Lathany

This is Carter - chosen for me by bateleur and the twins.



She's named after a The Secret World character.

Today has been a good day. Christmas dinner all came together as hoped, I've been playing my new Final Fantasy CD of battle music (with thanks to quisalan) and I've been for a walk. I'm a bit headachey now - but it was worth the cocktails.

Last week we celebrated our wedding anniversary. For the first time, we did so with the twins and everyone was involved in the cooking. I even tidied in the dining room beforehand for the first time in ages.



Starter was little savoury tarts, the main course was steak (which the twins were not fond of) and dessert were pots of banana and black treacle. We had a red Rioja (Gran Reserva) with it.

Also recently, we finished season 2 of The Wire. I thought that the dockers were interesting and I liked the new characters (particularly Beadie). However, the series suffered from wanting to keep the old favourites without really having a role for many of them. Still very watchable though and a very interesting and sympathetic portrayal of the dockers and particularly the Sobotka family.

It's been pretty quiet on the roleplaying front, although we did have a session of Folded Edge. We found the rebel fleet of Lassiter Drives (or, at least, we think it's the rebels) and we seem to be heavily involved in the grand plot. Except... we'd rather not be. The party has divided sympathies and this is somewhat paralysing as joining either side of the war seems bad.

Last night, having been stood up by chrestomancy, venta and I went out for dinner and a few drinks. venta suggested Abeno for food and I loved it. We shared the World Cup Okonomi-yaki ("'Okonomi-yakis' are variations on a theme, the theme being a base of cabbage, egg and dough with spring onions, ginger and morsels of 'tempura' batter"; the toppings included asparagus, bacon, mushrooms and a fried egg) which they cooked at the table. It was slightly tricky to divide in two (said the person who watched), but very yummy. We followed it up with desserts. I had Yokohama Sundae ("Coffee Jelly, Coffee Ice-Cream, Cinnamon Ice-Cream and more in this suffusion of sensations!") and venta chose Arashiyama-An ("A Japanese garden of a dessert - Green Tea Ice-Cream, Adzuki Beans, Fruit, sweet Rice Dumplings doughnuts - landscaped with Cream. Meditate on your indulgence!"). Thoroughly recommended.

We got back yesterday from Christmas with the grandparents. This began in Cambridge (bateleur's parents), on the night of bateleur's birthday when we arrived late having been working (and in Ryan's case at school) during the day. We were there until Monday lunchtime.

Saturday: The morning spent wandering around the parks trying not to get too damp. The afternoon in the house and the evening celebrating the birthday and Xmas. Dinner was roast lamb and the crackers had little musical whistles inside along with a music sheet. The idea was that you could play various tunes (including Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells) using the whistles. This was moderately successful, although some tunes were unrecognisable.

Sunday: We spent the morning at Josie's (bateleur's sister) and the afternoon at the Cambridge Arts Theatre watching the pantomime of Robin Hood. The show was rather good, once you accepted the whole "He's behind you!" and other bits of audience participation. In the evening, we watched Straw Dogs. I say we. The film reached the strangled cat and I left for bed.

On Monday lunchtime we travelled to Royston (my parents) and discovered that it was still unclear (there were two ambiguous emails) whether chrestomancy was going to attempt a mad dash in his car to do presents (we discovered on Christmas morning that he thought he had been clear and was not coming).

Monday: A Thai meal in the evening at the rather excellent local Thai.

Tuesday: A walk around Royston in the morning and I made mince pies in the afternoon. Dinner was spaghetti bolognese and said mince pies.

Wednesday: Christmas! I cooked the dinner, we all opened presents and there was Dr Who in the evening (which I wasn't too impressed with. The whole 13th generation bit was pretty contrived. Actually most of it was pretty contrived).

Thursday: We headed for home and Reeve. Who was found asleep on my futon.

On Wednesday I got up at 6am (too early for me) and headed off to London to catch a train to Birmingham. I was off to see the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in Birmingham, which meant Queen Elizabeth Hospital. It was a fairly interesting day, although somewhat on the long side, but the train journey up proved unexpectedly productive as I started planning the Warhammer 40K game I'm running at the end of August.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful both at work and at home. I like tennis but I've not been watching, instead I've been checking on the results from time to time. The weather has become glorious - it seems an age since we had a really lovely sunny patch.

Last night, bateleur and I watched Gone (the 2012 release), courtesy of Lovefilms. It had received abominable reviews - which was unfair - but it wasn't brilliant either. On the plus side, the scenery was good and I like Amanda Seyfried (Lily from Veronica Mars). One the minus side, the plot wasn't so good, there was an unnecessary cat-in-a-cupboard moment and a rather stupid bit about how a car chase started.

Today we're planning to celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary (which is actually on Monday) and tomorrow we have verlaine and family over. So it'll be a pretty full weekend.

My contributions to our quiz team (by which I mean the questions I could answer and no-one else could):
- What are the four Hogwarts houses?
- What are the names of the four girls in Little Women?
- Name the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
- Who played the Last Action Hero?

Yes, I know.

Today was the rare occasion when bateleur failed to get up for breakfast having been struck down by the latest lurgy. Fortunately, he started to recover mid-day and has been downstairs since then.

Having missed all the Christmas fun yesterday, I finally made a start on the cake (which takes about three weeks - so I'm just about in time) and this evening I put the tree up. The twins each claimed a piece of tinsel and took them off to their rooms. I'm nervously wondering where I'll find them when I go up.

A couple of weeks ago, bateleur and I celebrated twenty years together by going to a rather fine restaurant called Roganic. As bateleur has already provided an extensive write-up, I don't propose to say anything more about the food. However, I would add that the service was excellent - we were offered water when we arrived (still, sparkling or tap), every course arrived promptly and was described in detail and they brought the menu, wine list and bill to the person who asked for them. And chrestomancy was the hero of the occasion for providing the babysitting.

Roleplaying
GMing
I finished Meteor last night. It was a two year fantasy campaign for which I designed a world. The features were a pantheon of gods (the game featured just over a hundred) and a magic system with six types of magic - form, movement, energy, mind, disruption and displacement. When I set it up, I decided to try out running two different parties within it.

• The Good - Both parties worked and had different dynamics and somewhat different goals. It meant I could run with more players than I usually do (seven - I don't like having more than five people in a party these days). It made more use of a background I had put a lot of thought and effort into. All the characters were good and worked (although it turned out that some magic paths were more interesting / easier to progress through than others).
• The Bad - The parties were both on six week (ish) cycles while I was on a three week cycle and the players would have liked to run more often. The two occasions when the parties met up involved playing in somewhat overcrowded conditions (our lounge is fairly short of seating anyway) although no-one complained. I'd had a cunning plan for bateleur to play in both games - to NPC in one of the two, but it didn't work that well and he was constantly trying to remember which character knew what.
• The interesting - The parties had very difficult reactions to things and stopped and started at different times. The Nemoria party (lanfykins, chrisvenus, Alistair and bateleur) were more directionless at the start while the Constructs party (quisalan, ao_lai, chrestomancy and bateleur) were fine at the start, but struggling with aims and plans towards the end.
• Memorable moments - There were loads, but for the Nemoria Party, I think the tragic battle at Jist and also the Preadith Pilgrimage particularly stick out in my mind. For the Constructs party I would go with the debate about the sword of Thearanda and also the Battle of the campsite Orcet Bridge.

So, I enjoyed it, but I need to rethink the two party approach if I do something like this again.

Having completed a campaign, I'm now thinking about one-off plans for the next Con. Also, I can finally read Dark Heresy without worrying about it influencing my Meteor campaign.

Playing
Seventh Sea re-started on Tuesday and this time we set off across the land of Germany Eisen and promptly found a ghost inn. The resulting interactions were creepy, strange and - I think - a little bit helpful. Most characters have been contacted by people asking for them to come home (to different places) and the party is going to have to figure out where to go as soon as we complete our business in Eisen.

Computer Games
I promised a write-up of the two Darkness Within mystery/horror point-and-click games when I finished them. The short version is that the story was interesting (inspired by Lovecraft), the atmosphere tense/scary in places but that the gameplay was awkward and I constantly needed a FAQ. For a longer version:

There were originally supposed to be three games in this series, but the company finished the story in two games (which can be bought together) and, as far as I can tell, then stopped being a company. The two games they produced had some good elements, but I could also see why they hadn't get excellent reviews.

On the plus side, the story was genuinely interesting and there were a number of unexpected developments and scenes. The first of the two games (In Pursuit of Loath Nolder) in particular had some great surprise moments - such as the appearance of the poet (I won’t say more). Also, the inclusion of nightmares along with the day-to-day world was a nice touch. Every time I moved to a new night or day I was very keen to see where I now was.

I liked the two main characters - Harold (the protagonist) and Loath Nolder (who mainly appears in the second game, The Dark Lineage) - which particularly brought home the rather gruesome fates they suffer. Perhaps it's in keeping with the genre, but one thing that stuck out is that the main character does seem to make what Bea would call "poor choices". Example: Exploring the house of the murder victim? Go alone and do some rope climbing in the dark! Howard never told his friends anything and never asked for help. Perhaps that’s a mark of a bookish police detective, but it left me scratching my head and blinking at the screen several times. That said, his friends didn’t seem that bothered about him either.

The big problem with the two games was the gameplay. The main part of the game is usual for the genre - wandering around the environment reading things and interacting with objects. However, the game also has a couple of other elements - the first is a process for examining documents and the second is about combining items or ideas - both are nice concepts, but rather irritating in practical terms. The process of examining documents is that when faced with a new paper, letter or book the game gives you the option of underlining key words and sentences. Trouble is, some key sentences are really obvious and others are not. I found I wanted to underline everything, a few lines at a time, to process a document into clues. The combining items feature appears in many games in the point and click genre. What makes Darkness Within different is that this is also used for ideas. This is a lovely thing in theory - you combine some of the thoughts your character has and then reach new conclusions. However, in practice, you need all the associated thoughts to be able to use the mechanic and this is frustrating when you have only some of those needed. Also, in the second game, I’m not sure there were many places where the combination feature could be used for ideas (I don’t recall finding any).

Outside these two features, the game has other problems. The main ones being missing hotspots, huge areas and needing scenes to activate objects. The missing hotspots issue is caused in part by the screens scrolling up and down as well as right and left. There were several occasions when I missed something on the ground and it was really annoying. The huge areas were just painful. Whenever I was stuck, the next thing or stage could be anywhere in a huge range of locations as the character was almost never restricted in movement and the resulting plodding around was extremely frustrating. Finally, the inactivated objects were a nuisance because it meant I wandering around looking for things only to discover what I needed was something I had already examined, but could not previously pick up.

The overall result of the system was that the game had some nice ideas, but these were somewhat drowned in the inevitable plodding from place to place re-examining everything. So, I found it was just about worth playing - with a FAQ to hand.

Films
We've seen two more films - Fire Walk With Me and The Raid. The former was rather disappointing, but the latter was excellent.

• Fire Walk With Me - We finished Twin Peaks last year, so this seemed like a good idea. In addition, Mark Kermode had thoroughly recommended it (although responses were mixed). So I watched it, and was disappointed. My huge complaint was that there was little or no new information. The dark fate of Laura is already known and this film shows very little of anyone else. Yes, Kermode is right and Sheryl Lee is excellent as Laura, but that simply isn't enough in itself for me. I think the most telling comment I read was that Lynch apparently said he made because he was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and, if so, yeah - that's what it looks like. Like most other people, I would have liked a sequel (I knew in advance this wasn't) and the couple of lines alluding to Dale's fate simply were not enough. I gather two more films were planned to complete the Twin Peaks sequence but these were cancelled when this film flopped. A shame, but I can also see why.
• The Raid - Subtitles or not, this is excellent.The characters are interesting, the plot works and if the action is a combination of realistic firefights and unrealistic martial arts - well, even they kind of work. I loved this and I want to see the sequel (in production). Apparently the Americans are remaking it with the original director.

Not a lot else is going on right now. Work is busy - as always in the autumn - and I'm gearing up for dark evenings, dark mornings and the Halloween -> Xmas shopping.

Friday was bateleur and my sixteenth wedding anniversary. We celebrated in the usual way - with food and alcohol. Food was little savoury tarts, then prawns, fish, stuffed courgettes and three grain rice followed by bananas and sultanas fried in rum and served with cream. The alcohol was Pimms, a rather nice bottle of white and Grand Marnier. Sixteen is the first anniversary in my Book of Lists that doesn't have an associated material and it suddenly feels like a big number.

From having had a relatively quiet year last year, 2011 has been full of roleplaying games. Last week we had two on.

• Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor - This is a supplement to Monsters and Other Childish Things being run by smiorgan for chrestomancy, TheHattedOne, triskellian, bateleur and me. We play eight and nine year old mutant orphans who no-one loves. We've had two sessions to date, the first of which involved everyone picking on us (although we were eventually saved from The Bad Guys by a psychotic car) and the second of which involved us finally making a friend and watched other people have bad things happen to them.
• Meteor - This was with the party who have just completed their fourth pilgrimage (of four). They spent the session critical-failing magic tests and fighting minions of the Diseased Ones. I'm now heading for a session involving both parties. And a few gods. I'm hoping that they'll get to reach some agreement about the Diseased Ones. Or at least agree that they are A Bad Thing.

It's been a while since I ran a one-off, but there's a Con next year and I'll be planning something for it. I recently read an entry (over here) about one-offs and I agree with the points raised:

• Signpost the plot clearly.
• Character attributes should fit on an index card.
• Maximum of 2 fights, preferably 1.
• Individual character information should fit on a sheet of A4.
• Stick to 1 scene per hour (on average).
• Give the PCs a reason to work together.
• World - keep 1 location per scene maximum, plus outside the sandbox as one location.
• Assume your PCs will never sleep until the game is finished.

I would add three points to the general list and one for Con one-offs. Firstly, the better one-offs I've seen tend to work on a strong concept which can play out in a few hours (this is in the same way that constructing a short story is different from constructing novels). Secondly, one-offs almost always want pre-defined characters. I have seen player-generated characters for one-offs that worked, but they tended to work because it was impossible not to rather than because they were well-chosen. Thirdly, make sure that the characters all have a role; this is equally true for other types of game but arises particularly in one-offs because the characters have less time over which to establish niches for themselves; such things have to be pre-established. Also, for Con one-offs, it's important to be aware of the number limitations (ie. don't write for a party of four if the Con needs six). So:

• Strong, one-off suited concept.
• Pre-gen characters (or a very strong steer for players).
• Ensure that there's a role for everyone and it couldn't equally be done by some subset of the party.
• Check limitations - such as number of players - for the Con.

My past solo one-offs have been rather hit-and-miss - Working With Children went well whereas the BadgerCon Athory one-off wasn't particularly memorable. My main failings are usually that I don't run with a good one-off concept (it tends to be too big) and that the party has come unstuck. It is perhaps no co-incidence that I've generally had more success with mini-campaigns (such as Kaleidoscope and From The Cellars of Xanadu).

Much of my spare time has been spent on Twin Peaks episodes (which I'll review at the end of the season). But not all.

• The Lies of Locke Lamora - This was recommended by al_fruitbat and _alanna and I really loved it. It's a very clever plot set in a fantasy background about thieves who become confidence tricksters. Technically, it's the start of a series but the book is fairly stand-alone (although there's at least one character you expect to meet and then don't and another whose exit isn't detailed). About my only whinge is that the book is very light on female characters.
• Brighton Rock - We watched the remake, which is worth it for Helen Mirren alone (and a bit of Gollum). However, the film itself isn't a masterpiece and is generally a bit too dark for my tastes.

I don't have much work news to report. However, the next time I want to take a long lunch break at work, I think I might spend it poking round the British Museum. I've finally figured out that it's just round the corner from where I work. And it's free.

Valentine Day came, so we did our usual thing of nice wine and food. bateleur had bought salmon and cream cheese starters and made yummy pasties for the main course. However, the best part of the meal was the dessert he constructed - a little like tiramisu with a base of raisins and bananas cooked in alcohol and a top layer of mascarpone flavoured with spice. It was awesome.

The other main event of last weekend was the photo session at Ryan's school. His school photographs showed up a while back and were rather good (as opposed to Bea's school's more standard - dull - offering. So when the photographer offered family photo sessions this seemed a good opportunity to finally get some decent family photos done. I liked what came out when I saw it on screen, and we expect to get them in a few weeks time. There's three photos of the family (we'll keep one and grandparent the other two), a shot of bateleur and me and both separate and a joint picture of the duo. Most of it was in the studio (school hall!) but some were outside shots.

On a more predictable note, I've also continued to rewatch Heroes - both Once Upon A Time in Texas and Brother's Keeper were still awesome - probably the best of season 4. However, Strange Attractors was still dire and even as a devout Heroes fan I had trouble sitting it through on a rewatch. I haven't fully gone through the deleted scenes from that trio of episodes, but might say more when I do. Also I think both the good episodes include audio commentary which I plan on listening to.

• District 9 - We saw this last night and I knew little about it beforehand. It starts off like a documentary and is gory and disturbing. Having read about it afterwards, I can see why the Nigerians were mightily p*ssed about the way they were portrayed. But an excellent film - good to see one set in South Africa - but not an easy watch.
• Ravenor (Warhammer 40K fiction) - I read this trilogy (with two short stories) and felt it was good, but not as good as Eisenhorn. However, and for the benefit of quisalan, he's a much less smug and irritating protagonist.
• Recettear - I'm well into the eternity mode, but it's still moderately entertaining. The new heroes are interesting and I like upping the number of items and redecorating my store (the equivalent of "raising sheep", I'm sure).

Next week I have a day off work to go to Kew and it should generally be quiet because we're duo-less. Well, apart from the two roleplaying sessions of course (a one-off from bateleur this weekend and a Meteor next).

We've been away for the weekend to celebrate my father-in-law's 70th and - because it's the following day - the duo's 9th. Center parcs is pretty, covered in lights, has deer and has a rather awesome swimming pool. But the best thing? The warmth of the villa we hired (except at night when it was too hot) - we picked an excellent weekend to be somewhere cosy.

• The birthdays - The three cakes were different and beautiful - Josie used coloured icing to paint a pattern on J'J's fruit cake, Ryan had a chocolate dinosaur and Bea had a vanilla cat. The presents went down well - Ryan was instantly possessive of his camera whilst Bea tucked herself into a corner of the sofa with Super Scribblenauts. There was also too much food and drink of which my favourites were the red wine bateleur and I brought, the champagne, the dolma and the duck (and, of course, the cake).
• Sister Alice - My (ex) staff member bought this for me (along with The Player of Games) as a leaving present. It's by Robert Reed and was initially five (long) short stories. It's readable, interesting, set in the future, involves super-powered almost-invulnerable beings and gets meta very quickly.
• Deja Vu and The Butterfly Effect 3 - Deju Vu stars Denzel Washington. He's the lead, the best thing about the film and makes it immensely watchable despite the utterly unbelievable science fiction element. As bateleur noted, he makes his way through a scene watching a woman in a voyeuristic set-up managing to look smitten rather than a stalker (West from Heroes take note). The Butterfly Effect 3 isn't nearly as good, but is worth watching if you have seen and enjoyed the first one (otherwise don't bother). It uses a slightly different approach to the first two and is miles better than the second one (which, as I said earlier this month, was rubbish). It's not as good as the original though and still has a tendency to dwell on its sex scenes (like the second one did). And the protagonist is still a bit of an idiot, but a nicer idiot than the guy in Two.
• Holly Walk - Last weekend, we did something I've been meaning to do for ages - we walked Kew's Holly Walk during the berry time. We've never managed before as it falls in term time and the duo aren't big walkers (well, Bea isn't). But with a bribe of cake, they came along and I enjoyed myself. I love holly and holly berries; in part, I guess 'cos they remind me of the festive season and I love Xmas.
• Xmas cake - Speaking of Xmas, we're at home so I'm making the whiskey Christmas cake and I've done the first two steps (ie. now have a cooked cake after soaking the dried fruit for a week).

Christmas-wise I've got a fair way through the present-buying and have a stack of cards to write. Plus I have a candle and calendar for Wednesday. I love this time of year and have my leave already booked. Also I have two Meteor games in December (weather permitting) and have finally finished the big map of Vebrica.