Archives: Old Posts

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]

Our Daily Beard – 09/02/13

Good evening fellow mammals.

It’s time for a glimpse into my day to day life, peeling back the layers of mystery and gazing on the wonder that is my world.

I know, I know- some of you aren’t ready. Some of you would prefer to preserve the legend, rather than see that I’m actually just a mortal man.

But I’ve got nothing else to talk about today.

So, here’s one of the things I do to amuse myself (Becki has to take some blame) and how you can recreate the hours of fun:

1. Watch Game of Thrones.
2. Be making a stir-fry of some kind. Go on, I’ll wait for you to catch up.
3. Get to the stage where you add mushrooms (or chilli or whatever).
4. Use a chopping board with a hole in it (where you grip it).
5. Shovel the mushrooms through the little hole, to meet their demise in the pan.
6. While doing so, cry ‘Open the Moon Door!’ and ‘Make the bad man fly!’
7. Giggle.

 

 

See? I’m just as useless at home.

 
[sociable]