Wings Over the Pyre - January 9th, 2005

05:44 am - [Meme] Ani-Memetics

Royalty!


What was your job in a past life? (LOTS of results & Anime Pics)
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Current Mood: grumpy

08:43 am - [Misc] The Long Winding Night

I just haven't been at my best, tonight. A long, twisted day with more downs than ups. When the highpoint of your night is accidently running into an Elite Level 20 bear named "Ol' Smoky" and just as quickly running away, with a scant 30hp to your name, you know its kind of an off night.

It doesn't help that there are just too damn many idiots in the world. Like the guys responding to my thread regarding SAM3 truncating the play of some files in my server. I wasn't aware that reading comprehension was an optional portion of the modern educational curriculum. Of course, the other thing you come away from that thread with is that I'm just the kind of person support folks love to have with a problem. I'll beat every corner, rummage through every hidden nook and cranny, until I find exactly the problem, characterize it, quantify it, and theorize about reasonable places of difficulty.

Now, if only support would read that thread.

Its annoying, frankly.

Likewise annoying is that I simply could not find either my copy of All Flesh Must Be Eaten nor Fistful of Zombies, despite tearing half the house apart looking for the damnable things. This is annoying more than simply the wandering lack of presence of one of the best RPGs ever designed and one of its best supplements, but because I was looking forward to sitting down with WikidPad and assembling the elements for what I'm tentatively referring to as Deadworld Omega.

Yes, there's a message hidden in that name. No, you can't ask.

Yes, I realize that I don't really have to use All Flesh for this Deadworld game. I could just as easily use one of the literally other several hundred (at a minimum) RPGs that I own, many with more streamlined mechanics. But, damn it all to Hell, I really had my heart set on AFMBE. So, at some point this week, I'll start methodically disassembling the den, bit by bit, looking under the couch for goodies (including my Ars Magica 5th Edition hardback), and grousing at ear-splitting volume.

It will not be a happy time.

On the other hand, in the wake, perhaps things will be more organized and, in fact, cleaner.

Ah, holy cleanliness.

Eric the .5b and I have been kicking around a setting for him to write in, something like a Bronze Age Theocratic Civilization as the good guys. Well, except that the bastions of civilization, the cores of city-states, the Temples are effectively false, paying no worship to any real god. In fact, the Clerics are all Wizards, wielding magic by their own will and trying to hold civilization together while it advances. Against them are the cults, groups who worship Real Gods, divine entities. The problem, of course, is that deities are unpredictable in action, power, and demands, and they tend to have detrimental effects on even the most noble of their worshipers. Even the most good and holy of the gods are inescapably alien, and as such inherently inimical to human civilization.

So, on the one hand you have groups of strong-willed, self-commanded men and women leading society through control of false religion, hunting down the acolytes and agents of the real gods and making sure they receive neither aid nor comfort -- in order to save humanity from chaos. Personally, I love the tension.

With the city-state Temple structure and the flexibility for every Temple to manage things somewhat independently of the other, you get a real set of moral concerns. What is permissible when you not only know that certain acts and modes of thought are going to destroy the world, but you can prove it? To what lengths do you go? What do you try to accomplish along the way?

And what happens when the new Chosen One ends up dead in a potter's field?

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention. I'm trying to warp it into a High Fantasy Bronze Age Film Noir Murder Mystery. :)

People really shouldn't ask me for help. Really.

Current Mood: tired

08:18 pm - [Meme] You Can't Take the Sky From Me

You are Simon, the young, brilliant doctor. Your
devotion to your sister drove you to part with
the world you knew. Raised on a civilized
planet, you are not used to coping with the
situation you have landed yourself in - though
you seem to be adapting well enough to suggest
robbing a hospital.


Which Firefly character are you?
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Actually, a really surprising result. Usually I get pegged as Jayne or Mal. Simon is ... unusual.

Current Mood: thoughtful