This was a suprisingly entertaining film, my enjoyment greatly assisted by the young ladies in the front row of the theatre who would squeal every time Edward appeared, any pashing or near-pashing occurred or when Jacob took his shirt off.

( Warning, dark and sparkling spoilers revealed ahead... )

An amusing and terribly deep film, I'm sure. Three out of five muscular werewolf chests from me.

... are the damn songs you can't get out of your head.  Can't... stop... Beatles... music...  Curse you, Sergeant Pepper!

So, my next game has turned out to be... Fallout 3.  When I first played it, I got lost a fair bit in Megaton, especially after spending ages going in circles to solve the amazing leaky pipe quest.  And then it went back on the pile.  It didn't quite compare to my fond memories of the original Fallouts, which had turn based combat and a top-down isometric view and maps that didn't rotate around the character.

Well, giving Fallout 3 a second shot has convinced me I may have been overly judgemental with my first impressions.  I've gotten about ten hours into it so far, and have worked out how to manage my crappy spacial perceptions in Fallout 3 land.

Firstly, I've discovered the amazing technique of Always Going Left when exploring bases and towns, which means I'm not getting as hopeless lost as much as when I try to explore in any other random pattern.  And the compass is handy; I set that little marker on the compass and follow it doggedly, until forced to detour around rivers, rocks, mountains etc.  Bits of the original Fallouts' black humour pops up in the F3 dialogue boxes.

There's an awful lot to do.  I peaked at a cheat guide and was incredibly overwhelmed with all of this stuff so I decided to ignore it and play it by the seat of my pants, which has been proving fun so far - only running on one or two saves rather than having about twenty to cover every moment of indecision I might have while playing it.  I've tried to help the sheriff take out Mr Burke, in conflict where both died.  Oh well.  And I've just finished helping out a gang of poseur vampire cannibals with issues.

And VATS, a sort of turn-based combat hybrid, is great, apart from when you run out of AP.  I shoot, run away to build up more AP, shoot, run away etc.  But it's doable.

What's next?  I have no idea, but it's going to be fun finding out.  It'd be nice to get this one to bed before Dragon Age comes out.

Well, after a long chunk of time, I've finished Persona 3. Highly recommended, with a moving storyline, where you dungeon crawl by night and cope with Japanese high school by day. Now, there is a gaping hole in my night-time existance. I have a list of games I need to get though, but which one next? My PC running Y2K is out at the moment, as I think there's something dodgy with the video card. (So that crosses out Fallout 1, 2, Planescape and the Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights package I've got lying around.)

Most of these games I've started and never finished. I have a terrible habit of playing something and unless I get violently sucked into it, I will get distracted and not get back to it for a loong while. Plus, being a wuss, a frustrating bit of gameplay will also contribute to the 'distraction' factor.

Appealing options at the moment are:

• Final Fantasy VI - Just got a bit dull after twenty hours. I found it fascinating when I had the flu, but it's a bit grindy and lacks the pretty cut-scenes found in later games in the series.
  
• Final Fantasy XII - Originally put off by the coding you need to do get the combat system running properly. The gambit system is interesting - a bunch of code statements you purchase throughout the game - "If Health > 50% drink potion" etc. I just remember getting splattered by a particular boss monster over and over again, and so stuck it back on the pile.
  
• Fallout 3 - Oddly enough, the 3D spacial environment put me off it. I remember getting lost a fair bit, even though it had a map. Couldn't find the three leaky pipes in Megaton.
  
• Persona 4 - A JRPG dungeon crawl/high school drama, revolving around long grindy bits, teen soap opera, and pokemon collectiona and fusion. It took me about 18 months to finish the last one. (I game slowly...)
  
• Valkyria Chronicles. My tank kept getting blown up.
  
• Lost Odyssey - Can't remember this all that well. I liked the story but the gameplay was so late 90s.
  
• Encharted Arms - Got a bit grindy. Have forgotten most of the details.
  
• Eternal Sonata - Put off by sickly sweet vomit inducing intro.

I'll keep you posted for the next thrilling development in the 'What Game Next?' saga....

I got a chance to roadtest Under my Skin on the weekend with regency_rhi.  It's a romance RPG, written by Emily Care Boss, whom I met back at GenCon 2008.  We had five people show up for the game  - sadfrog , mishka_jayne, Jenn D, Di and Malcolm, poor brave soul, who was the only man to show up for the evening, unless you counted feline Shaam.  (I've met women who've complained about being the only woman in a group of roleplayers, but when I've encountered men who are the only male entities in a group of roleplayers, none of them have complained...)  

The RPG is essentially a framework for making up couples or 'singletons', having them encounter 'new flames' and then seeing how it impacts on the pre-existing relationships.  The 'crunchy' part is in the character generation phase, where the characters are made with lots of group-input and links to other characters.  Firstly, you pick your core issue that you want to explore during the game (e.g. ‘anger’ or ‘abandonment’ or ‘insecurity’) and other players do word association to come up with ‘areas’ related to your core issue - basically, random nouns or concepts. You develop the character based of these elements and then you sort out who in the group will be your partner and who be your friend.  Singletons get to be someone's best friend and then move in to potentially being part of a relationship.  The couples have stats, where points are divided between Intimacy, Passion and Commitment, giving players a qualitative feel for how the relationship is set up.

The players then also develop various 'sets' where the PCs will hang out.  Overall, you get a group of tightly linked characters and some sets - a bit like Friends, the RPG (although we had a yacht in our budget.)  It's also fairly effective brainstorming for a story.

The GM role relies heavily on scene-framing, telling the players the situation for a particular scene, and the players do little improv roleplays within these scenes.  The overall effect reminded me of structured, high school drama classes.

As GMs, regency_rhi and I watched a character be divorced (triggering his 'abandonment' core issue) and watched our pre-existing couples move about in initial, flawed relationships and then slowly change as they were visited by their 'new flames'.  One couple stayed together when a new flame went a bit too quickly in an attempted seduction scene!  The other couple broke up, creating a new singleton at the end of the game.  It was clearly up to the players in question how they responded to the situations and whether they stayed with the existing relationship, embraced the new flame or just decided to change something else about their life.  I thought it went well.  The character generation and stats don't impact upon play at all, apart from intially setting up the framework of the characters for the players to play.  There were some tabletop rules at the back of the little booklet, but they weren't quite clear as they could have been and the default, structured freeform environment worked out well.  Overall the players enjoyed it, even Malcolm said that it was 'interesting'.

The original intent was to see if it would make a decent con game, but it certainly wouldn't fit into the three hour slot of the Australian con game scene.  You could have pre-generated characters, but creating them is part of the fun of the game.  Also, a lot of RPGers I discussed the concept with didn't like the core idea of the game.  "I just broke up with my girlfriend!" or "I've been through a divorce - I don't want to roleplay that!"  Even when one of the estimable EyeCon organisers was scalphunting at the SydCon afterparty for con games next year, the idea of a plain old romance game didn't really appeal.

Still, it made for a fun, experimental one-shot for a good evening of ad hoc RPGing.

Well, Sydcon's been and gone. I had a good time and caught up with a lot of people. The games I remember most now, nearly a week and a half gone, are the Dune freeform, the chaotic but fun Colder War freeform (my faction benefited by not having a mini-boardgame attached to it, I think) and sim_james's Radiance game, where I paid an artistic, amnesiac mental patient. There were some PC doctors and some PC patients and it worked out well in my session, particularly where alien pheromones were making my IC love interest and I run towards the lake to drown ourselves while we were being fired at with tranquiliser guns from a small hovercraft. I did recall enjoying Jame L's anime game and an occult horror game that could have benefited from a longer or better developed clue chain. While the scenario was enjoyable, the mystery was easily solved when the werewolf character got to the crime scene and could lead the party directly to the villain.

I volunteered to write a Cthulhu game for next year's con, leaving me chasing various thoughts on how to write the World's Best Cthulhu Convention Game, without it being a bizarre, post-modern wank. (I do enjoy playing those, when they're good, I just don't think I could write one effectively.) My plan was to do something in 1930s Sydney, but that wasn't leading me any further into an adventure. Finally, someone said, 'start with the characters', and I've sketched an interesting, if broken, family dynamic that will be interesting to see played out.

Also, I have a new flatmate for a bit! Well, same as the old one, but I finally got that 'room for rent' actually cleaned up and emptied out on the weekend.

I've also been sick and sniffly since Sydcon, much to my annoyance. It's getting better though, touch wood...

When they were pimping the new Stocklands mall, they had pictures of happy people everywhere hanging out by the sea-side on the construction plywood.  (You know, the things that say "Prepare for the shopping centre of a life time" when it really means "Ha! Your shopping centre will be a construction zone for two years while we take away your useful cinema and replace it with a whole tonne of shops you'll never use!")

Unfortunately, as far as I can discern, Merrylands is nowhere near a large body of water.  Not even the mighty, sluggish Parramatta River goes near it.

Now, the new block of apartments they are building near the mall is called "Pacific Edge".

Perhaps this is a sign of events to come - just like in Superman I and V, a Lex Luthor like villain has brought up large tracts of Merrylands real estate and will arrange for an earth-cracking impact to hit, creating a nice bit of water-front real estate.  I hope my villa is in the right location; I could do with a harbour view.

I woke up this morning and the light coming in through the windows was red.  Pushing back the curtains, I saw that the sky was covered in an orange haze, giving everything a red, apocalyptic kind of tinge.  I debated whether I was on Mars, whether it was the Last Days or a meteor was approaching, and then settled down on the more mundane explanation of a dust storm. 

Great chunks of inland NSW red dust were floating in the air above Sydney.

Shaam didn't want to go for his morning walk, and kept sitting down and miaowing ever time I tried to tug on the lead.

Walking to the train station later on, I saw that the moon was in the sky - it looked blue when viewed through the haze of red dust.  And at the trains station, all of the seats and the platform was covered in red dust.

I'm back from GenCon Oz and my parental visit in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. GCO was smaller than last year, and would have benefited by having more updates on their site about what was going on. RPG people of note included Keith Baker, Jason Bulman and David Conyers but I didn't find this out until I got there! I would have enjoyed being able to play with Cthulhu with David or Eberron with Keith Baker, but because the sessions or seminars weren't on the registration list when I registered up, I missed out.

And because you need to plan your time carefully with GCO's scheduling system, I'd booked games on top of seminars that I would have rather attended. I'd be great if the website is updated a bit more regularly for next year. I met up with Ian H and passed these comments along.

Having said that, I had a great time catching up with people (waves to you all) and playing the games I'd registered for. I enjoyed simjames's Radiance session - where we were crash landed on a hostile planet with a crew at loggerheads with each other while having debates about the nature of love and transhumanity. It felt quite Star Trek in places, well, good Star Trek. The other game that stood out for me was a World of Darkness game, the adventures of the New Athenian society, where a group of Victorian psychics and crackpots investigated occultic mysteries.

I also enjoyed a small seminar with fantasy writer Karen Miller, where only two other people showed up, so we were able to ask her a variety of questions that she answered frankly and interestingly. Brisbane had some great weather and it's one of few places that does a decent banana and passionfruit smoothie. That's at Oasis on the Queen Street Mall.

CJB looked after Shaam and the house while I was away. Shaam had been a naughty boy and kept waking CJB up every three hours at night, although he settled down eventually. But right now, Shaam is all curled up on the couch, perfectly behaved. Could CJB have been mistaken? :)

Sydcon is in a few weeks.  Due to the way things have spun out, I'll be playing this year rather than running. (I've got two current con game ideas for Eyecon next year, however - an SF freeform set or based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe (a sort of trial) or a Trail of Cthulhu mystery set in 1930s Australia, packed with lots of red herrings and other weirdness in order to play with my thoughts on how the system runs).

Any one interested in forming a team the impending Sydcon?  I can even offer free accomodation if need be!

Due to sheer inertia, I've only just got around to booking into GCO and organising my games.  They're listed below.  Being the last day for rego and all, there were quite a few sold out games, so I had to scavenge through the left over bones and pick over the carcass of the schedule:

Game	Start	Finish
SPEC1-3 Ghosts of the Past (LFR) (LOW)	18/09/2009 09:00	18/09/2009 13:00
Geek Trivia	18/09/2009 15:00	18/09/2009 16:00
Transactions of the New Athenian Society	18/09/2009 18:00	18/09/2009 22:00
RADIANCE: Lost Contact	19/09/2009 09:00	19/09/2009 13:00
Homecoming (the Sequel to Reunion)	19/09/2009 13:00	19/09/2009 17:30
The Flight of the Apollyon (a Steampunk LARP)	19/09/2009 19:00	19/09/2009 22:30
Phoenix	20/09/2009 13:00	20/09/2009 16:30

Let me know if you'll be at GCO and when you're free!  I'm keen to catch up with a lot of people and see how y'all are.

Courtesy of the new Magnum Gold Class promotion, I took myself off to see District 9 in Gold Class last week.  The seat was comfortable, the food not so great (they've cut back the menu even more and the nachos weren't as good as they used to be) and the movie was quite good. 

I mean good; not just because it was entertainingly crap or silly.  In fact, District 9 is the first decent (non-campy) SF film I've seen for a while.  (The last was Sunshine, which decided to become a slasher flick in the last act.) 

In D9, an alien starship stops above Johannesburg, just hovering in mid air.  Eventually, authories break in and find a half-starved race of insectile aliens, "the prawns".  Being refugees, they get put in slums.  The film starts off in mock-doco mode as academics and employees are interviewed about the impact of the aliens, how they're kind of pathetic because their hive structure is damaged and how they've got all of these cool biotech weapons we can't use because of DNA coding.  And the story kicks off when the company running the slums, MNU, decides to relocate the prawns to a newer, cleaner camp that is 200Ks away from Johannesburg. 

D9 pokes around with commentaries about social issues and aliens and then twists into an action-adventure sequence for the last act.  There's lots of FPS tech - lightning guns and even a gravity gun in one shot.  The way the aliens moved reminded me a bit of Bay's Transforrmers.  The protagonist acts like a confused, panicking, crazy guy out of his depth for most of the film. The film uses wobbly-cam a fair bit, but I could actually see what was going on in the action sequences, unlike bits of TF1 or TF2.

Overall, I'll give this four out of five lightning gun zaps.

GenCon is going on right now, in the US.

I was there one year ago with aldren .

(Pause for a few seconds of pining, examining of savings accounts and feeling nostalgic and recalling the state of Chicago deep dish pizza and St Elmo's steak. Mmmmm.)

Well, GenConOz is coming up!  Let's see, last year we had the fairly awesome Tracy and Laura Hickman, Peter Adkinson and Robin Laws.  This year we have... click, click... Hmm, still can't see any signs of guests.  No Cthulhu in games.  Increased focus on console gaming.  This better come together at the last minute! At least I'll be catching up with friends and people I know, but still; we could do that when there was a Brisbane RPG con.  This is supposed to be GCO!  I'll be optimistic for now.  There are probably going to be some awesome guests and last minute events just around the corner...

A friend suggested I should try out for Channel 7's Beauty and the Geek.  Having enjoyed MasterChef this year and bits of Big Brother, my appetite for reality TV has been whetted.  I could be on TV!  Maybe win prizes! Cry on camera! Tell people about my emotional journey! Meet dashingly handsome guys willing to assist me with the heavy burden of my geekery!

So, let's check out the webiste...

* ARE YOU A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN AND THINK YOU CAN HELP A GEEK?

No!

* ARE YOU A GEEK AND WANT TO HELP A BEAUTY?

Yes!

THEN WE WANT YOU!

Yay!

We are looking for the following:

Intellectual "Geeks" who are socially challenged when it comes to women but think they could have a go at turning a beauty into a scholar. (If you're a shy geek into comic books, star wars, RPGs, D&D, computers, on-line gaming, chess, or physics, etc, etc., we want you!)

I can do this! Sort of, in reverse. I mean, I'm female, socially awkward with men, into comic books, roleplaying, fantasy novels - you name it.  Willing to be assisted into social graces by a handsome stud muffin with tousled hair and Mr Darcy looks and to show him the wonders of George RR Martin novels, Castles & Crusades and Trail of Cthulhu in return!

Beautiful, sexy, social-savvy women who can turn a geek into a stud.

Not really...

Beauties and Geeks willing to work together and compete for the opportunity to win a substantial prize!! If you meet one or more of these qualifications let us know.

Sigh.  Maybe in a few years time when they need to mix up the format a bit.

The first Transformers movie had a plotline reminiscent of disaster movies coupled with the boy and his alien best friend/car storyline. And it worked - the narrative felt cohesive, despite some wonky plotlines and dodgy comic relief characters. And there were some awesome giant robot combat scenes and cool scenes of stuff blowing up.

Which brings me to the second movie. Well, there's some awesome giant robot combat scenes and cool scenes of stuff blowing up. But the overall arc of the film is buried in lots of padding, like a million monkeys had their opinion on what would make a good sequel.

Good bits - the humans and Autobots are teaming up to fight Decepticons around the globe. The opening action sequence is excellent. And in the human plotline, Sam is going off to college and gets infected with an alien memetic virus from the remnants of the All-Spark cube. And then there's some cool bits with a 'Pretender' transformer and Soundwave and Ravage showing up and explodey bits.

And then it snowballs into a mess from there. The new administration wants to get rid of the Autobots on the hypothesis that they are bringing Decepticons to Earth. (Is this an anti-Obama message?) I was hoping another Pretender would be involved, but alas this was not the case.

And then a whole bunch of stuff I didn't like. The two hilly-billy Autobots, the return of John Turturro's stupid character, the Lara Croft chase to the pyramids, the sort of confused ending battle, the fact that if Transformers require Energon which can only be derived from blowing up the sun with the super weapon and... Arrgh! Why is Megatron taking orders from this Fallen' guy? Calling him 'my master' in a Sith Lord-like manner? If you're going to bring Megatron back, don't make him such a pussy! At least Starscream had some good scenes and was properly in character. And there's no wrap up properly at the end for the Transformer characters....

So, not bad. But rather incohesive. And when I was at Parramatta, I've discovered that one of my favourite cafes, Oscars, is closed. Arrgh, where will I get my banana-and-passionfruit smoothies from now? Arrrggh!

So, overall - six out of ten transforming cars/howls of incoherent rage.

Wow. The big glass cover for my light just fell down from the ceiling, smashing everywhere. I was about half a metre away and hadn't yet dragged my chair under it to start PS2ing. If I had, I would have been directly under it.

I now have my full license after just sitting for the Driver Qualification Test!  (I've been sitting on my Ps for years, due to, er, well, apathy mostly.  Not any more!) 

Now I can go up to 110 k/h.  Vrrroooom.

Well, I got a cat today. I headed down to the RSPCA to see what they had. The first cat I picked out wasn't comfortable with be picked up and got a bit hissy. I then checked out an adorable, fluffy black cat who was extremely sociable and affectionate. I played with some kittens who enjoyed climbing on me, but in the end I went with the fluffy cat. He's about a year old. I'll stick some pictures up when I get my camera working again. (The rechargable batteries are in a box somewhere, still unpacked. That's the next big project, of course.)

He seems to enjoy sleeping and being patted a lot. He leaps on my lap everytime I try sit down and has tried to prevent me from using the computer.

So far - he keeps ignoring the cat toys I've got. I'll roll the jingly ball at him and he'll just stare at it. He has not entered his Cosy Cat Cave. Not once. He's also ignored the paper bag and shopping bag I left on the floor for him to crawl into.

He also won't eat any of the wet food sachets I have but likes the dry, science diet stuff I got from the RSPCA.

Oh, and he hasn't used the litter tray yet. Getting paranoid now. It's probably due to the fact that the brand I'm using in the tray isn't one he's familiar with. I've shown it to him a few times and scraped his paws in it, but he just looks up at me and purrs. He better use it; I might have to ring up the RPSCA again to work out what sort of litter stuff they use.

He also doesn't have a name yet. The RSPCA called him 'Moe', but I've been toying with names like 'Shadow', 'Smokey' or 'Storm'.

Just back from Phenomenon 2009.

I played ten sessions and did one Rockband 2 session. My team was Matt K, Malcolm, erratio and mishka_jayne and I met up with a whole bunch of cool people, including daedalist, divaflip, Aidan C, sadfrog, globalthought, kayjay1970, capnoblivious, bunnitos and lots of people who lack LJ names that I’m aware of. Hi to you all. Games were as follows:

1. A Secret of Amber. Even though I've read the books and have heard of the game, I've never actually played Amber before. This game was a lot of fun. Mainly similar to Vampire – political manoeuvring and backstabbing, but I enjoyed the fantasy setting a lot more.

2. This was the first game on Saturday morning, and so my team had arrived. Yay. We played Silence of the Bush one of the Triptych games, a sort of cross-temporal soap opera about modern young people and their ancestors in the 1880s. Enjoyable - it could have easily slipped into didacticism, but was more focused on character growth and relationships.

3. Vengeance of the Vampire Lord. This game took about half the session to get going, as we didn't get any cues from the GM about what was going on or what to do. The first scene felt rather confused and directionless. So we fumbled around in the dark for a bit, before it all came together. I killed a major NPC early on as I interpreted the confused text on my character sheet one way. And then I worked out I must be a bit crazy. The second half of the game was excellent as we cornered the villain and worked out how to resolve the situation.

4. Queen of Love and Beauty. I ran this freeform again (written for Sydcon 2008), assisted by fellow GMs Matt K (who ran the tourney) and 'barrel GM' divaflip. It went well (especially with the new Crown of Love and Beauty made especially by sadfrog) and even filled up, unlike Regency Revels. (A problem I had with Pheno scheduling is that a lot of freeforms were accepted for the convention and then scheduled against each other, which mean that a lot of them were running at half-strength). 'Queen' only filled up due to another freeform being cancelled. Some gentlemen drafted in to play the courtly lady characters said there wasn't enough 'to do', which I'll review if I run this again; I didn’t have that issue when it ran at Sydcon however. Got lots of good feedback and the SCA people showing up made the tourney a lot more fun and enjoyable.

5. Sympathetic Magic. One of capnoblivious's comedies set around a group of eccentric magicians arranging an occult wedding in Canberra. We had the idea of running a marriage business to constantly churn out occult weddings to help 'strengthen the bindings'. Overall, it was entertaining and enjoyable, although I would have liked more of a challenge from the 'evil' occultists of Canberra. Pleasant, but somewhat mild when compared to 'Last Man Standing' from last year.

6. Knights of the Stagnant Pool. A heavy-metal, adolescent power fantasy of a con game, where you got to play death knights fighting the Angel of Annihilation on an apocalyptic battlefield. I really enjoyed this game, as I eat this sort of background up. Rather strongly influenced by Abyssal Exalted, I thought. I wish there had been an Iron Maiden/Nightwish soundtrack, although my character, the mopey goth death knight, was certainly more of a Robert Smith type character.

7. London Girls. Lovely simple game - five girls of a different background are stranded in apocalyptic London. My only quibble is that the ending resolved on solving a logic puzzle that felt a bit out of place given the haunting opening structure of the game.

8. Regency Revels. divaflip, sadfrog and I GMed this freeform, ably written by divaflip for Sydcon 2008. We only had about two-thirds of the characters filled due to the wonky scheduling, so it meant that there was a greater focus on the smuggling and murder plotlines rather than the romance/marriage plotlines. I got to NPC a beagle that was brought into track down the murder, and the young debutante had to find a reason to get everyone outside in order for the dog to its CSI work. Overall this went rather well, all things considered.

9. Rock Band 2. Got to sing Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Oh, and Alanis Morrisette. I felt catharted.

10. Chaos Ends. I tried this it as it was highly recommended by crowroadaw. It was quite good - a sort of drama/political/soap opera set in a castle under siege, all ending tragically and messily. At least I got to take down a Champion of Khorne with a spear.

11. Dead Man Walking. I think fengshuiguy would have loved this - a hardboiled, Deadlands-esque chase for a serial killing body-hopping spirit that was ripped off from strongly influenced by Heath Ledger's Joker. crowroadaw warned me that some of the characters didn't get a lot to do, but I wasn't aware of it this session. My only quibble was that there was only one solution to the problem - all of the characters' special powers, apart from one, didn't have any affect on imprisoning the spirit.

Overall, a great con and there weren’t any ‘dud’ games like the few I had issues with last year. It was great to see everyone and hang-out. Overall, my team enjoyed our games, with having lots of different opinions on which ones we enjoyed versus which ones we didn’t like as much. Overall, I liked Dead Man Walking and Knights of the Stagnant Pool and Chaos Ends the best. Now to get some sleep. Zzzz.