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The future

November 25, 2007 Newt Leave a comment

Having another chill weekend here at Castle Von Newport, so as the ladies sleep peacefully I sip coffee and quietly reflect in a playfull way about the Future

IPODs – my nano is definitely dead after going through the wash (DOH!), so Rach has put her foot down and said I must have a new one for XMAS. Its a hard life but after much agonising I’m getting a 80Gb Classic. Oh the humanity!

Job – definitely going Freelance/Self employed. My subconscious is working on it and its being worked on more consciously. May in the short term go for another job, closer to home in the commercial sector, but definitely out of the cosyness of Uni/Public sector. Recent informal meeting with new uberboss in new year, convinced me despite his nice words that continuing where I’m at will slowly drive me bonkers!!

Important thing short term is that I’ve regained my passion and excitement for webdevelopment!! Doing a couple of personal projects, such as the D101games site and the GoPlayManchester page (full site coming when we work out what we want out of it) has helped. Also helped Rach set up her Veggie-baby.co.uk blog (which is running along nicely, with posts about vegetables named after ‘testicles’!) was fun to. Building Web sites is fun again, something the white-blah of work’s site robbed me off.

Games – The mighty Continuum and Furnace have been announced!!!

Continuum 2008. John Foster Hall, Leicester University, UK
Friday 1st – Monday 4th August 2008.

http://tavern.zunder.org.uk/tav/viewtopic.php?t=1853

Furnace 2008 is booked in the Garrison Hotel’s Diary for the weekend of 18th/19th October.
http://rpgfurnace.com/

Both brilliant cons, none of the nonsense you get at say GenConUK, and I’ll be throwing myself into both with gusto!

Already plotting an epic Fantasy Ancient Greek game with scads of figures for SimpleQuest @ Continuum, and have at least one gm interested in helping me run games. Also Monkey should be done and dusted by then and out in book form. Visions of running round the con in a Gorilla suit to promote it keep popping into my head.

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Calmer, happier, colder (brr)

November 18, 2007 Newt Leave a comment

Been very introspective recently, so I’ve held off updating this until my head calmed down. Coming out of this ‘introspective’ phase now, a much happier person than I went in.

Work – I’m a man with a plan. The restucture of Man University IT is coming to an end. I’ve been told that I’m not getting voluntary severance, boo!, but I have got a direct transfer over to Faculty IT from my present job at School level (which is being disolved at the end of this year). Mixed feelings about this , mainly because I’m stroppy bastard and like to be in charge of my job destiny!!!!! Therefore in the short term I’m looking for a new jobs, outside the comfort/lazy zone of the Public sector and longer term looking for freelance/working for myself. I’d love to jump into the whole freelance/self employment thing but as Rach sagely points out I’ve not done any of the prep work to make that a reality. I’ve made a start over the last couple of weeks, but its not nearly enough to get me up and going by the end of this year or even the start of next year. However I’d still like to be proved wrong on this one 🙂 Main thing is that I’m back in the saddle and guiding my career after having to sit on my hands to see what happens with the IT restructure.

Play – Current RPG campaign (HeroQuest: Black Horse County) really galloping along at a tremendous pace, heading towards the big ending (think Resorvoir Dogs meets the Battle of Tanenburg/Grunwald). Now all I have to do is make sure we fit the sessions in before XMAS hits to keep up the momentum. Go Play Manchester #1 was a big success, despite the small turn out (see previous post) and already planing #2 in Dec. Got John Ottoway who runs Cthulhu Rising coming along to run a Marines game (think Cthulhu meets Aliens). If you are an out of town GM who fancies coming up to Manchester for the day, the venue Fanboy 3 is a five miniute wallk straight down from Piccadilly. Musing on running some form of Savage Worlds, after picking up the Explorers Edition at GPM #1. Work continues apace with SimpleQuest, which is a mountain of work but absolute fun. Currently working on the Character gen chapter, and making notes about Skills and Combat which are next up. Monkey will get picked up and dusted off next weekend since I’ve promised the producers of Huddersfield Gaming Society (HUGS) a game in December and an article for their next society magazine. Pondering having a Newtcon 2 over the holidays and attending Winter Stabcon.

Family- Well we’ve survived the first six months of young Evie’s life!! I’m looking after both the ladies this weekend, since Rach is well beyond knackered. Now looking at ways of giving Rach more of a break, and structuring the day so more tidying up gets done.

Right gotta go Evie is stirring!

Music

Tuneage

November 15, 2007 Newt Leave a comment

Started using Last Fm again.

New tunes recently

Porcupine Tree – Fear of a Blank Planet
Recommended by lots of folk, modern prog rock. Very good kinda like a heavier Marillion , but that’s only half the story.

Dillinger Escape Plan – Ire Works
Noisey, angry but with lots of mellow moments, melody, jazz, classical. A step on from their last release ‘Miss Machine’, this one is going to get alot of play.

Keef Baker – RedEye
Great weird intense electronic music. Similar to the last release (‘The Widnes Years’) but BIGGER AND BETTER.

The Young Gods – Super Ready/Fragmente
Return of the mighty!! If you loved them in the 90s they are back on top form!!

Gaming

Go play Manchester #1 a success!!

November 12, 2007 Newt Leave a comment

We’ll our first meetup went well 🙂

Big thanks to Dave who runs Fanboy 3. The gaming environment was top notch and he was friendly and helpful even though the shop was busy.

Thanks to the players who turned up

John, Lynn, Kevin, Reagan, Rob, Mike, Stephen and Mark.

In the end we all huddled round one big table and I ran SimpleQuest (a D100 Fantasy game based off the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD). A very good game, despite me loosing my voice due to a bit of a throat infection. The players were awesome and got on famously despite it being a large group. It was a pleasure to GM for you 😀

Everybody said they would come next month, and John and Lynn have got the details of the Stockport Games Society off Stephen and Mark and said that they be turning up to their Tuesday nights. Result!!

So overall a good time and fun was had by all.

Looking forward to next month 😀

Gaming

RPG Camapaigns

November 7, 2007 Newt Leave a comment

After years of playing one shots at cons, and a series of short unsatisfying campaigns which either fizzled out or exploded, I’ve been running a campaign since Feb.

Its worked marvelously, because I was upfront that I wanted it to have a beginning, a middle and an end rather than a game that just goes on and on. Its important to note this is not a ‘time-limited’ campaign, although I did state I didn’t see it going on further than a year at the begining which we a close to. We’ll play until we’ve finished the story,

The players already know the structure of the campaign and contributed much of the plot and setting ideas, since we have a strong commitment to running a very cooperative game. I deliberately chose a part of the setting (Black Horse County in Glorantha) which has minimal write up so we have lots of scope for creation as a group.

Since players have a stake in the creation of the setting this allows them to invest more in their characters and I’ve made it very clear that although I’ve got a outline for the game (beginning/middle/end) its all about their characters and any thing can happen!

So in short

Campaign with defineite begining, middle and end.
Framework for the campaign set up in full sight, input and agreement of players.
Campaign centred/focused on PCs.
Cooperative play and creation of setting.

If any of this looks familiar, its because its completely nicked from Burning Wheel/Burning Empires and various comments Luke Crane has made via podcasts (mainly the excellent Sons of Kyross).

Its making a very memorable game for everybody out of a setting and system that I was beginning to get a bit jaded of.

Its also worth mentioning we have had the occasional break for people being away, mainly me on Paternity leave, and also to have one shots adventures using other systems. Because we have the focus of the campaign structure, getting back to the game is aways easy. It also means that we can always have a break when the campaign is getting a bit heavy, which it does from time to time.

Also the big benefit for me of us making the setting up cooperatively as we go along, is unlike other Gloranthan campaigns I’ve run, I hardly have to do any prep between sessions!!

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