What You Want To Read

Posted on by Henry

I have been moderately derelict in my duties: I’m in the throes of a book.  1636: The Devil’s Opera caught me late yesterday and hasn’t yet let go.  I am also partway through two others (Hide Me Among The Graves, The Quiller Memorandum), but I don’t have a review of any of them ready for you.

I’ve been making progress on the next Jerome short story, with several thousand words down already and a good number more to go.  I’ve been having some trouble with this one, but it’ll come around eventually.

What I want to know, though, is what you next want to read from me.  Specifically, are any of you interested in seeing more material based on that flash fic piece which I wrote?  I’ll include it past the break so that you can refresh your memory, but here are a few questions to get things started:

  • Do you want to see more in this setting?
  • If yes, whom should I follow?  Who and what seem most interesting to you?  How long should I make it?
  • If no, what sort of thing would you like to see instead?  Do you have any ideas that you’d like to see explored?

Please put any responses in the comment section.  Once again, the flash fic piece in question follows the break…

Continue reading →

The Escapist Nature of Superhero Works

Posted on by Mattias Lehman

What do your favorite superheroes say about you? Superhero literature — and really the speculative fiction genre as a whole — are a genre rooted in escapism. Superheroes are a way of conceiving of the world as we’d wish it to be, but in a roundabout sense. While a utopian novel may define our perfect world, superhero works define the one-man struggle to make a perfect world. Have you ever heard somebody say ‘man, if I were in charge…’. That is the defining idea behind super hero works: one person trying to change the world dramatically by sculpting it to their personal ethos. It is my opinion that our favorite superhero works indicate (to some degree) how we see the world.

Continue reading →

Choose Your Own Adventure! Part 3 (or 2b?)

Posted on by Henry

Quick news note: the flash fic that I wrote one week ago was chosen as the winning piece in the contest!

This is the third installation of my Choose Your Own Adventure series.  The previous two pieces can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.  You’ll benefit from having played them and being moderately familiar with their details, especially Part 2.  Note that this piece is divergent from Part 2, and actually follows on the events of Part 1.  You’ll see what I mean when you read the first briefing just below.

For the best experience, keep your eyes on the text nearest the top of the screen and be careful not to read ahead.

#Start here#

When we last left you, you had just outrun the knights and fled into the woods with the villagers.  You’re immensely popular, because you warned them of the approaching group of knights just in time for them to escape…

Continue reading →

“Roleplaying” Games and the Misused RPG Label

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

I have written a few reviews for digital roleplaying games (RPGs), but in many cases I find the label is completely inappropriate.  When I think of a “roleplaying” game, I think of a game in which I take control and can make important narrative choices.  But most digital RPGs don’t let you make narrative choices at all.  For that reason I would say that the label of RPG has come to be associated with a mechanic which is common to most RPGs, but isn’t the attribute that makes them RPGs.  The mechanic in question is that of leveling up, and I hate it*.

Continue reading →

Short Story: Jerome’s Tropical Vacation

Posted on by Henry

tropical-island-sunset_1680x1050_60065

Alternate title: Dude, Where’s My Boat?

Dear readers,

It’s taken a bit longer than I had expected, but I finally have another installment for you.  This goes along with two other pieces in the same setting.  I won’t claim that this is the final version of this story, but I do think it’s ready for your eyes.  It might even, according to some of my proofreaders, be fun.  Enjoy!

***

Jerome lay on the sandy hill, exhausted.  He had pulled himself up to the line of trees, above the high tide mark, and fallen to his knees before slumping over onto his back.  The sun was slowly lighting the sky from beyond the horizon, turning the east pinkish gray in anticipation.  Lifting his head, Jerome could see the ship breaking apart on the reef.  Much of it was still afloat, but it was all wrong.  The wood was holding together, but it had been so battered by the waves and rocks that the only piece he could recognize was the bowsprit.  That jutted into the sky, waving back and forth like a flagstaff whipped by wind as the swell dropped it time and again in the shallow water.  It had separated a while earlier, breaking off the forward hull with a sickening crack that he had heard across the water.  Soon enough there would be nothing but fragments and scattered driftwood, carried off by the rolling waves.  Jerome found the fate of the ship a fitting metaphor for all civilized accomplishments.  Who could claim that they had made something which would last more than a few heavy storms without being constantly repaired and rebuilt?  Everything slowly fell apart, even as people tried to hold it together.

His head dropped back onto the sand.  This was probably just his fatigue talking.  He knew that he wasn’t usually this unhappy.  He watched as the darkness of the night sky fled across the heavens towards the western horizon.  Then again, he reflected, he usually hadn’t just been shipwrecked and marooned, likely to die far from home on an island in the New Sea.  It was enough to make him want to cry, but he was just too tired.

***

  Continue reading →

Bait and Switch

Posted on by Henry

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned.  Back on August 26th I promised you that I’d have a short story posted by today.  As you can see, I don’t have that here for you, but perhaps you’ll forgive me: I did give you the second installment of my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure far sooner than I had thought would happen, and I have actually finished the short story I’d intended to post today.  I just haven’t edited it yet.  My guess is that you’ll see that up here on Wednesday, though it won’t have any of the section that I teased you with last time (that should end up in another short story, which will come out sooner rather than later).

Finally, in hopes of making reparations, I offer you the flash fiction piece that I wrote over the weekend for Alison McKenzie’s contest.  The rules were that the piece had to be between 100 and 750 words long, and had to use the phrase “When dawn broke, he knew it was all over.”

Have fun…

Continue reading →

Giving Players More: Strategies for Padding Your Game

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

Today we are going to play pretend.  We will pretend to be in the process of developing a game with the goal of being worth a particular price tag.  Since we are ambitious, we want to be just like the AAAs and charge a hefty $60 for our game.  But we are also familiar with the hours-to-dollars assessment people use to judge if the game provided enough entertainment to be worth the pricetag.  If we use the price of a new DVD as a measuring stick we can guess that our players will want their entertainment on a 10:1 ratio ($20 = 2 hours of entertainment), so for our $60 price we’ll need to provide six hours of game time.  That can be a lofty task for a single player game, so today’s article will be delving into the wonderful world of design mechanics/strategies to extend game time (for better or for worse).

Continue reading →

Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Posted on by Henry

I think David Drake might have access to a time machine.  You see, I’ve written my reviews of his books years after they were published, and yet he has consistently moved to address my concerns.  He doesn’t get it exactly right every time, but he’s clearly heard me and has responded to the points that I make.  He’s even usually fixed things within a book or two.

Master of the Cauldron is the sixth book in the Lord of the Isles series, the last book before the final trilogy which is supposed to wrap up all of the adventures that our heroes have been having.  It continues with the excellent setting which I gushed about in my earlier reviews, still delivering on that sense of diving into a world made up of an Atlantean amalgamation of our past.  In fact, much of it is very familiar.  If you’ve paid attention while reading the previous books, you’ll probably be able to call most of the scenes here as they happen, or at least know the pattern of the flow as you read.  So the question is, do I still like it?   Continue reading →

Battlestar Galactica

Posted on by Mattias Lehman

When we talk about science-fiction, we hold two different ideas in our heads. First, we think of lasers and space ships and so on. As I discussed previously, I don’t particularly see this to be science-fiction, but rather the clothing that science-fiction wears. Science-fiction should be about how new technology shapes the way we have to live our lives, not just wearing a sciencey setting. Here’s a quick litmus test for that. If the science suddenly became real, would we make such a movie in that era? That is, cars must have been science-fiction at some point. But would 2 Fast 2 Furious ever have been a sci-fi movie? Probably not. What is the distinction? 2 Fast 2 Furious doesn’t think about how the existence of cars changes human nature and society, it simply tells a story that uses cars. You could imagine the same movie with space ships, or horses, or any other speedy mode of travel. On the other hand, Minority Report is clearly science-fiction, being about the way we would react to some technology. Would we accept it? Would we fear it? Would we fight against it?

Bearing this in mind, Battlestar Galactica is one of the best science-fiction TV shows I’ve ever seen. Warning: there will be minor spoilers after the jump.

JUMP

Choose Your Own Adventure! Part 2

Posted on by Henry

Edit: Part 2b has been posted and can be found here.

This particular story follows in the footsteps of the previous CYOA which I published on this blog.  It should be perfectly legible and entertaining without having read / played through the first one, but those of you that like knowing a little bit more about what’s going on should try the other one first.  As with the previous one, you’ll have to make a little effort not to read ahead.  But if you keep your eyes on the topmost section of text and click the links as you see fit, you’ll do fine!

Another important note: this was originally going to continue both sides of the the previous story.  I’ve pared it down to just one of them to give myself more time with the other half, but even so this may be longer than the first installment.

# Start with this link #

Last you knew, a knight had ordered that wretched man named Hurly to pick you up and carry you off…

Continue reading →