Month: October 2004

And the archives are updated… kinda sorta. Blogger has changed stuff and at the moment I can’t be bothered to retweak things, so I’m just going with the mass spammage at the bottom of the page for now.

I’ll try and think of something more constructive soon, in the meantime, just deal with it. I know I am.

In another one of my internet walkabouts, I happened to stumble across this particular website that offers various alternate views regarding world history. The snippets are each dated using the calendar of the particular culture to which they pertain so reading them can become slightly confusing, and there is a chronology of sorts going on so to understand some of the threads you will have to go back to the beginning and read forward.

It’s a fun waste of time if you like that sort of thing.

Whee! Enjoy.

I found This little quirky and fun flash game the other day and I’ve been addicted to it ever since.

Enjoy.

With All Hallow’s Eve just around the corner I found a little bit of light reading to help you get in the mood.

I stumbled upon This site the other day and found it rather intriguing and compelling, and something that fueled my imagination as I pondered the implications of things as presented. Definitely an interesting read.

I leave it to you to make up your own mind regarding the truth or fiction of the content.

Enjoy.

So I’ve been unwittingly sucked into watching another tv show… bringing my grand total of shows I watch regularly to a whopping 3½ (half because I haven’t decided if I like or will continue watching CSI: New York yet or not).

I started watching Lost tonight and I’m actually quite impressed. When I first heard the premise, I shrugged it off as yet another Survivor type of show and thought nothing of it. Then I heard that Merry from Lord of the Rings was in it and I thought, hrrm… it might be better than average. Then my wife started watching it (cause she’s odd like that) and started giving me a weekly rundown of things to the point where I was more than a little intrigued with things. So this week I camped the tv and sat and watched an episode and was more than impressed and intrigued.

The character byplay was much more real than anything on Survivor. These were “real” people coping with a horrific set of circumstances. There was no million dollar prize, just survival and… hopefully rescue. I particularly enjoyed the way they introduced us, the viewers, to each character in turn via a flashback. It’s not a tell all flashback though, just a poingnant cameo of their lives that gives us some insight as to who they are and what they’re doing here.

I also like the spooky atmosphere of them not being alone on the island and their being anomalous critters and unanswered questions. It’s got me watching at least and if you get the chance I recommend checking it out and seeing for yourself.

A friend would come and bail you out of jail at 3am.

A ‘good‘ friend would be there, sitting beside you saying, “Damn! That was fun!”

I’m on a small break from writing right now as both the stories I’m working on have sort of come to a fizzled end while I try to work out a couple of plot snags that have cropped up. I’m going to set them aside for a day or six and let them lay fallow in the hopes that when I pick them up again I’ll see them with new eyes and will be able to take things farther than before. It has worked in the past, so I’m not too worried that I’ll never pick them up again type of thing, but I just have to keep myself in the habit of continuing to write stuff even if it isn’t part of what I’m working on.

To that end I’ve started to flesh out a new campaign for Gurps that I hope to eventually run at some point. I don’t know if I ever will run it, but I’m at the stage now that I’m just going to toy around and tinker with ideas and see how far things go. I’ve been toying around lately with a number of ideas revolving around the Infinite Worlds concept that has become the base setting in the fourth edition of Gurps but with a number of changes that would deviate enough from that setting to make them unique.

My original focus was on something similar to the TV show Sliders, but after thinking about it some, I realized that to really be a good campaign it would have to have a lot of detail, even if it wasn’t visible to the players, to be truly immersive and realistic. The more I thought about it, the more it drifted from a very cool campaign idea to something I’d love to do if I had the inclination, background material or the properly receptive audience.

My next idea was possibly running a pure Space campaign, but Space/Sci-Fi/Futuristic campaigns are another one of those genres where accuracy is imperative, and numbers and number crunching are next to godliness kind of thing. Or they would at least be in the framework of the campaign idea that I wanted to run, and right now it is a little more detail/effort than I wanted to concentrate on. Plus, in all honesty we already have a solid and good Space campaign (and GM) in our gaming group so why try to compete with something we’ve already done type of thing.

Finally I came to rest my fevered brain on a concept that was a nice generic amalgam of the previous two ideas but was still unique enough to be something new for us campaign-wise. It was an idea that would give me enough leeway to blur the lines of history and mythology if need be and also be something that didn’t have to be too technically accurate every step of the way. To top things off, the idea already had a movie, 8 seasons worth of tv episodes, and a spinoff series in the works for me to plagarise and draw plot ideas from…

And so… GURPS: Stargate was born.

So far I’ve decided that it’s going to be a retelling of the whole story from the beginning, but from a different perspective, and with different protagonists/antagonists. That way I don’t have to worry about the stuff like “what did/would Jack O’Neill do” or “but Apophis died in such and such episode…”. The players are the first ones going through the wormhole for the first time and they won’t end up on Abydos and it won’t be Ra or Apophis that they run into. There will still be System Lords, Goa’uld, Tok’ra and the Asgard and so on and so forth, but it’s all up in the air as to how they fit together

I really haven’t decided yet whether I’ll try to run the game as a 4th edition campaign or just stick with 3rd for now out of sake of ease. Once I start to firm up the campaign plot and background info I’ll work out the hard rules details and go from there.

After that I guess it’s time to see if anyone in the group wants to play kinda thing or even if they have time to do so.

Okay, so it’s been awhile since I did one of these stupid internet tests and posted it for the rest of you to see, so here one is… Enjoy.

So, who here (other than me) has tried to write an Epic Fantasy Novel, or even just thought about it at some point?

Well, get off your butts and read this before you get started… it will save you loads of time trying to think up something remotely original.

If for no other reason you can at least read it and discover Robert Jordan’s Sekrit Writing Skillz0rs.

Anyways, insomnia is a pain in the ass and I’m gonna try and get back to sleep.

Pax