Naturally, I’m not the only person who thought of this when the Surface was first announced years ago:

People talk about the ultimate RPG equipment, and I have to say that the surface really comes close. This could help take care of a lot of the mechanical stuff that bores me as a game master, and allow me to focus on plot and dialogue.

Source: Crunchgear

Ok, I’m only writing this because I’m not playing. And the reason I’m not playing is that I’m at work on a Sunday. There’s a bunch of other posts I need to get out quickly too. Hopefully, I won’t lose momentum, and you’ll see those soon.

Mass Effect 2 picks up several years after the first game. Commander Shepard has joined the shadowy Cerberus network to continue his fight against the Reapers, a race of sentient machines that raise galactic civilisation only to destroy it. Read the rest of this entry »

MacquarieCon went really well this year. With over 100 pre-registered players, I think it was the most attended MacCon of the decade (including any of the ones that I had a direct hand in the organisation of). Everybody had a good time, and most (if not all) of the games were booked out.

Joshua (the chief conorg) did a fantastic job of organising games and promoting the con early and often, and that made a huge difference to the turnout and quality of the convention.

I helped P write and run a game of Cthulhu Invictus called “The Mean Streets of Rome”, in the style of Raymond Chandler’s noir detective novels, much like Lindsey Davis’ Falco novels.

As usual, there were some brilliant performances, as well as people signing up for an investigation module, even though they seemed to have no interest in following any of the clues laid out to them. Maybe next time, we should put in a disclaimer:

You know nothing of the supernatural, so don’t try to chase any of it down. Trust me. There is nothing there.

Anyway, we had a great time overall, and I wanted to extend a congratulations to Joshua for running a great con.

When Google Wave was first announced I (like probably every other tech-minded gamer) immediately started seeing its possibility as a play-by-chat medium. Unfortunately, that thought took a back seat to other more pressing concerns, even after I got my own invite to the preview.

That all changed when Robin D. Laws posted on his blog some thoughts about the whole shebang. Ignoring his whining about technology moving too quickly for him (keeping up is still optional; people still play RPGs face to face), he links to a couple of good articles. Read the rest of this entry »

SYDCON was really great this year. We had well over 100 people sign up before the con started, and plenty of people rocked up for a casual game during the con. Everybody seemed to have a good time, which means our efforts as conorgs were successful.

Ok, conorg hat off and player hat on. I only played two games this year, both freeforms.

First up was “Judgement of Change”, a Dune freeform presented by Luke Strotz and Grant chapman. I played the vile Baron Harkonnen, who was written in such a way that he succeeded all his goals with very little effort. I basically had to ensure that House Atreides won their bid to take over Arrakis. Doing that amounted to being my usual disgusting self and allowing a coalition to form around Atreides. The only catch was to ensure it didn’t look like I wanted to lose the vote, so I actually had to pretend to scheme. I didn’t feel as necessarily powerful as the main controller of Spice production in the universe should. The main reason for that was the GMs continually handing out Spice so that addicted characters weren’t forced to deal with those of us stockpiling the stuff.

The other game I played was also a freeform, the last in the A Colder War campaign by the Troika group. “Dancing in the Dark” was pretty heavy mechanically, with a number of mini-games. The one that I was involved in was a little broken, to the detriment of all players who were using it.

I was playing the character I had from the previous session, Detweiler Earthbane. Previously, I had left my physical body and transcended into the “Source”, an alien technology capable of huge acts of creation and destruction. In this game, I spent much of the game listening intently to the “programs” left to administer the Source and watching it get depleted time and again by the humans tapping into it. I eventually determined that since mine was an organic mind capable of much more flexibility than the AI programming, I should be able to reprogram the system to prioritise the source requests of the AIs.

When I confirmed that this worked, I took over its function and made myself the sole arbiter of Source in the galaxy. Then the universe ended, and pretty much everybody got a desired outcome from the game.

I had a great time with both games. Congrats to the designers and GMs for stellar efforts. I look forward to seeing everybody at MacquarieCon and then EYECON.