes much less SAN
loss than having your body stuffed with machinery until you are an inhuman
monstrosity, even if medically the two are almost indistinguishable. Add
international intrigue and murder on various scales, and fling at a
concrete wall, very fast.
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16 April 2014 - Wednesday
More Heartbleed excitement. We got the biggest customer who screamed the
loudest the early version of the fix, which they managed to install
mostly on their own with only light casualties, so I guess we're moving
forward.
The final version of Inverse
World is out in PDF form, available at DriveThruRPG!
(The physical version will be a bit longer, apparently.)
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15 April 2014 - Tuesday
Oh look, customers are all flipping out about Heartbleed. It's almost
as though they think their data has some value.
Argh, I left work early to get to gaming at Ken's, and then Ken
called me to say that everyone else who didn't already live there had
cancelled. No gaming for us! Only Zuul!
Maybe next week? Or maybe trying to game with grownups is just
futile.
They have failed us! To the crocodile pit with them!
The Pillars of Hercules (David Constantine) starts off as
leverpunk AH, with a multi-way war in which Macedonia is at least two
sides, but then spirals out of control in several directions at once. I
really did not expect it to go where it ended up, although possibly I
should have.
Ruins (Dan Wells) is the end(?) of the "Partials" sequence,
in which the very few remaining wild-type humans and very few remaining
modified humans manage to not drag each other down, barely. I still
liked the John Cleaver books better.
Jadepunk:
Tales From Kausao City is jade-powered steampunk in an enormously
corrupt colonial metropolis, using Fate Core. It
seems like it should be a good idea, but something about it leaves me flat.
Not enough evocation in the background, I guess.
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14 April 2014 - Monday
Oh look, customers are all broken.
Twelve paws!
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13 April 2014 - Sunday
For some strange reason, Avalon seems to still like me.
Empire State (Adam Christopher) is a rollicking tale of
superheroes, supervillains, alternate dimensions, and conspiracies
within conspiracies. Also, robots.
Oh yes by Avalon (Mon Apr 21 17:44:57 2014)
I still like you, and I /like-like/ you. =)
Re: Oh yes by Trip (Tue Apr 22 08:41:42 2014)
BLUSH!
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12 April 2014 - Saturday
Blblblblblblbl.
- Princess Tutu 3: Ayse is still enjoying this, so Marith
is happy.
- Slayers Revolution 6-7: I hope they didn't get charged
too much for that cruise.
- Shakugan no Shana season 3 9: And Jedi think they're
cool because they can TK their weapon into their hand. Pikers!
- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood 42-44: I am totally
down with Envy getting smacked, but I don't have much hope that it will
last.
The Teratic
Tome is for OSR games, but ones that take the horror element seriously.
Some of these monsters are stand-up opponents, but a lot are things that
creep into a city and surreptitiously do horrible things to people who have
committed a particular sin, and some are the kind where the earth quakes
and calves are born with two heads in the days before they arrive.
Re: Princess Tutu by marith (Mon Apr 21 22:08:29 2014)
I am happy because it is still awesome on second viewing and _I_ am enjoying it (though of course I am also pleased that Ayse is enjoying it too, and that you and Dave at least do not appear to be suffering under the crushing burden of animated duck ballet).
The Crushing Burden of Duck Ballet by Trip (Tue Apr 22 08:41:02 2014)
It's okay, ducks have hollow bones. :)
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11 April 2014 - Friday
Too sleepy to brain.
Hillfolk is
built on Robin D Law's DramaSystem, which
is a fairly minimal system built on the premise that proper stories need
dramatic beats, not just procedural ones (see Hamlet's Hit
Points). There is a rudimentary system for doing things, but mostly,
you need to make a character who a) has two dramatic poles to oscillate
between (principle vs expediency, etc), and b) wants something emotional
(love, respect, punishment, etc, etc) from two of the other PCs that they
don't want to give. There is a system of tokens to encourage people to give
a little, but mostly the PCs are just supposed to chew on each other, with
the GM there to provide external threats to ramp up the tension.
That's the first few pages, plus an Iron Age Eastern-Med setting with no
magic. The bulk of the book is a couple of dozen alternate settings (by
other people) in which drama could occur once a group has played in the
default setting enough to overcome their desire for procedural scenes.
These range from professional wrestling to a gang of robots living under
the thumb of a frustrated transcendence in the post-biological future of
Earth.
I'm not sure about DramaSystem itself, but the idea of requiring every
PC to want something from another PC seems like it would make party
dynamics more exciting in most games.
{Quarter, Half, Full, Double, Captain's, Owner's} Share
(Nathan Lowell) are a series of direct-to-videoebook
novels about the career of a young spacer in a fairly low-tech interstellar
future (gravitics, jump drive, autodocs, and not much else), from orphaned
kitchen mook to expert spacer who gets all the chicks with his tailored
clothes to owner of a starship. There is surprisingly little violence in
them for space adventure, even on the one ship where a lot more would have
been justified. The main character is engaging, but I think the author
cheated to make him look smarter. Either that, or it's a future in which
all the lessons of software engineering have been lost. Also, I am deeply
unsure about the economics as portrayed, but that is true for all
tramp-freighter-in-space settings. But the handling of the gravity
slingshot maneuver was good.
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10 April 2014 - Thursday
More interviews, also ¾ unproductive. But I escaped the office
early so I could spend some time with Avalon before being sucked into
the pits of recruiting.
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9 April 2014 - Wednesday
Up until 98264589 o'clock interviewing guys in India, of which at
least ¾ were unworthy.
Maybe I should have let the cats help more.
Judge vol 1 (Yoshiki Tonogai) is deathtrap psychological
horror: a bunch of random bozos are kidnapped and locked up, while
mysterious messages say that if they can't agree on one person to
sacrifice, they all get the chop.
Is The Waking Engine (David Edison) New Weird? It is
certainly Infinite City (examples: Perdido Street Station,
Rats and Gargoyles, Thunderer, although they are
not literally infinite), which I think is pretty much always a subgenre
of New Weird. Anyway, it has death and shamanism and liches in
skyscrapers and pilots in barrels and transformations and depraved
aristocrats with weapons from the dawn of time.
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8 April 2014 - Tuesday
So far the customers are not as horrible this week, but on the other
hand, I have more late-night interviews scheduled for tomorrow.
The Alchemist's Revenge (Peter Cakebread) is set in the
world of Clockwork
& Chivalry, with Puritans in clockwork tanks vs Royalist
mages alchemists, turning all England into a war zone with
both opportunities and obstacles for avenging wrongful deaths.
Scarlet
Heroes is an OSR game, but with some interesting differences. It is
intended for one player and one GM (take that, fiendish schedule) to play
through OD&D or AD&D modules. PCs have the same hit points, but monsters
take damage directly to hit dice; the same kind of damage dice are used but
they are read very differently: 1 => 0, 2-5 => 1, 6-9 => 2, 10+
=> 4. This adds up to monster hit points and all damage being reduced by
a factor of about five, so that the one PC takes as much killing as the
whole party of five would in regular D&D. The PC has one die of damage that
can be freely inflicted on anyone of equal or lower level each round, so
hordes of mooks melt away like butter. Finally, the PC can take two dice of
damage (bigger dice each time) to either escape certain doom, or make it
past something they don't have the skills for by complete coincidence. (The
skill system is freeform backgrounds, very much like 13th Age's and
not very old-school. It also rolled on 2d8, like saves, instead of 1d20
like attacks, I guess to avoid accusations of having a la-di-dah
system instead of rules.)
The setting is mostly Asian, with some vikings and dwarves and
assorted others who also got driven into Campaign Archipelago tucked
into the corners, and the locals (who got tagged with unflattering names
like "orc" and "goblin" but are pretty much human) in the areas no one with
metal weapons wants. The bestiary is all obscure Asian monsters too, since
you can get popular monsters from existing material.
Twelve paws!
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7 April 2014 - Monday
Workingu, workingu, la la la.
Angelfall and World After (Susan Ee) entertain
me because not only is it set in places I know, or at least have seen,
but I recognize the self-defense moves the protagonist uses as being
from IMPACT. Those angels
are pretty sketchy as divine beings, though. Maybe the third book will
explain some of that.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
6 April 2014 - Sunday
How do we play this game again?
Oh yah, I make up stuff to annoy the PCs! However, in the end, they
managed to capture one catgirl ninja and fight the others to a draw long
enough to get her to the Empress and get rid of the -2 penalty on all
other activities that no one ever remembered to inflict on them. Then we
tried to remember what we were doing in Jeremy's adventure, which was
both ages ago for the players and out of chronological order for the PCs.
We got it to a place where we could leave it until the current time, and
then subjected Hyacinthe to a visit to the place where her entire family
was brutally massacred by plant monsters. There was still a clue there,
although it is pretty ambiguous. We are pretty sure something freaky was
going on when Hyacinthe's ancestress was sacrificing PoWs and rhubarb
monsters to make magic weapons. Even more freaky, I mean.
Okko vol 1 (Hub) is a French comic about about a ronin and
his strange companions (a PC group if I ever saw one) in not-Japan, vs
pirates and vampires and stuff. It is totally a Legend of
the Five Rings adventure.
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5 April 2014 - Saturday
I continue to be not on call, but also lazy.
Not too lazy to go to Monkeycat Towers for friendship and pizza,
however!
- Princess Tutu 1-2: Ballet battle, Duck vs Anteaterina!
- Slayers Revolution 5: Finally we learn some about Pokota.
And [SPOILER] is back!
- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood 41: Kimblee's motto
seems to be "I can always get new henchmen".
- Shakugan no Shana season 3 7-8: Villainous dialog!
Zenn Scarlett and Under Nameless Stars
(Christian Schoon) are YA space adventure with alien animals, but I think
the animals fail on a) cube-square law (yes, even in Mars gravity), and b)
nothing makes sense in biology except in light of evolution. These are very
traditional SF-biology failings, but they still sadden me.
Twelve paws!
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4 April 2014 - Friday
I'm not on call any more! Yay!
But, Avalon is dealing with Impending Family Drama, so no date tonight.
I will have to go blblblbl and read stuff and pet cats.
Sarah Monette's "Doctrine of Labyrinths" series was not received as
well as it should have been by the Philistinate, so she had to publish
The Goblin Emperor as Katherine Addison. Perhaps this time
she will get her proper due, because this book is pretty good. It's not
perfect — some of the antagonists are gratuitously (although not
unrealistically) awful — but I liked most of the characters and
strongly approve of the protagonist's attempts to not suck despite being
an untrained hereditary ruler.
Although this book is fantasy, the genre elements are not at all
central. All the important characters in the book are elves, goblins, or
hybrids, but they are pretty human except for including mobile ears in
their body language. Likewise, although there are steampunk elements
(airships, pneumatic mail tubes) and magic, they're almost entirely
background and the story would probably work almost as well without them.
On the other hand, the secondary world elements (language, social
structure) are very nicely done, so it's not like it could have been
historical fiction.
Hurray, Shadow Unit vol 14 (Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Leah
Bobet, Will Shetterly) is out! Oh the doom! But it would nice if there were
a little more development of WTF is going on.
Carl recommended Norse Code (Greg van Eeekhout), but it
turns out I had read it before, I just didn't remember the name. It seems
suitably bleak in some ways, but I still like the Pitts books better for
modern Norse myth.
Dictatorial Grimoire (Ayumi Kanou) ends with volume 3, and
not really that much doom. It may have been anticlimactic, but "Yah,
so?" was clearly the correct answer to Cinderella's big reveal.
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3 April 2014 - Thursday
I could not escape early today because there was a meeting right up
until the end, but at least I escaped from that without too many action
items.
Dinocalypse Now (Chuck Wendig) is one of the tie-in novels
Evil Hat put out for Spirit of the
Century. It is okay but kind of over the top. Maybe I don't actually
have the pulp sensibility after all.
A fiction book with no specfic elements? Who am I, and what have I done
with Trip?! Well, wherever I stashed him, I used the time to read
Panic (Lauren Oliver), which is about desperate teenagers
behaving in self-destructive ways for arguably good (or at least
optimistic) reasons, which they wouldn't have to do if the adults around
them didn't suck.
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2 April 2014 - Wednesday
I was here for thirteen hours yesterday, so when the Horrible Customer
became quiet I unilaterally figured the stock price could survive my
leaving after only eight hours today, to do all the stuff I would have done
yesterday. Like Avalon! And also returnng library books and eating pizza
and petting cats.
Princeless vol 1 (Jeremy Whitley, M Goodwin) is not
terribly original, but I am very much in favor of princesses rescuing
themselves and even being sensibly clad. I'm not sure about that
sidekick, though.
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1 April 2014 - Tuesday
Date with hot internet girlfriend: FAIL, due to Horrible
Customer.
Getting library books back on time: FAIL, due to Horrible
Customer.
Dinner: FAIL, due to Horrible Customer.
Going to bed on time: FAIL, due to Horrible Customer.
The main characters of Rat Queens vol 1 (Kurtis J Wiebe,
Roc Upchurch) are totally what Amazon Quartet of
Justice would have become without the moral compass of Sophia.
Volume 3 of Saga (Brian K Vaughan, Fiona Staples) needs
more weirdness, but at least they found a way to bring back the
spider-monster.
4 right paws +
4 orange paws +
4 left paws +
4 white paws +
4 front paws +
4 brown paws +
4 back paws = 12 adorable paws!
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31 March 2014 - Monday
Spent all day on Webex with the same horrible customer, fixing things
but somehow never making them happy.
Also, no Avalon for me.
The 13th
Age version of the Midgard
Bestiary is not quite as inspiring as the actual 13th Age bestiary, but
it's not bad. The monsters have a lot of setting stuck to them, but it's
easy to soak that off and repaint.
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30 March 2014 - Sunday
I got called at 1:30 and again at about 3:00 for more work stuff, which
did not work as well as it might have because my RSA token was still at
Monkeycat Towers. I managed to get down there and back and eat lunch before
the horrible customer returned again (horribly).
Horrible, horrible customer.
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29 March 2014 - Saturday
I got called for work just as I was trying to head out into the pouring
rain to get lunch and go to Monkeycat Towers, but it was an easy question
and did not delay me excessively.
Today, Birthday Dinner II:
Sushi Boogaloo, now with added Dave and Ja Baby! Om nom nom nom
nom.
Work kindly (though of course inadvertantly) waited until we were
almost done with dinner to call me and make me spend an hour and a half
trying to mollify Big Customer X while everyone failed to watch anime
until finally I told them to give up on me.
- Slayers Revolution 3-4: I only saw part of 4, but so
far it doesn't seem like there has been any new information about
Prehensile-Ears Plushie. A magic-user in a cardboard box makes a
pretty good substitute for a magic tank, though.
- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood 39-40: Making deals
with things in bottles is always a good plan!
- Shakugan no Shana season 3 6: Yes, all Flame Hazes are
like that.
The Seven Deadly Sins vol 1 (Nakaba Suzuki) is pretty
standard overpowered shonen fantasy, with giant pig and cleavage (not
together).
Emilie and the Hollow World and Emilie and the Sky
World (Martha Wells) are fantasy/steampunk YA adventure in exotic
locations. They don't push the bounds of the genre, but are fun. In
fact, while reading the end of the second one, I missed my stop on the
last train of the night and had to ride the bus back from California Avenue
like an idiot.
Make a comment!
28 March 2014 - Friday
I escaped work early today, but it doesn't matter because I'm on
call. Also Avalon is busy.
I finished the third disc of Strawberry Panic. Love
triangles everywhere! And no, Yaya does not just admire Hikari and want
to be her friend. (If she did, she would remember to kiss with her mouth
and not with her hands.)
The Wyld Hunt (Gunnar Roxen) is more or less cyberpunk,
although it has psionics, and apparently magic and living gods (which might
be psionics, or maybe the psionics is magic), along with the last two
honest cops in Neo-London. However, it is also cheesy and poorly edited,
because "first published as an Amazon ebook" is this decade's "direct to
video".
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27 March 2014 - Thursday
No interviews tonight, but Big Customer X's problem kept me at work
forever, and then once I finally got home, I had to do more work until
it was after bedtime again.
Marmalade did not try to eat my headset this time.
My hardcopy of Go Get a
Roomie! (Chloé C) finally came in, so I read it. It is still
very cute.
Make a comment!
26 March 2014 - Wednesday
More late-night interviews, with worse candidates, but at least this
time I wasn't trying to do laundry at the same time.
Marmalade, do not eat my headset!
Sadly, Razor's Edge (Martha Wells) is an official
Star Wars novel, so we do not get to see Princess Leia jump
the butch Twi'lek pirate. But she totally should have.
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25 March 2014 - Tuesday
No bonus after-hours work today, just the usual work. But no Avalons.
Only cats and Strawberry Panic.
Dragon Venom (Lawrence Watt-Evans) wraps up the trilogy
neatly, but it's so neat that I have to wonder how that system came to
be. Also, it cries out for a fourth book where people go, "Holy crap,
how can we get back to the days of ravening dragons of death?"
Make a comment!
24 March 2014 - Monday
Ack, where did this Monday come from? And why does it have extra
bonus interviews from 20:00 to 23:00? Also, why was only one of the four
people we interviewed even slightly acceptable? Maybe I should see if
Marmalade can eat their Internet connections so they never bother us
again.
Since Darkness is a published author, I figured I should read some of
her books. Matchbox Girls and Infinity Key were
pretty good! And so, so full of doom.
Make a comment!
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