Raithe

On a Rogue Trader note, I recently read through Stars of Inequity. I have to admit, after the months of waiting for this to shed lights on planets and systems, creation ideas, and how to handle setting up colonies by your Rogue Trader... I'm left feeling a little disapointed and I can't quite figure out why. Chapter 1 is pretty much random tables for generating systems, then planets. But nothing too detailed or varied. So you'll probably end up following it vaguely but throwing in your own stuff like you've been doing until this point.. Chapter 2 "Planetside Adventuers" - more random tables. For ; Profit Motives, Encounter Sites, Local Phenomena, Planetside Complications, and Treasure Generator. Although these tend to have a fair few interesting ideas for you to expand on yourself. There's also about 3 pages of "explorer's gear". Chapter 3 "Populating the Expanse" - The first part that seriously engaged me, some general look at how colonies get founded, the world details involved ; ie. All the different things players would need to do, looking at founding colonies by themselves or getting contracts with backers, the practical matters of shipping equipment, the different elements you need to bring together to form the various types of colonies, creating a colony charter.... That and a few basic mechanics for establishing, then running them in the background (and just how easy they are to fall to pieces if you don't micromanage them..). Also a brief section on establishing "Representatives" that can run things for your characters and do minion type things.. Chapter 4 "Factions of the Expanse" has some interesting ideas, but they seem more thrown in for no real reason. It's four different groups that have no fixed position in-universe, so you can drop them wherever. A mysterious explorator fleet, a rakish pirate king and his band, a semi-restrained ork fleet, and a group of unusual kroot. None of which are tied in any way to earlier elements to the book. They just feel as if they've been added so there's some "fluff" elements to give you a break from the random generation tables. One thing that seems missing, is any actual examples of systems, worlds, colonies, rogue traders actually using them. So you can't really do any comparison with what you create to get a feel for how well it balances out or if you're doing it right.. I know it's geared around helping you create new worlds and all, but it feels like too much consists of random generation tables that don't have that much variety or too much linkage together.

A nice little blog entry regarding that Games Workshop thing.. Shlock Mercenary - Space Marines, Water War and Uplifted Elephants

You watch Desperado for Salma Hayek, not Banderas..

Geez, found out some news about an old friend I haven't spoken to in months. After years of health issues that doctor's could never figure out (breathing issues, blood issues, passing out due to unexplained "heart murmers" and assorted other things), she was in hospital for a minor surgery over christmas, and the doctors finally discovered a growth. A 9 pound fibrous growth. Wrapped around her womb and up, compressing her lungs and internal organs. It had never been picked up on before, and previous doctors had just told her she needed to lose weight. Apparently what was meant to be a not-so-long surgery turned into a 5 hour event. Afterward that surgeon was amazed she'd been in class teaching, because women with growths half that size had basically become house bound due to the problems it can cause. Kind of highlights the fact that you still need to take doctors with a grain of salt. I mean she'd had these problems for years without it being diagnosed correctly.

I did actually get a copy of the Bard's Tale. But I could never get the tape to run properly. Yes, that joyful age of games on casette tapes....

I can remember all the Eye of the Beholder games..and have some vague memories of a couple of those Dragonlance ones as well. Hm, I'm trying to remember what might have been before those.... Heh, although technically.. wasn't there that educational crpg that used to be ..western settlers? During the mid-late 80's?

It was okay. I think it's a shame they went with a closed system and didn't play up more on the change of how things were in the original movie and the computer tech and internet of today. Or maybe I just played too much Tron 2.0 over the years...

Is that the full manifesto, or the edited copy? I saw a couple of bits about how they'd edited out chunks of his pro-obama, anti-nra rhetoric or some such...

So while Tron Legacy didn't do great at the cinema, but has slowly hit the 400 million mark worldwide after dvd sales and wotnot, they're talking about doing a follow-on.. Hm, I think I'll get the John Carter dvd in case that works for that as well..

Woke up from weird frakking dreams about an ex. Now the whole day feels out of kilter somehow.....

Arg. I realised how many albums/songs were mislabelled genre wise in my itunes library. Which kicked in what must be almost ocd like need to make them all right. I've lost hours today working my way through it.. I can't seem to let it stay as it is.

Hm, I can't make up my mind about this game. I like the idea... but then the key element of memory manipulation is a "you can't fail at this" because you literally cannot go forward until you get it spot on and exactly right. If only it could handle divergent fallout depending on how you set the memories up ...

Hm, and Robin Sachs passed on.. http://blog.bioware.com/2013/02/06/remembering-robin-sachs/ The voice of Zaeed Massani, Admiral Saul Karath, and always remember for his role in BtVS as the man who got to call Giles "Ripper"...

Another slice of literary news. Games Workshop is trying to lay claim to all uses of the term "Space Marine"... Whatever.Scalzi.Com - Space Marines and teh Battle of Tradem Ark MCAH Online - In the Future, All Space Marines Will Be Warhammer 40K Space Marines

"Having twins is like recovering from testicular cancer. Everyone is happy for you, everybody is even happier it's not them."

A little change of pace..

Well that explains his lack of a British accent. To be fair, being born somewhere doesn't always equate to growing up there... That and if you spend x many years/decades living around folk who have a different accent you'll most likely adapt to it.

For that next batch of info from the developers blog:

And for the musical interlude...

Admiral Ackbar on the announcement of J.J.Abrams directing Episode VII - "We can't repel lens flairs of that magnitude!"