Off to 7 Hills

Spring has sprung, and a couple of weeks in its finally energising me.

A small weekend break away for me beckons, at the 7 Hills Gaming Convention in Sheffield. I drive down with Lynn and John from my home group later today, after a couple of catch up meetings with my new Web Support team (what a surprise eh, me a web developer transfered in to that team as part of the IT restructure) which should be fun.  Fingers xed there will be no traffic jams as we go over the hills via Snake Pass, that would be less fun. Really looking forward to seeing a bunch of folk I only get to see at cons a couple of times a year. Hang out, waffle on and drink a few beers.

Looking forward to giving my four games an outting. I’m cursing that I ran out of time to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, but they are all more than functional and half the fun is letting things emerge through play 🙂

This is what I’m running:

Name of the game: Stainless Steel Providers
System: Project Darklight
Game Slot: 1
Number of Players: 6
Game Description:

They call you the Losers 242, since you come straight out of District 242 and to them you are just yet another street gang. A bunch of suicidal cyborg motorcycle gangers out to make mayhem and die in a blaze of glory.

But they don’t know the story. How you and your comrades from the infamous 5th Mechanised Regiment (Imperial Sterling INC) where demobbed to the shit hole of a planet they call New Oldham after the Galactic War. A burnt out, crashed, cesspit of belligerent idiots who claim descent from the clans of Northern England. You only ‘agreed’ since your Corporate Liaison said there would be a great relocation package. They even agreed to move your families to New Oldham. That’s where it all went to hell. The transport carrying your loved ones burned up in atmosphere – the victim of a terrorist attack- on the way to your new home. How you’ve spent the last year howling in grief fighting off constant attacks from racist hooligan locals.
Now a beacon of hope has been lit. A signal from the transport ship has been detected coming from the wilderness beyond the city.

Time to jump on your steel stead and ride off into the dust!

Project Darklight is a rules light cyberpunk game , set in the bright Corporate future of the 23rd Century after a mass exodus from Earth.

Tags: Mad Max, Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, Ufology, Steel, MGF.

[I decided to change the system I was using and throw in a new homebrew system. Might be a bit shakey here, but I’m confident enough to pull it through]

Name of the game: Wootz!
System: Monkey 2nd Edition
Game Slot: 2
Number of Players: 6

Your great trek to India from China to collect the lost cannons of Buddhist lore is nearly over. Standing in your way is the great foundry where they make the famed Wootz metal. Wootz metal is famed for its sharpness and strength is misused by tyrants and warlords all over the east. In the hope of spreading compassion you and your fellow pilgrims feel compelled to end this factory of suffering and defeat the Demons of Pain that blight this place.

You are wary of the old saying that even the wise man must melt and dissolve to attain new form of enlightenment.

Come play Monkey, in its second incarnation which features a much streamlined and simplified version of the game system, a game of epic light hearted Chinese kung-fu flavoured adventures. You play an Immortal out of favour with Heaven. Help them cultivate their Te (or personal power/virtue) and amass awesome chi-powers in the process. No prior knowledge of the system or Chinese Mythology required.

[Early days for Monkey 2nd ed, small changes in how the main mechanic works, and a few tweaks.]

Name of the game: Old Steel Ruins
System: Crypts and Things
Game Slot: 3
Number of Players: 6
Game Description:

In days of yore hot molten metal poured from the wounded Zarth. Mighty Sorcerers melded it into buildings of glittering Steel. They enslaved the land and the people. Until the Gods themselves were moved by the evil wizards hubris and buried them and their city under hot scolding sky fall ash! So the Steel Empire came to end, its treasures buried for millennia, its location a mystery.
UNTIL NOW! Brave scouts have discovered the City of Steel and have shared its location. Join the expedition to explore the Old Steel Ruins and discover THE SECRET OF STEEL!

An adventure for up to six 5th Level characters, using Crypts and Things a distinctly British Old School game, based upon the classics from the late 70s/early 80s, of Swords and Sorcery Adventure.

Tags: OSR, D&D, Swords & Sorcery, Foul smelly Khaos, Hair caked with the Ash of Ages, Lightly Gritted Sinews.

[Rar! Playtested this a couple of weeks ago and it was Maximum Game Fun ! 🙂 [

Name of the game: The City of Ironsmash
System: HeroQuest
Game Slot: 4
Number of Players: 6
Game Description:

The long lived Trolls of the Queendom of Halikiv have deep memories.

They remember the Gbjai Wars of the Dawn Age. How the men of light came out of the east over the mountains. How they conspired with Dwarfs and build a Forge-City on the Queendom’s borders, spawning iron armed and armoured warriors. If the Night Queen herself had not sent her son Arkat Kingtroll to lead the Black Legions against the city, how the Queendom would have been exterminated. Instead it was the Trolls who did the extermination and how the city is named after their deeds there. Happy memories of victory in the City of Ironsmash.
Now the storm scum are back in dark Halkiv and a small band of Black Legionaries travel to the city of Blackrock to ask for reinforcements from the Great Hag of the city. For they fear the forges of Ironsmash have been seized and once again good Troll hunting lands are threatened.

This is a big straightforward war story of Troll Warriors getting their Darkness on to trash Human barbarians. It requires no knowledge of the system or Glorantha. All will be gently introduced in an entertaining way over the course of the adventure. A Mega Gloranthan Fun game, so no basket weaving, sheep herding or anthropological discussions, only big fun adventure !

Tags: Glorantha , Trolls, Steel, Mega Gloranthan Fun!

[An oldy and goody originally run for RuneQuest 3 back in about 1997-98, now updated to hot of the press HeroQuest Glorantha system. ]

Here’s a picture from Crypts & Things to get you in the mood 🙂

crypts-and-things-scrolls-Web

Another Bloody Election

Here’s my thoughts on the current UK election.

It becomes ever clear to me that the ‘Government’ is not there for our benefit, but for the gain of the ruling class (who’ve been in place for much longer than you’d think). That their is no difference between the mainstream parties. That the minor parties (like UKIP and the Greens) are only there to distract and obfuscate from the elaborate parlor trick that is being played upon us.

I believe that the biggest thing that will come out of this election is that more people will decide to take control of their lives to the better and make changes to their own lives that benefit others around them, and that the current system will start to be come irrelevant as a result 🙂

Oh, post title nicked from a Killing Joke Song…from the aptly titled “Democracy” (which came out in 1996 one year prior to the 1997 UK election).

This one’s for Dad

Well three years to the day in the early hours (3am to be precise) I got the phone call from the Macmillan Nurse up in Sunderland that my father had passed away from lung cancer.

Now I could be all maudlin about this but instead I’m going to listen to this Stan Getz/Dizzy Gillespie concert, which opens with a rather manically upbeat version of “A Night in Tunisia”. Somewhere on a higher frequency, beyond our doors of perception, my dad is listening to it with me too 🙂

Emerging from the clutter

Finally after a good year (or more) I can see 70% of the floor of my home office (formally the master bedroom before the extension). It took me a good three hours to clear a mountain of paper/cardboard and put things neatly in cupboards.  All that remains to be sorted is two big piles of my rpg books (going to an ebay sale in a global village near you soon).

Then I started on the children’s playroom. Again more paper (see a theme here) it was like an archeological dig back to 2011.

I’m going to take a deep breath now and sort the living room and kitchen out.  In a strange way the fact that I have the energy to do this at 10:30 at night, after a day of looking after the kids, is an immense victory 🙂

We officially have too much stuff…victims of our own excess 🙂

Unrelated here’s a couple of interesting music tracks I found today.

My mate Keef Baker (in his Nimon incarnation) teaming up with another electronic artist (Micheal Morton aka Displacer) from an album called “House of the Dying Son”

..and a song called “House of the Dying Son” for all you folk who like echoy slide guitar.

Mr Newt’s Optimistic Positive Super 7

A sort of mini-album of stuff that gets me up and at’em in the morning.  A Yin-Yang with Funkadelic sitting in the middle as a turning point, and Strapping Young Lad as the Yang-as fuck noisy ending 😀

Enjoy 🙂

Click above to play as a YouTube playlist.

Here’s the full track listing.

1. Angelo Moore (Fishbone) – Optimistic Yes

2. Bold as Love – Jimi Hendrix Experience

3. The Shamen – Move Any Mountain

4. Funkadelic – Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow

5. Black Flag – Rise Above

6. Circle Jerks – Wonderful

7.  Strapping Young Lad – All Hail the New Flesh

Karma catches up…

I always meant to do a post about some of the issues we had with the Building Company  during our house extension a couple of years ago.  Mainly as an exercise in self-exorcism and in as a minor act of revenge, since I fully intended on naming and shaming. This last part never really sat well with me, so I never did it.  Short version: builders who did the work were ace and did a high quality job, but the boss of the company who PMed the work was a dickhead and couldn’t Project Manage his way out of a paper bag which lead to problems with the work he subcontracted out.

Every couple of months I do a internet search to keep tags on what’s going on with them.  I just did one today and found out that they went into liquidation over the summer.  Shocked , because I hope the chaps who worked on the house are ok, but not surprised because of the way that the company was being run (very much gone from being a small one project at a time to multiple projects with the same resources).

Harvey

On Christmas Day we went to Rachel’s Church as we usually do and a fine time was had by all (even though I’m not a Christian the energy is quite agreeable there and I always have a fine time even if the sermon is a bit dull or dodgy in my opinion).

The Christmas service is always short. The Kids get to bring one of their presents up to the front. Henry treated them to an enthusiastic  explanation of his new Bat Cave. The leader then swiftly goes through all the necessary prayers.  This year instead of a sermon they showed a quick clip of an old James Stewart playing an old man whose imagination brought him into the nativity scene he was putting together and face to face with the baby Jesus.  Here’s a  link on You Tube, its from Mr Kruger’s Christmas.

It’s a monologue wonderfully put together about his relationship with Jesus. I’m sure it resonates with a lot of Christians, but all I could think of while I was watching was of a younger Jimmy Stewart in a film that I watched once and had a huge powerful effect on me. I had no idea why at the age of 10 why the tale of a soft spoken bachelor who believed in a giant white rabbit called Harvey had such a powerful effect on me. Why I thought it would be great to grow up to like Elwood P. Dowd;

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

I must watch the whole thing again. For me it has a lovely whimsy, at worst heartwarming and uplifting, at best sincere and truthfully.

This scene I find especially touching and relevant at this point.