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HeroQuest musings

Just when you thought you were out….they drag you back in.

For various reasons I stopped focusing on HQ a couple of months ago. I thought I’ll tie up some loose ends and that is it.

However in the process of tying up those loose ends and my ongoing weekly (or near as damnit weekly ) HQ game set in Black Horse County, my love for the system has been rekindled.

Part of the frustration was an implosion of a book I was working on, called ‘New Beginnings’, which was intended as a set of starting adventures and advice articles for narrators new to Glorantha. Well the happy ending for this project is that the bits I finished have now got homes.

’10 tips for MGF’ and ‘A starting structure for gaming in Glorantha’  as well as the adventures ‘The Black Ziggurat’ and ‘The Fortress of Doors’ are now up on the Masters of Luck and Death website (www.molad.org).

The Men of the Sea adventure  “Dead Man’s  scrolls” and the Lunar  adventure “The Great  Egg Hunt’, along with a starting Lunar community the town of ‘Vastar ‘ have been submitted to those nice folks at the Unspoken Word magazine, along with my Troll Pak of Halikiv Homeland and adventure ‘The City of IronSmash’.  So sometime in the future I’ll have the satisfaction of all this in print 🙂

A relatively quick piece of work which has now gone to print, are my two contributions to the the Champions of the Reaching Moon supplement. The Goddess Index, a group of pedantic scholars who are out to find incarnations of the Red Goddess amongst the faiths of other cultures, and Cae & Moon a pair of lunars who seeking immortality. When this comes out this meansI’ll finally be proffessionally published RPG writer!!!

Since about feb I’ve been playing a campaign set in Black Horse County (see. here for background) with my mates Steve Elves, Rob and Mr C. All very different players. Steve is our schemer, Rob is the loud dramatist, and Mr C is our resident strategist. But HQ as a system really lets each shine and enjoy the game without clashing with one another. It lets them create the characters and game they want without very little input from me. Which is cool since I’ve not got all that much time to do a fully written up background like I have in the past. We are very much making it up as we are go. This sunday just gone we had a very memorable session 9,  and the players are really beginning to go for it as they know what they can do and get away with. This episode the characters started a war against the neighbouring Grazelanders and without much risk to themselves grabbed a new valley which their Lord as revenge (since it has disrupted peacefull relations, and there will be hell to pay later) has ordered the pcs to set up a fort to hold onto the land. Because of this game, admitly my first campaign I really understand the system and what its getting at. I no longer worry that there’s no HP or other such methods to give the players a sense of horror and loss, the contest system can quite easily do that (remember the players do not have to win every time : ) ).  I also am not bothered that the Heroes though a combination of manipulating the situation and through group augmentation will always eventually win. In fact I am cheering them on, eager to see were the game goes, occasionally putting obstacles in their way and but seeing them come up with their own difficulties for their characters to over come. Rob’s character for example is not your typical obedient BHC resident, Steve’s character is one of the demon horses of BHC, and Mr C although is your typical BHC obedient, loyal and pious  man who trains hard to be a knight that can cause its own problems when you are in the same group as Rob’s and Steve’s characters 🙂  In short I’m finally happy that HQ is not a traditional roleplaying game, but more a vehicle for a shared Storytelling experience akin to movies and books, than video games and wargames.

As a result I’m now toying with creating a setting, or Questworld, for the upcoming Generic version of HQ, and also planing to finish of the write up of the Epic of the Red Moon (A five scenario story arc set in the Lunar Empire) for publication in one form or another.

World turned upside down in a happy way

Had a big happy shock yesterday. Rach was let out of hospital a day early!!! So back in the land of sleepless nights, since Eve didn’t settle at all last night, but very happy they are both back home.  Rach is under doctor’s orders to take it very very easy, and me and her mother are going to make sure that she does, despite her active nature. To give you a sense of how ill she’s been her HB (Hemoglobin count basically) dropped to 5 (12+ is normal) and she was on two types of Intravenous antibotics for 48 hours with 4 units of blood.

This afternoon I head out through the wind and the rain to the Register’s office in Oldham, to make Big Brother aware of young Eve’s existence.

Filmz

Caught up with a few recent films last tonight.

300 what a horrible, horrible film. The best thing I can say about it was that it exhumed the corpse of Kirk Douglas (circa The Vikings) pumped it full of steroids and cloned it about 300 times, poured on a ton of bad CGI and filmed it all in ORANGE.

The Curse of the Golden Flower By the same director as Hero (which I love) and The House of Flying Daggers (which I’m less keen on). Totally loved it, but be warned its not a martial arts movie but instead being a slow burning Family Drama, admittedly with some awesome mass battle scenes. Liked it alot because it brought to life the Tang Empire, which I’m currently reading about. Without some knowledge of Chinese culture and philosophy it might be a bit hard to get.

Just when you think things were getting back to normal

Our Rach is back at Royal Oldham Hospital, since her C-section wound has got infected. Now this truly takes the whole “everything that could go wrong with this pregnacy has” to the limit. Her and the very healthy Evelyn will probably be in the hospital until Saturday.  I will be making multiple trips , using Grandma Taxi, to visit.

Rach is dealing with this with her usual good humour, but it has rather shaken me. The house feels very empty without them, and we were just getting settled into a nice routine. I’m also quite upset that I won’t be there to look after the both of them. While the staff at the hospital can look after her medical needs, no one does hugs quite as good as me.

Must however start looking at the positives. I’ll be able to get the house well and truly sorted as well as do abit of writing and preparation to go back to work (which after two weeks off will be like landing on the mars!).

Hurrah for Paternity leave

Well I’m still alive, just. Baby Evelyn Rose is thriving, but keeping mother Rachel up at night. I usually get woken up at about 3 to sit with her for an hour or two to allow Rach who has been breat feeding for 4 hours on and off some kip. Good job babies love sci-fi (it was Firefly last night).

Despite the tiredness and the realisation life is not exactly our own at the moment, serveral posistive things have happened recently.

All the Newport clan have been to visit and think see is very pretty, as does it seems does the rest of the world. Uncle George was first to come up a week gone last Friday to wet the babies head with me. We had a mini pub crawl round my neck off the woods and it was a nice break for me. Mum was next mid week and Dad came up this weekend just gone.

We’ve been out of the house using the ‘assault vechicle’ (which is my current nickname for the mechanco set that is the baby pram/car seat) first for a gentle walk down Tandle Hill Road and yesterday for a quick trip to the local gardening centre (which ER slept all the way through).

Since ER and Rach have sleeps through the day (although we hope at some point ER will settle down during the night) as well as the house chores I’ve got a fair bit of RPG writing done for my projects. I’m also reading the complete Conan Chronicles by Robert E Howard for the first time. So I haven’t ceased to exist as a person 😉

This week we plan to get the house even more sorted, which hopefully will see the ‘office’ finally clear of all the other bits that have been dumped there over the last 6 months.

Babies love Sci-Fi!!!

Had a huge Dresden Files catch up, over the recent sleepless nights, and the series is a hit with me. I’m a fan of wizards and hardboiled detectives, so mix the two and what’s not to like! Very intrigued by the deep background that sits behind most of the stories and only comes to the fore in some of the episodes (“What about Bob?” especially). I’d imagine I’ll get more out of reading the books that the series is based on. A second series is up in the air, but I’m putting my wishes for one.

Finally got to watch ‘Infernal Affairs’, the Hong Kong Crime Thriller that Martin Scorscose’s The Departed is based upon. I was intrigued from my love of HK films and from watching The Departed over xmas. A very slick film, kinda like a Miami Vice for coolness and lingering city rooftop shots (leading to my favorite quote, ‘do you undercover cops always meet on roof tops?’). The Departed is very faithful to the orginal, with alot more padding which explores the characters more. I rate both, but Infernal Affairs would get the drop if I wanted to watch a pacy 2 hour long film while The Departed is a more lumbering 3 hour long character/gangster epic.

Revisited Aliens:Directors cut in a particularly long sleep deprived session (babies love sci-fi!), and was reminded what a slick film it is and how cool sentry guns are !!

It’s a Girl!!!

I’m chuffed to bits to let you know that yesterday after big adventure in medical emergencies my wife Rachel gave birth to a 6lbs 13oz baby girl called Evelyn at 9.27pm yesterday. Despite the fun and games, which were worthy of an episode of Discovery channel’s Special Babies, mother and daughter are doing fine. Father is rather shell shocked.

The simple things in life

Ah, spring has sprung in Sunny Oldham 🙂

Tandhill road, were I live, is alive with blossom.

The garden  has bloomed to this in a matter of weeks.


And Rachel who is in bloom as well has gone from this

to this

in a matter of weeks

I have been guilty of over complicating my life. As a Taoist I shouldn’t be doing this. Stress over work, stress over pregnancy, stress over gaming stuff. You name it I’ve found a way to perceive complexity and make life stressfull.

As a result I’ve not been sleeping very well. Last night I was kept up with a dodgy stomach. Had I eatten something off? No, it was just the stress store had finally reached my guts, a tender area that shouldn’t be used for such purposes.

After a whinge to Rach, before see went to church (for those of you unfamiliar with Rach she is a practicin Christian), which fell on deaf ears I’ve got on with my chores.

The main one of which was mowing the back lawn, with our trusty 470hp petrol mower ‘Metallica’. After some whinging about needing an oil change Metallica got down to the job and chewed up the lawn in fine style. Although the garden is looking kinda wild at the moment, which I kinda like :), I know if I do a little bit now and then I’ll get it under control and next year add new features (a herb & veg plot is top of my list).

Anyways this is where you find me at the moment. Sitting on the Garden bench, with the wireless laptop, enjoying the simple pleasures of my sunny garden.

This afternoon the chaps come round for Roleplaying, and since we’re down a player this week we’re going to do some playtesting of Monkey 🙂