What´s my/your current reading/viewing/playing amusement?

[Dave Syrinx]

Ahem... Sorry for the bad judgement to considering watching some of those films. Let´s say that it was pretty much wasted time. For most part the first half hour of any has promise, then the decline begins. I still look forward to Mr Flint, that can´t go bad.
And to remedy the lack of skill in picking odd films, I´m preparing to watch the 1937 version of King Solomon´s mines, to find something Masks worthy. Fingers crossed. The era is right. It´s Africa. It´s an expedition. Missing people. The future looks bright.

[Dave Syrinx]

After watching the Salomon films I re watched Apocalypto, which is the highlight of my viewing spree.

Fear is a sickness. It will crawl into the soul of anyone who engages it. Quite good quote to start off a scenario with!

This film really have the qualities to function as a Mesoamerican chapter to Masks. I read about the various locations in Brady´s statement and paired with the different forms of Nyarla. To use a hidden cult in the jungle would be an easy task for any keeper. To change the setting to 1500 could turn out more difficult.

[Mr. Handy]

Yeah, Xipe Totec would be active in those parts. As for setting it in 1500, time travel is always a possibility where the Mythos is involved.

Part of Zombie Apocalypse may even eventually find its way to that area. I don't want to say any more, as I don't want to spoil it. Of course, at the pace Zombie Apocalypse moves, "eventually" could be several years of real time. The journey from the U.S. heartland alone could take ages. The pacing is another thing about which the later books in the Gap Cycle remind me (over 70% done the final book, by the way). So much is going in on in such a short period of time, and the interlocking motivations and interactions of the various characters is similar too.

[kabukiman]

Hi guys! I have been awfully busy lately. Now I'm in holidays for the next 2 weeks.
Well, I've been reading different things.
"Naissance des divinité, naissance de l'Agriculture" (starting of the gods, starting of the agriculture). It's a book about the neolithic in middle east, and it can be used easily as a source for a scenario of an archeological expedition finding traces of Shub-Nigurath.
"The Himmler brothers". The details to make a very original enemy in a scenario. Someone who is nice, soft, and will help others. And at the same time, is a mass murder. For the players it's a surprise very different of the normal maniac cultist.
Cyberbad days. Collection of stories in India in 2050. Without the technology0 they give lot's of information to make scenarios in that country,
I've been reading several stories of Dylan Dog (an italian comic). It's about a private eye that investigates paranormal cases. Most are perfect to one-shot scenarios.
About movies: I saw "3 Extremes". Horror stories made by oriental producers. They are indeed a bit extreme... But have good ideas (one is a about cannibalism and eternal youth).

[Mr. Handy]

I finished This Day All Gods Die before I left for the convention, and I've started replaying the Lone Wolf gamebook series starting with Book 1, Flight from the Dark. As the last surviving Kai monk after the Darklords invade your country Sommerlund and massacre your kin, you must make a dangerous journey to the capital of Holmgard to warn the King. This is the first adventure in an epic campaign that is currently at 28 books, with the long awaited book 29 due out before too much longer and three more new books in the works. This is the revised and expanded version published by Mongoose Publishing in 2007, which has 550 sections instead of 350 and adds a lot to the story - but also adds annoying unavoidable random instant deaths and particularly hard battle at the end. Still, at least it's the first book, so if I die I don't have that far to replay when I start over. I made a wrong turn early on, as I hadn't remembered which way to go, and wound up in a place where there were a couple of random rolls that could have killed me, but I somehow survived. I'm about halfway done the book now.

I'm in the middle of watching The Descent 2. It's not as good as the first one, at least so far. The creatures remind me of ghouls.

In my Doctor Who marathon, I've finished Time-Flight, the final story of Season 19. Next is Arc of Infinity, the first story of Season 20 which features the return of an old enemy and Colin Baker in a small role as a Gallifreyan commander - he later went on to play the Sixth Doctor after Peter Davison left.

[zielonobrody]

Re-reading the Wheel of Time series due to Jordan passing away after publishing book 11 and the long wait for book 12, and me totally not remembering what was going on so far, so I've started over. I first started reading them some 11 years ago

[Mr. Handy]

I had finished the intro and started reading the prequel New Spring a while ago, but it's been a while and I haven't gotten back into it. But now I understand why there are no male Aes Sedai. I think I mentioned before that I have those and the first ten books as eBooks on my phone. They were free, but annoying ads pop up and block the page navigation buttons.

I almost finished Lone Wolf Book 1, but I died in the final battle. I rolled up a new character and got one that was a good deal better, but again I died in the last battle due to some bad rolling. So I started up a third character and got nearly optimal stats, and this time I made it to the end and really kicked butt in that fight, prevailing with damage to nothing but my armor. My copy of the book started falling apart last night, with pages starting to come out of the book. The original run (from which my book came) had faulty bindings, but I had never had a problem with my copy before, and this is the first time I've read Book 1 in two years or so. Thankfully, Mongoose will send me a replacement with a good binding quickly. I'm still reading the final section, but when that's done it's on to Book 2: Fire on the Water. In order to save Sommerlund from Darklord Zagarna, I must journey to the heart of Sommerlund's ally Durenor to retrieve the fabled Sommerswerd, the only known weapon that can destroy him. But the forces of Evil know about my mission, and they're going to try their best to stop me. They probably won't succeed, unless I roll a 0 at the wrong time and killed by a certain falling mast...

I'm almost done Arc of Infinity. Before I move on to the next story, Snakedance, I intend to watch The Gunfighters, a classic First Doctor story that was just released on DVD. It's a pure historical set in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881, involving the famous gunfight at the OK Corral.

[Dave Syrinx]

What I´m currently writing?

I´m starting another project - A Blade Runner rules set and background material for running Blade Runner scenarios.
I´ve invited Steff Worthington from Miskatonic River Press and he´ll be doing this as a hobby project.

My goal is to have a scenario ready to run by December, using whatever we´ve created by then as skeletal rules.

/Dave

[Dave Syrinx]

And btw, say hi to Steff!

[kabukiman]

Hi Steff, welcome to the gang!
I'm starting to read a book of Osprey publications about the battle of Leyte (Americans versus japonese) and Altered carbon, a kind of cyberpunk book.
And I'm playing Deus ex3.
Two last weekends where quite interesting. I was in the Iberanime (a convention of anime/manga in Oporto) and the national meeting of boargames. Played several games (including "The order of the stick", based in a webcomic) and bought "Pandemic".

[Mr. Handy]

Welcome, Steff! I'd noticed that you'd joined the site. Glad to have you aboard.

Can Steff even see these forums? Let me know if you need me to add him to the list of moderators, Dave, unless Raiko has already done it.

I bought Pandemic too, and it's fun. I've seen the Order of the Stick game and would like to play it, but I've never had the chance.

I have a couple of conventions in New Jersey coming up in November, and I'm really looking forward to them. The first one is Metatopia, in Morristown, which is centered around game designers. There will be a lot of playtesting going on there. It was also recently announced that Kenneth Hite will be there. Philcon is two weeks after that. It hasn't been the same since they moved it out of Philly, but maybe there will be more and better stuff this time. They've been treating gaming as an afterthought the past few years.

I'm not writing anything at the moment, but I'm about to have some free time. The first thing I plan to do is write the third scenario in my Doctor Who/Call of Cthulhu campaign. It's a UNIT adventure set in 1985 called "The Shadow Over Dunwich" (the real life UK town, not the fictional one in Massachusetts). Then I'm going to work on "Alone Against the Invaders," a short solo adventure set against the backdrop of the War of the Worlds broadcast of October 30, 1938. I intend to submit this one to Protodimension Magazine, hopefully by the end of the year.

I'm starting to play Civilization V, but I don't have much time for it. I've just completed the basic tutorials. I like the new hex map and the addition of city-states, but I'm disappointed that they took out religions (which were introduced in Civ IV) and espionage (which had been part of the game since at least Civ II, maybe even Civ I). It also doesn't look like they'll have a real expansion pack.

I finished Lone Wolf through Book 16 and am ready for Book 17 when the new Mongoose edition comes out. That one's really tough, I remember, but I'm well stocked up on the potions and Combat Skill-boosting gear that I'll need. I recently read Alan Moore's The Courtyard and am planning to borrow Watchmen next when I return this one to the library. I'm also reading a Greg Iles thriller, Third Degree, that I bought for $1 at a book sale in my building. I also got Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo there.

I've made a lot of progress on my Doctor Who marathon. I've just finished Revelation of the Daleks, the finale of Season 22. Season 23 (Trial of a Time Lord) is next, and from here on out the seasons are only 14 episodes - and there are only four seasons of the classic series to go. I expect to finish it by the end of the year. Before I move on to Season 23, I just got the new Special Edition of The Talons of Weng-Chiang, so I'll be giving that a watch first.

[Dave Syrinx]

Hi! Steff has some serious cartography do finish so he won´t be committing to the forum as such, but work on the Blade Runner thingy solely. I´ve set up Raiko to sort out visibility and mod rights to the new forum.

Cheers!

/Dave

[Dave Syrinx]

Altered Carbon

Right on that, Kabs! Read it a couple of years ago and found it in line with Blade Runner. Memory stacks and retiring expired licenses.

[Dave Syrinx]

Just had to put some inspiration up here!

[Dave Syrinx]

To show you what the finished product might look like, here´s a sample:

One Last Song

[Dave Syrinx]

I just watched a hilariously fun Johnny Depp portraying a drug addict extraordinaire.


Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

This must be how totally whacked out people see reality. I guess the choice of movie to watch was due to my Philip K Dick research.

I couldn´t help but thinking of Robbie William´s "Me and my Monkey" which is a rip off from the movie. But cool nevertheless.

/Dave

[Mr. Handy]

I love that movie! It's been far too long since I've seen it. I did play in a great series of LARPs at DEXCON and Dreamation over the past year and a half which featured Hunter S. Thompson as a PC. In the last one I teamed up with him in a failed but entertaining attempt to stop my character's misguided cousin from "becoming the king of Groundhog Day," as Jack O'Neill put it in an episode of Stargate SG-1.

I recently read V for Vendetta for the first time, and it's very different from the movie, which I also watched again last night. Currently I'm reading Dracula by Bram Stoker for the first time, which reads a lot like a CoC scenario.

My Doctor Who marathon hasn't made much progress in the last month or so. I finished watching The Mysterious Planet, the first sub-story in The Trial of a Time Lord (Season 23). Colony in Space was newly released on DVD and just arrived last week, so I'm watching it before moving on to the second Trial of a Time Lord story, Mindwarp. I probably won't finish all of the classic series by the end of the year, but I hope to at least get close.

[Dave Syrinx]

Having an old touch mobile phone, I´m trying to emulate android OS on my old laptop. Going to have a run of wordfeud if I get it to work. (Just bought my two teenagers new cells. They can´t sleep without them!)

[Dave Syrinx]

Hah, that really didn´t work. Found a website doing scrabble online. Worked fine. Gets boring quite fast, though.
Back to RPGing instead.

Five episodes into season 2 of "The Walking Dead" it feels like I´m watching "Zombie Apocalypse"... I guess that´s why it so great. I´ve caught up on Dexter as well. Not so great, yet. That leaves two shows to wait for: "Game of Thrones" and "Breaking Bad".

Still haven´t finished "A Feast for Crows" but guess I´m done when the next book comes out.

[Mr. Handy]

I've been watching and enjoying The Walking Dead too. Interestingly, Welsh and I were discussing back in 2008 the possibility of making Zombie Apocalypse into a TV series.

I've finished Colony in Space and am in the middle of Mindwarp now. I should finish that tonight.

I was very sick yesterday with a migraine, and I'm still recovering today, but I'm mostly better now.