User: baxil Date: 2009-12-25 10:19 Subject: A little gamer Christmas present Security: Public Location: ~/brainstorm Mood: creative Tags: fireborn, multimedia, roleplaying

Good morning, and happy heathen-based Winter ritual! I made you a present.

Those of you reading my series of Fireborn review posts may be curious to get a game going yourself. So here's something you can throw in to give your players some social intrigue in the mythic age! There are several "epochs" (mythic-age settings) during which supernatural creatures such as dragons are trying to manipulate the major human powers from behind the scenes while disguised as humans themselves. In particular, the Atlantean age has a more courtly feel to it, and this sort of labyrinthine and subtle social negotiation fits right in:



Click the thumbnail for the full print-resolution image (PNG, ~250k), and print it right from your browser, or right-click and "Save Target Link"/"Save Link As..." to your computer. If I've done it right, which I'm not sure I have, this should be a print-ready PDF at standard 8.5x11" size.

Gamers not playing Fireborn will find it can be easily used in any courtly setting with slightly archaic language (anything from AD&D to Victorian-style urban fantasy), and even adapted with minor changes to modern games such as Vampire: The Masquerade. Strike all the references to "nonhuman" etiquette and it even makes a great set of challenge-responses for secret societies set in fully human games. It could be really cool for LARPs too (if you try it, let me know)!

Made with LovelyCharts, a nifty free online flowchart creator.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

User: baxil Date: 2009-12-23 16:33 Subject: Fireborn: First Impressions - Pre-Game and Combat Security: Public Location: ~spiral Mood: busy Music: Big & Rich, "Love Train" Tags: draconity, fireborn, roleplaying

As I've previously mentioned, I've talked my roleplaying group into starting up a game of Fireborn, where all the characters are reincarnated dragons living in human bodies in the modern world. A week ago Sunday, I finally got my first chance to see Fireborn in action.

It was a rather modest start -- two of my players, {M} and {S}, came over for character creation/finishing touches, and I convinced them to stay for the evening and run through a little "pre-adventure" with a few simple encounters so I could build up some confidence in the gameplay mechanics. It was a good experience for all three of us. And the difference between this "pre-game" game and the start of the actual campaign was dramatic (though I'll get to that later, in the "Fire Within" first impressions).

I'm actually REALLY glad I did that, because that "milk run" had some powerful effects:
( Rules mechanics stuff, mostly of interest to gamers )

We started out with {S}' character Kimiko, a covert operative visiting London from overseas to investigate reports of magic, breaking into a house belonging to Hugh MacHugh, a known but minor member of the Freemasons and a suspected mage. Kimiko subdued a guard, but his cigarette accidentally lit a bookcase on fire and set off a fire alarm -- forcing her to flee the house with guards in hot pursuit. Meanwhile, {M}'s character Maggie -- a former paramedic who started providing independent services as a street doc, to help people who wouldn't otherwise go to hospitals -- encountered George Saint while shopping for groceries, and after both of them shared a hallucination/flashback about dragonslayer George attacking dragon Maggie, he went mental and attacked her in the modern day. Kimiko broke an ankle while running from MacHugh's estate, and Maggie knocked out George and called the hospital so some other doctor could help out the poor beggar. Kimiko called up Maggie for help, and after Maggie discovered that Kimiko had been involved in the fire over at MacHugh's place (MacHugh stiffed Maggie about 20,000 pounds after a disagreement over services), the characters bonded and holed up to heal.

This gave both players a chance to deal with the game's narrative mechanics and combat mechanics in a low-pressure situation.

( 'I know kung-fu.' 'Show me.' )

The overall verdict: As the RPG.net reviewer said, Fireborn's rules get out of the way when you're trying to roleplay and jump into the foreground when you need them to describe the action, and it's a combination that everyone seems to appreciate so far. By the third combat at the end of the pre-game, {S} and {M} were into the flow of the dice and {S} was praising the system's unique attributes -- how counterattacking and partial success and vivid combat descriptions and whatnot flowed from the core rule in a way that really goes beyond anything we've previously played. Easing into the combat rules a bit at a time has worked out the best so far for us; find some excuses to have your first action scene be small and non-threatening, so that your players feel free to experiment with the rules and the number-crunching in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're putting their character on the line by not doing things "right".

Anyway, tonight will be our second proper game of the campaign, and the first with everyone attending. I've gotta get going so I can make it home in time for game, but I should have a little more time over the holidays to write up how "The Fire Within" is playing out and how the various elements I am injecting on my own are playing out.

(Also, note to self: Now that I am assigning experience points, remind the players that you have to keep track of what XP you've already spent, because it's those accumulated expenditures that determine your character "level".)

User: kadyg Date: 2009-12-22 10:49 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public Tags: pets

I was both wrong and not wrong about Ocras. He's definitely winding down, but not for the reason I've been treating for the last two years. The Dr. just called and gave me the rundown on his levels. Most of them are in the "old cat" range of things, his kidneys are hanging in there fine, but his sodium and something else indicates that he most likely has a brain tumor or other neurological issue going on.

Well, then.

On the one hand this makes things easy: there's no real treatment for that, so now my goal is keep him comfortable and safe. On the other hand, I didn't ask how much time we have left. I sense is two to three months - tops. Hopefully, I'll be wrong, but I'm kinda doubting it. I'd like to see him get through the new year, but...

Right now he's snoring away on the back of the couch and refuses to believe me when I say anything is wrong. Good wooly bear.

User: baxil Date: 2009-12-22 01:51 Subject: In which our dragon LIKES a film for once Security: Public Location: ~/Brainstorm Music: Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, "Science Fiction Double Feature" Tags: films, reviews

So let me tell you about this movie I saw. It's a CGI-heavy film about humans, and aliens, and a single human stuck in the middle because he's now inhabiting a body with fused human/alien DNA. He has to struggle with issues of identity as the process unfolds. There's an evil corporation, and our hero must fight the evil, and he alone can save the aliens from their evil evil grip ...

... But I already dissected District 9 back in August, so let's start over and discuss Avatar.

It would be fair to look at this movie in the same critical light as I did D9; there's certainly race fail with the "Noble Savage" Na'vi¹ and heroic Mighty Whitey learning their ways just in time to become their epic hero. However, this time I'm not going to be the reviewer who goes through all that, and you know why? I liked this movie. Period.

If you are looking for reasons not to see Avatar, don't let me ... um ... unstop you. heron61 has covered the race fail and given some fantastic suggestions for how to make a better Avatar story. krinndnz has pointed out that the film's main attraction is special effects that will inevitably show up in a better movie. (Edited to add: And outside my friends list, cleolinda does the dissection that I won't do, and also points out the "no one disabled can ever be happy" angle that a lot of people, including me, missed. Also also: When will white people stop making movies like Avatar?) ... My goal is to try to give you some reasons why you might enjoy the movie anyway.

As for me, they had me at the unobtanium.

... I'll get to that in a moment. First, let's start with why I had such a profoundly different reaction to this one than I did to the last human-joins-the-alien-race effectsfest. Amazingly, despite the two films sharing their basic premise, Avatar is (as kadyg pointed out) the anti-District 9.² They are opposite in color, attitude, and message.

D9 is relentlessly lonely, dusty, gritty, and cynical; Avatar does deal starkly with the horrors of war, but is generally lush, luminescent, and pretty. The D9 aliens are nicknamed "prawns" and have all the charisma of Cthulhu; the Avatar aliens are good-looking, cat-eared, magic-haired humanoids. Avatar's main character has loyal friends throughout the movie, in both the alien and human camps, and they cooperate, something unheard of in D9's crapsack world. D9's main character is forced into an unwitting transformation, and loathes every minute of it, so that the movie's takeaway message seems to be "humans suck and being an alien isn't any better"; Avatar, for all its stereotypical romanticizing of the aliens living in harmony with nature, immediately shows the main character enjoying his transformation, and comes off more as "some humans suck and let's face it aliens are pretty cool."

If you're a xenophile, this in itself is enough to redeem the movie -- but regardless, you'll find lots to lovingly stare at, simply because the film is so damn pretty. I didn't even see it in IMAX³, and it still popped off the screen. The scenery is a character, and the alien world of Pandora steals every scene it's in. The way the characters interact with the environment is lovingly rendered; from the main character examining spiraling delicately-fronded plants that retract at his touch, to his first night encounter with bioluminescent mushrooms (he jogs down a walkway surrounded by them, whacking them with his hands to boost their glow), the film walks you through a world that plays by its own rules, and the operative word here is "play."

Did I mention how pretty this movie is?

And then there's the unobtanium. Those of you not familiar with the term just need to know that it's a long-standing engineering and science-fiction in-joke to refer to whatever Material Of The Week is needed to make future technology work; those of you who are familiar will find your jaw dropping that they actually use that name in the movie. I kid you not. The first time the Evil Corporation referred with a straight face to the thing-they-were-strip-mining as "unobtanium" I almost fell out of my chair. It was perfect: the mineral was never a plot point, other than as a motive for Evilcorp to do their evil things, and so the movie naming it that was a flat-out order: "Hey, nitpickers, sit down and shut up and enjoy the beautiful stuff already." It worked. I did.

Oh, there was still stuff to nitpick. There's one scene where an army pilot turns tail and very obviously runs from an active fight, and yet doesn't get court-martialed shot or jailed or even given a stern talking-to; Pandora's atmosphere has the curious effect that it's exactly as deadly to humans as the plot calls for it to be; most characters' reactions to the protagonist seem badly plot-driven rather than organic. But the end effect was a sort of mild disapproval that registered in the back of my brain and never pierced through to destroy my suspension of disbelief. The movie did its job: it sucked me in and held me in straight through to the end. Considering the lashing I give most movies, this is high praise.

I do have to caution here that your mileage may vary. Eye candy is a lot of the movie's appeal ... and I'm not just talking about the scenery. A movie about aliens living in a nature-centric hunter-gatherer society means that you're going to be staring at a lot of nearly-naked, athletic, blue, tailed bodies for three hours. This pushes my buttons like a toddler at a Star Trek console. The aliens are human enough in shape (if not in proportion) that even normal people are likely to have this reaction, but if you're unwilling to let the borderline pr0n⁴ distract you from the storyline's weaknesses, you'll have an easier time finding Avatar's flaws.

I could go into the storyline, but by this point you're either going to see the movie or you're not, and the story won't make an appreciable difference. This is not a movie to see for the story. Still, for completeness: The story is predictable Hollywood stuff (the ending was sorely obvious halfway in) about a guy finding an unexpected appreciation for the primitive culture he was sent there to fight. Except set in a future with space travel and mecha and of course a dose of "hey their mysticism is totally fantasy-novel real." (Idea: Why don't we call it "Dances With Catfolk"? Some of that 1990 Oscar magic might rub off.) The protagonist teams up with the good-hearted scientists against the evil soldiers and a lot of shit gets blown up in really dramatic ways and then there's a desperate last stand against overwhelming odds and the Power of Heart (warning: TV Tropes link) saves them all.

... Have I mentioned yet that this is a really beautiful film?

So, yeah, I plan to see Avatar again -- hopefully but not necessarily on an IMAX screen. I can easily see how people might dislike it, but I found it a film that transcends its mediocrity by the things that it does get right. Verdict: A.

--

1. I cannot utter this name without nightmares stirring in the back of my head ... "Hey! Listen!"
2. Put them both in the same room and they would annihilate each other in a flash of special effects, releasing enough energy to power IMDB for three days.
3. Though we did spring extra for the 3D, and it was worth it. I've never actually seen a 3D movie before. It added to the presentation -- nothing essential, but a neat effect -- and today's 3D glasses neither tint the movie nor give you vertigo. We both went three hours without taking the glasses off with no ill effect.
4. Another huge difference between Avatar and D9: There was nothing sexy in the slightest about the D9 aliens. One could, for the wordplay value, consider the idea of "prawn pr0n," but really honestly ew.

User: kadyg Date: 2009-12-21 12:40 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public Mood: worried Tags: pets

Why does no one warn you when you're 21 and someone plops a black and red stripped fluffball of a kitten on your desk that 14 years later that same kitten will break your heart?

Ocras is winding down and the last two years have a been a gift. I took him in today for his usual fluid top-up and some blood work. The vet took three tries to get blood and I left between tries 2 and 3 because it was making me more twitchy than him. She'll be calling me tomorrow with the results. I'm not sure why I'm so certain it's bad news, maybe because I've been waiting to hear the bad news for so long.

Of course, the same cat I'm mourning is sitting at my feet loudly demanding that I pick him up so he can commune with the aquarium (his main hobby), so maybe I'm just responding to the weather and being a wee melodramatic.

User: baxil Date: 2009-12-17 10:31 Subject: PSA Security: Public Location: ~spiral Music: Cowboy Bebop OST, "American Money"

One of our customers just called in to report that he had gotten a suspicious e-mail -- and later, phone call -- telling him that his credit card had gone over limit (he got suspicious and checked with his bank directly; no such thing had happened).

As an ISP, we can't directly help with cases of potential identity theft, but I did point him to the Web site www.ftc.gov/freereports -- which tells American citizens how they can obtain a free, no-strings-attached credit report (up to three times every 12 months, once per credit reporting firm) under federal law. It's a good reminder for my friends, too.

User: baxil Date: 2009-12-15 23:32 Subject: "Dragons In Urban Fantasy" Updated Security: Public

Just an FYI for those of you who care but haven't bookmarked it: Monday's "Urban-Fantasy Dragon Book List" has doubled in size due to a number of excellent recommendations and/or serendipitous discoveries as I was tracking down the links for everything. I also went through my own bookshelf with a fine-toothed comb, and split off a few new categories. I'll keep updating it as long as people keep offering new recommendations.

User: kadyg Date: 2009-12-15 20:28 Subject: Octopus on the move Security: Public

Yet further proof that octopi will take over the world while we sleep. They have mobile homes.

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

User: baxil Date: 2009-12-14 18:27 Subject: BOOK LIST: Dragons in urban fantasy Security: Public Location: ~spiral Music: Boom Crash Opera, "Too Hot To Think" Tags: books, draconity, requests, reviews

Early in November, kistaro asked: "Looking for a good urban fantasy novel with a dragon as a major (or main, even better) character. Any recommendations?"

I was a little thrown to see the paucity of recommendations. A month later -- even fudging on some of the criteria -- the number of "good urban-fantasy novels with dragon characters" is still small. As such, I'm making this post as an attempt to compile a definitive list. ( ... ) Please speak up in comments if there are other items that should be added in!

LAST UPDATE: 2009/12/22

Series

Individual Novels

Not-Quites