Author Archives: Henry

Cordelia’s Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Posted on by Henry

Ok, so I was planning to post a piece today on game-system flavors, but then I just kept writing and writing.  It turns out that that piece is going to be a bit longer than I’d anticipated.  Instead, I’ll give you an easy one: Cordelia’s Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Ostensibly the first set of stories in the long Vorkosigan series, I came to this book only after I’d already read a number of the other stories.  I feel that I benefited from the prior experience, and would recommend that you start elsewhere as well.  Not because the stories in Cordelia’s Honor are in any way bad, but because some parts of them are harder to engage with when you don’t already know and like some of the characters.  I feel like I had a deeper understanding and appreciation for the characters that I met because it wasn’t the first time that I’d met them, even though the events that I read about were obviously happening long before anything else that I already knew about.

My quick opinion before I get deeper into talking about the book?  Read it.  In fact, read all the Vorkosigan books.  They are very hard to put down once you start, but at least they come in manageable, more or less bite-sized chunks.

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The Brief Hiatus Continues

Posted on by Henry

I’ve been lax in my duties to this blog.  My apologies.  I should have explained further with my post last week: I’m in Portland, Oregon, and on Monday I spent all day running my Call of Cthulhu game for a number of fellow Reedies.  Today I’ll be co-teaching a stage combat class, and Saturday will see a second run of the same scenario from Monday.

I’m afraid that all means that I won’t have new material for you this week apart from this apology.  On the plus side, I finally cast my eyes upon RimWorld, a fascinating base-building simulation with an AI-managed event-engine that I’m itching to get my hands on and tell you about (yes, I want to tell you about the event engine, follow that link and read about it).  I’m also moving ever closer to having a complete version of my Call of Cthulhu scenario, though I’m not yet certain whether my most recent alterations are progress or regression.  Either way, I’ll be back here to bother you about cool stories, games, and story games next week.

A Glance at Shadowrun’s 5th Edition

Posted on by Henry

I’m busy getting ready to run the seventh iteration of my Call of Cthulhu scenario, Temple in the Sands, and I probably won’t have anything for you this Wednesday due to traveling.  But last weekend I had the chance to play a game of Shadowrun again, something I don’t often have an opportunity to do.  I had a good time, but I think I realized why it was that I play it so infrequently; Shadowrun looks like a chore and a half to run when compared with all the other RPGs that I play.

Shadowrun reminds me a bit of a glamorous ass.  You know what I’m talking about: one of those people with so much style, and with so many good stories told about them, that you forget just how frustrating they can be in person.  If you spend enough time hanging around them the aggravation (mostly) disappears into the background noise, but there’s a lot of settling in and acclimatizing that you have to do first.  And every so often (usually right in the middle of something that is pretty cool) you get a reminder of why you thought the person was an ass in the first place.  But because it’s so glamorous, because it’s practically oozing cool, I keep wanting to come back to it like the sucker I am.  I can explain, I swear. Continue reading →

Dominions 3’s Manual Seduces, Conquers All

Posted on by Henry

I sure did say a lot of mean things about Dominions 3 when I wrote about it last time.  I finished on a positive note, to be sure, but if you didn’t read that last bit it might have looked like very mild hate mail rather than an admission of my affections.  I won’t take those comments back (I still think they’re true, confirmed through further play), but I do have a few other thoughts to add.  First of all, giving me a copy of this game for Christmas is both wonderful and somewhat mean.  Secondly, I’m (not so) secretly in love with the game’s manual.  Third… well, my third thought is that the game is far more captivating than I had realized that it would be from my time as a spectator.

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The Forever Engine, by Frank Chadwick

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I hear you like adventures.  How about books that come complete with steam, airships, weird science, and doomsday devices?  Frank Chadwick’s new book The Forever Engine delivers action and adventure with all of those things, and good characters too.  Even better, the story follows an active style very similar to what I’ve come to expect from John Ringo, but without the moments that make you want to yell “Oh John Ringo, no!”  The main characters are competent, sometimes preposterously so, but they generally feel like whole people in a way that happens less often in action/adventure stories.  Already sold?  Go read the book!  If you’re not quite convinced, try reading a little more…

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Dungeon-Starter: The Duke’s Men

Posted on by Henry

Happy New Year!

Here’s an abbreviated dungeon-starter for Dungeon World, building somewhat on the material that I came up with for The Duke’s Men.  Agenda, Goals, and Dungeon Moves are at the top as per usual.  This is mostly focused on cultists and such, as the game itself was, but the basic storyline offered in my previous post could easily be altered to deal with any number of different kinds of threats.

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The Duke’s Men: A DungeonWorld Adventure

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A few days ago, I ran a game of DungeonWorld for two of my friends.  It went so well, and ended up feeling so much like a classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure, that I thought I would share the basics of the game with you.  It’s somewhere between an actual play and a scenario description.  I’ll put up an honest-to-goodness Dungeon-starter soon, and with a little creativity you should have an easy time converting it into your own single- or double-episode game.

We didn’t look too closely at the backstories of our heroes, but please allow me to introduce you to the adventures of Kate the thief and Jonah the ranger (and Jonah’s wolfhound, Erasmus), the loyal representatives of Duke Blackforest.  What follows should allow you to live out their adventures for yourself, or change things slightly and experience the adventure anew with other people.

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1636: Seas of Fortune, by Iver Cooper

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I read this book in halting installments; not because I couldn’t get through it quickly, but because I read each section as it became available, starting two months before its ostensible publishing date.  I don’t know whether that says more about the book or about my love for the series started by Eric Flint‘s 1632.  I can say that I would certainly recommend this one to anyone else who has enjoyed the previous books in the series.  Read on past the break to find my more nuanced thoughts on Iver Cooper‘s 1636: Seas of Fortune.

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Your Enjoyment (Mostly) Guaranteed

Posted on by Henry

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Have you seen this movie?  No?  You may wish to reconsider your life choices.  At least insofar as they involve watching or not watching Safety Not Guaranteed.

How would you react to someone who told you that they could and had built a time machine?  What if they told you that they had used one once before?

That’s what this movie is all about.  It tells the story of a young woman working as an intern at a Seattle magazine; it follows her travails as she tries to learn just how crazy the person who posted the above classified ad actually is.  And somehow, in the course of a wandering storyline that nearly lost me at a few points, Safety Not Guaranteed absolutely stole my heart.  It’s been about a year since I watched it, and the movie still sticks with me as an excellent example of how you can make a great movie with a fairly low budget and a healthy dose of creativity.

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More Pretty Pictures: Kyle Perler’s Photos

Posted on by Henry

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We interrupt our normal programming to bring you more news of pretty things that my friends are making.  My sometime-housemate Kyle Perler is an awesome photographer, and he has recently created a Kickstarter project to fund a photo-trip to Africa.  He’s aiming to make a book from the photos that he takes on this trip, focusing on the landscape and wildlife of Africa, but the really cool thing that he’s offering is access to a travel blog with all the pictures that he takes.

He’s planning to, amongst other things, go on safari and go bird-watching.  He’s already been catching photos like this one:

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If you like pretty pictures, or just really awesome photos, check out his project.  You might also look up some of his other work.  I strongly recommend looking through some of his galleries there, especially the “Fine Art” one.  His portraits are also totally worth a look.  It’s great having talented friends.