by Bret

The Saga of Sweetangel – Part 2

Hello!

Today’s post is a continuation of said poem story! You may have to check back to remind yourself of the intro here.

 

On the eve of the First of Rain,

When the nights were long and the gutters full,

A Karkar girl found the detectives.

“No room for beggars,” said Poulter,

“Give the poor urchin a crust,” said Longthorn.

“I don’t want no food,” she protested.

 

“My name is Turtle,” said the child,

“I been told that your firm unloses things,”

“And my sister has sudden come gone.”

“An urchin can’t pay,” said Poulter,

“We’ll take the case anyways”, said Longthorn,

And he bid that Turtle’s tale go on.

 

Saltpetre had many orphans,

The girls Turtle and Frog lived among them,

But two nights ago Frog disappeared.

She was hunting for spent lodeshells,

Electrum men paid a penny for each,

To feed the machines they engineered.

 

“I searched all night long,” said Turtle,

“I asked about Frog in alleys and dens,”

“But they all had the same thing to say.”

“Sweetangel has taken the girl,”

“Sweetangel takes young and old, rich and poor,”

“Sweetangel takes good people away,”

 

More to follow, have a good one!
[sociable]

Our Daily Beard – 11/02/13

Good moon day!

Two bands are touring this year which will be overlooked by a lot of people, particularly the younger crowd.

They also happen to be among my favourite bands.

Fleetwood Mac and James. Not together- that would be amazing and weird!

But yeah, they are both touring, Fleetwood in the September region and James going April style.

I’m definitely going to see one of these, money allowing. Hopefully James, who are touring with Echo and the Bunnymen (who I’m not so familiar with honestly).

To the casual observer, James are pretty standard midlander Britpop merchants of the 80/90s. Everyone has heard Sit Down, which is a great tune, but it falsely paints them as one hit wonders and happy-go-lucky types. It’s an old story: the song which is the most simple, repetitive and catchy gets picked up and used ad nauseum.

The fact is that James do have a certain hippy-love quality at their core (nothing wrong with that, as they present it in a mature fashion, as a kind of plea for humanity rather than preaching). However, they are also still recording and have 12 albums under their belts which grow and develop along with the times. Their last couple of albums? Scathing, political in places, emotional, very current (without becoming pop) and with a lovely dark undercurrent. Plus, on top of that, they still have an originality that some modern bands on their first album fail to produce. All this and still the seed of peace and love buried deep within, mirroring their flower motif remarkably well. Check out the last few albums, including The Morning After and The Night Before.

Plus, how can you not like a hippy band whose frontman played Mr Zsazs in Batman Begins?!

Anyway. Show, don’t tell, right?

Peace out!

[sociable]

Our Daily Beard – 10/02/13

Spent today reading RPG books while at work (pretty sweet, non?).

I’ve taken the executive decision to ‘do’ Sleepwalkers as a Basic Role Playing Monograph, provided that they accept my submission. BRP is a cool and really thorough system, simple but complex enough to get lots of nice realism and detail. Plus it’s got a following, so I don’t mind the fact that the book wouldn’t be standalone.

In other words- you’d need the BRP book to play it, but the BRP book is awesome and popular, so no loss. Then, you’ll all be able to play it too, without my clunky D12 obsessed mechanics.

Failing that, bah, I’ll make it run on an avant-garde system of eating competitions and stern looks.

I have found a very nice barebones system called D6 Pool, check it out at this site. It’s really light on rules, which isn’t a good point for many people, but the idea is that you can pick it up and play within a few minutes. It’s not like you can’t add your own details depending on setting. Did you ever see the game Fudge? Well, it’s that, with incremental pools based on skill levels, akin to White Wolf.

Do you ever feel like there’s an RPG mechanic somewhere just out of reach that hasn’t been done before? It’s perfect: flexible yet defined, simple yet detailed, realistic yet fun-first. It probably uses some hitherto unknown concept instead of dice, like, origami.

Well, there isn’t. But tons of ace games already exist! Wish me luck with the monographing!

In other Sleepwalkers news…

Novel wise, I’m going to radically alter the main character. The location will probably change too. Woops!

See you tomorrow folks, keep rollin’!
[sociable]