The first trailer for the new series of Red Dwarf is out and by the looks of it the Boys from the Dwarf are on top form.
Monday, 23 July 2012
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Congratulations Bradley Wiggins...
I've just watched Bradley Wiggins become the first British rider to win the Tour de France, the world's most gruelling bicycle race covering 4,000km over 21 days. Congratulations to Bradley and all the other members of team SKY who helped make this possible.
What has this got to do with roleplay you ask, "plot and decoration" I say, and an excuse for a rambly article about sports in RPGs.
Sporting events have featured throughout all the ages of history in some form or another and there's no reason why they cannot be incorporated into any RPG scenario when the PCs enter a new town or village.
Medieval Sports
Victorians are often credited with inventing "leisure time" but it is estimated that medieval peasants had up to 8 weeks holiday a year, during which they engaged in a range of games and sporting activities such as:
Archery - In "The Assize of Arms" of 1252, King Henry III, mandated that every Englishman between the ages of 15 to 60 equipped themselves with a bow and arrows. In 1363, Edward III, Passed the Archery Law obliging all Englishmen to practise with their longbow every Sunday and holiday. Needless to say archery competitions were very popular and should be a staple of any pseudo medieval fantasy game.
Bowls - Medieval bowls was a simple game of throwing a ball at a target, this illustration from the Bodliean library, shows a group of peasants taking turns throwing a bowl at a feather stuck in the ground. So popular was the game that In 1366 Edward III outlawed it as it had become a distraction from Archery practise. Edward IV issued a similar edict in 1477 against a range of pastimes such as "bowles, closh, kayles, hand-in and hand-out".
Boxing - Traces its origins to the Pankration of Ancient Greece where early pugilists wrapped their hands with leather thongs leaving their fingers free. Romany Gypsies often resolve family disputes in bouts of bare knuckle fighting and there is no reason why these should not feature in the arsenal of every DM either to prove a PCs mettle or just to earn a few silver pieces when the times get tough.
Colf - The game of Golf has its origins in a much simpler version where contestants tried to hit a ball at a target such as a tree, with a wooden club. The winner being the player who hit the target in the least number of strikes.
Gameball - Many games are considered to be the progenitor of football, but my favourite example is that of gameball and the report of a match played in the village of Ulgham, Northumberland in 1280, which resulted in a player being killed after running onto an opponents dagger. Sounds more like Bloodbowl than football to me and could be a great opener for a murderous plot..
Hammer-Throwing - This olympic event can trace its origins all the way back to the Tailteann games held in Ireland in 1829 BC. Even the young Henry VIII is said to have enjoyed the sport. I expect that every Dwarf in the Known (and unknown) Kingdoms to have a penchant for this sport.
Hurling or Shinty - Another Gaelic sport which can trace its origins back 3000 years.
Horseshoes - Given that every village worth its salt would have at least two things, an Inn and a Blacksmith, it's inevitable that someone would invent a game which involved throwing old horseshoes at a target.
Horse Racing - The chariot races of ancient Rome had long since died out and by the Middle Ages, equestrian sport was largely confined to using horses in jousting tournaments, although I find it hard to believe that races between bored rich nobles did not take place in Medieval England. However, on the continent the Palio di Sienna can trace its origins back to 1590 when the then Grand Duke of Tuscany outlawed bull fighting and so the population took to racing buffalo and donkeys around the piazza. Those crazy europeans...
Jousting Tournaments - The joust has its origins in the Gladiatrial Arenas of Rome, the word joust is actually derived from the Latin 'Juxtare' (to meet together). By the Middle Ages these had formalised into one of two forms, the Joust a Plaisance, an organised tournament taking place over several days with several elimination rounds or the Pas d'armes, where a Knight would advertise for combatants from the local area and then take on all challengers at once in a single bout. Could your Knight or Paladin resist the temptation to sign up if they found one of these adverts nailed to a tree?
Quarter-staff Contests - The Robin Hood vs Little John duel is probably the most famous example of a quarter-staff contest in popular culture. The rules for such contests are unknown but by Elizabethan times these had evolved into a contest between two people similar to fencing. Examples of a range of polearm fighting techniques are graphically illustrated in the 1459 Fechtbücher (literally Fight Book) "Alte Armatur und Ringkunst" written by the fencing master Hans Talhoffer (An online version of the which is available courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen).
Skittles - The ancestor of modern ten-pin bowling which shares its origins with bowls and other ground billiards games. An example of a skittles set was found in the tomb of an Egyptian child dating from 2000BC. In England this was mostly an indoor game played in a wood or clay floored alley with many local rule variations. For bored PCs what else is there to do in a tavern when you don't feel like quaffing or listening to that rubbish bard?
Stoolball - An ancestor of Cricket, originally played between two "wickets" made from the seats of stools hung from trees or fixed to poles approximately 16 feet apart. The object of the game was for the bowler to attempt to hit the stool whilst the batter defended with a paddle shaped bat scoring a point for each delivery defended. A game which has clearly stood the test of time, as a formalised version is still played today.
Wrestling - One of history's most ancient sporting contests which needs little explanation.
The Challenge of Champions
The Challenge of Champions series of scenarios (published in Dungeon issues #58, #69, #80, #91, #108 and #138) by Jonathan M Richards pits a party of 4 players against a series of D&D puzzles with specific challenges for fighter, priest, wizard and thief classes. They are a lot of fun for the players and can be a great way to put a party of disparate PCs together at the start of a game.
 |
| Bradley Wiggins leads out Mark Cavendish during the final lap of stage 20 of the 2012 Tour de France |
Sporting events have featured throughout all the ages of history in some form or another and there's no reason why they cannot be incorporated into any RPG scenario when the PCs enter a new town or village.
Medieval Sports
Victorians are often credited with inventing "leisure time" but it is estimated that medieval peasants had up to 8 weeks holiday a year, during which they engaged in a range of games and sporting activities such as:
Archery - In "The Assize of Arms" of 1252, King Henry III, mandated that every Englishman between the ages of 15 to 60 equipped themselves with a bow and arrows. In 1363, Edward III, Passed the Archery Law obliging all Englishmen to practise with their longbow every Sunday and holiday. Needless to say archery competitions were very popular and should be a staple of any pseudo medieval fantasy game.
Bowls - Medieval bowls was a simple game of throwing a ball at a target, this illustration from the Bodliean library, shows a group of peasants taking turns throwing a bowl at a feather stuck in the ground. So popular was the game that In 1366 Edward III outlawed it as it had become a distraction from Archery practise. Edward IV issued a similar edict in 1477 against a range of pastimes such as "bowles, closh, kayles, hand-in and hand-out".
 |
| Feather-bowling (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Douce, 275, f. r12) |
Boxing - Traces its origins to the Pankration of Ancient Greece where early pugilists wrapped their hands with leather thongs leaving their fingers free. Romany Gypsies often resolve family disputes in bouts of bare knuckle fighting and there is no reason why these should not feature in the arsenal of every DM either to prove a PCs mettle or just to earn a few silver pieces when the times get tough.
Colf - The game of Golf has its origins in a much simpler version where contestants tried to hit a ball at a target such as a tree, with a wooden club. The winner being the player who hit the target in the least number of strikes.
Gameball - Many games are considered to be the progenitor of football, but my favourite example is that of gameball and the report of a match played in the village of Ulgham, Northumberland in 1280, which resulted in a player being killed after running onto an opponents dagger. Sounds more like Bloodbowl than football to me and could be a great opener for a murderous plot..
 |
| Henry VIII throwing a sledge hammer |
Hurling or Shinty - Another Gaelic sport which can trace its origins back 3000 years.
Horseshoes - Given that every village worth its salt would have at least two things, an Inn and a Blacksmith, it's inevitable that someone would invent a game which involved throwing old horseshoes at a target.
Horse Racing - The chariot races of ancient Rome had long since died out and by the Middle Ages, equestrian sport was largely confined to using horses in jousting tournaments, although I find it hard to believe that races between bored rich nobles did not take place in Medieval England. However, on the continent the Palio di Sienna can trace its origins back to 1590 when the then Grand Duke of Tuscany outlawed bull fighting and so the population took to racing buffalo and donkeys around the piazza. Those crazy europeans...
 |
| Palio di Sienna |
Quarter-staff Contests - The Robin Hood vs Little John duel is probably the most famous example of a quarter-staff contest in popular culture. The rules for such contests are unknown but by Elizabethan times these had evolved into a contest between two people similar to fencing. Examples of a range of polearm fighting techniques are graphically illustrated in the 1459 Fechtbücher (literally Fight Book) "Alte Armatur und Ringkunst" written by the fencing master Hans Talhoffer (An online version of the which is available courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen).
Skittles - The ancestor of modern ten-pin bowling which shares its origins with bowls and other ground billiards games. An example of a skittles set was found in the tomb of an Egyptian child dating from 2000BC. In England this was mostly an indoor game played in a wood or clay floored alley with many local rule variations. For bored PCs what else is there to do in a tavern when you don't feel like quaffing or listening to that rubbish bard?
Stoolball - An ancestor of Cricket, originally played between two "wickets" made from the seats of stools hung from trees or fixed to poles approximately 16 feet apart. The object of the game was for the bowler to attempt to hit the stool whilst the batter defended with a paddle shaped bat scoring a point for each delivery defended. A game which has clearly stood the test of time, as a formalised version is still played today.
 |
| A game of medieval Stoolball |
Wrestling - One of history's most ancient sporting contests which needs little explanation.
The Challenge of Champions
The Challenge of Champions series of scenarios (published in Dungeon issues #58, #69, #80, #91, #108 and #138) by Jonathan M Richards pits a party of 4 players against a series of D&D puzzles with specific challenges for fighter, priest, wizard and thief classes. They are a lot of fun for the players and can be a great way to put a party of disparate PCs together at the start of a game.
Thursday, 19 July 2012
When Will this Plastic Film Revolutionise my Gaming Experience?
Unless you've been hiding in a deep dark cave for the past couple of years you can't have failed to notice the advances that have been made in Virtual Table Top technologies. Microsoft captured peoples imaginations a while back when they demo'd their Surface project. Since then there's been an explosion in VTT software offerings from the likes of Battlegrounds, Fantasygrounds, Maptool and a host of others (far too long a list for this article but this wiki has them all) but the display technology has been lagging behind a bit.
For me the VTT has always been about the marriage of old school play with new technology. It's no good having a great bit of software if you have to carry a 50 inch LCD screen around with you when you want to play. Likewise I don't really want to push virtual miniatures around on the screen I want real ones which interact with the display.
Cambridge based research lab, Plastic Logic, is aiming to produce its flexible plastic display in their Dresden factory sometime in 2013. This display meets half of my needs in that it is incredibly robust as demonstrated in this video, but it really needs multi-touch or RFID to be a success.
As the iPad has demonstrated, people aren't content with just watching their display anymore, they want to touch it, and the real market for this type of display is to be an inexpensive e-reader capable of displaying your daily newspaper. I for one will quite happily jump on that bandwagon when it arrives. Once they've successfully integrated the multi-touch capabilities into the plastic film (which shouldn't be that far away) you really would have limitless potential for the display to be used as a portable VTT.
In the meantime I guess I'll have to satisfy myself with Dungeon Mapp Lite, my iPad and a good quality screen protector.
P.S. For a more indepth look at the technology, watch as BBC's Spencer Kelly gets to look inside the lab to see how Plastic Logic's flexible display is made.
For me the VTT has always been about the marriage of old school play with new technology. It's no good having a great bit of software if you have to carry a 50 inch LCD screen around with you when you want to play. Likewise I don't really want to push virtual miniatures around on the screen I want real ones which interact with the display.
Cambridge based research lab, Plastic Logic, is aiming to produce its flexible plastic display in their Dresden factory sometime in 2013. This display meets half of my needs in that it is incredibly robust as demonstrated in this video, but it really needs multi-touch or RFID to be a success.
As the iPad has demonstrated, people aren't content with just watching their display anymore, they want to touch it, and the real market for this type of display is to be an inexpensive e-reader capable of displaying your daily newspaper. I for one will quite happily jump on that bandwagon when it arrives. Once they've successfully integrated the multi-touch capabilities into the plastic film (which shouldn't be that far away) you really would have limitless potential for the display to be used as a portable VTT.
In the meantime I guess I'll have to satisfy myself with Dungeon Mapp Lite, my iPad and a good quality screen protector.
 |
| Dungeon Mapp Lite on iPad |
P.S. For a more indepth look at the technology, watch as BBC's Spencer Kelly gets to look inside the lab to see how Plastic Logic's flexible display is made.
Monday, 16 July 2012
On hitting the big 4 - 0
This year was a landmark birthday for me as I hit the big 4-0... Ouch.
However, my work colleagues bought me some Forbidden Planet vouchers which I promptly blew on Fantasy Flight's Blood Bowl Team Manager the card game. The game attempts to recreate the fun of Games Workshop's classic Bloodbowl but rather than being a focusing on just one match between two teams, it follows an entire 5 week season of matches with up to 4 teams battling it out in the Blood Bowl Tournament.
Tonight, I bribed my step-daughter into playing the first game with me (so I could learn the rules) by promising to do the washing up for her. She wasn't too keen with either the theme or the complexity until she started to get to grips with using the powers on her team upgrade cards and then proceeded to beat my human team with her orcs.
I loved the fact that the matches are boiled down to just the weeks highlights, which sportsfans will recognise as homages to the weekly round-ups on ESPN. This mechanic forces players to make choices about which cards to play in which highlight in order to maximise their chances of getting rewards such as team or staff upgrades, fans or being able to draft star players.
Although I've only played this game once it does manage to capture some of the flavour of the original game and features some of the famous star players like Morg 'N' Thorg and the Dwarven Death Roller. It plays quite quickly (our game took slightly less than 90 minutes including reading the rules) and has a nice level of randomness. Needless to say I loved it and am itching to don my spiked helmet and give it another go very, very soon. 8/10 - Spiketastic
P.S. There are some great tutorials out there on how to play the game from the team at Fantasy Flight and Crits Happen and a review from the always excellent Tom Vassel's The Dice Tower
 |
| Blood Bowl Team Manager The Card Game |
Tonight, I bribed my step-daughter into playing the first game with me (so I could learn the rules) by promising to do the washing up for her. She wasn't too keen with either the theme or the complexity until she started to get to grips with using the powers on her team upgrade cards and then proceeded to beat my human team with her orcs.
I loved the fact that the matches are boiled down to just the weeks highlights, which sportsfans will recognise as homages to the weekly round-ups on ESPN. This mechanic forces players to make choices about which cards to play in which highlight in order to maximise their chances of getting rewards such as team or staff upgrades, fans or being able to draft star players.
Although I've only played this game once it does manage to capture some of the flavour of the original game and features some of the famous star players like Morg 'N' Thorg and the Dwarven Death Roller. It plays quite quickly (our game took slightly less than 90 minutes including reading the rules) and has a nice level of randomness. Needless to say I loved it and am itching to don my spiked helmet and give it another go very, very soon. 8/10 - Spiketastic
P.S. There are some great tutorials out there on how to play the game from the team at Fantasy Flight and Crits Happen and a review from the always excellent Tom Vassel's The Dice Tower
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Apple Security Questions: aka Choose This Adventure!!
I was so incensed this morning with Apple's ridiculous Apple ID security questions and the lack of sensible choices it provoked me to ranting.
When offering choices for security questions they have to:
1. PROVOKE CONSISTENT ANSWERS - The best security question always has only 1 answer and a person should be able to answer with 100% reliability consistently. Asking someone "What is your favourite car you have owned?" may have an answer which changes over time, you could easily buy a new car next week and your preference may change.
2. PEOPLE FORGET - Fact is we are all getting older and our memories fail us, so asking a teenager "What is the name of you first teacher?" will likely provoke a consistent response more frequently than a 40 year old.
3. PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES - Even though we are all sharing in this global digital experiment they call the Internets, our personal experiences are different depending on our age, sex, nationality and culture. Ask a person from India "What is the first car you have owned?" and they may never have owned a car. If subsequent question choices always contain one car question then you have dramatically reduced their options for selecting a question that they can reliably answer in a consistent fashion (see 1 above).
4. IF YOU'RE GOING TO FORCE PEOPLE TO SUPPLY 3 DIFFERENT ANSWERS DON'T HAVE QUESTIONS WHICH CAN PROVOKE THE SAME ANSWERS - If you ask "What was your first car?" and then in another question "What was your favourite car?" don't be suprised if people choose the same answer!! They may have only ever owned one car, but more importantly people often have a fondness for their first of any experience. I can remember the number plate of my very first car almost 20 years ago yet I can't remember the number plate the car that I own now!!
What annoyed me most is that there was simply no reason for this to happen, and it wouldn't if Steve Jobs had gotten wind of it. The content of the question and it's answer are entirely irrelevant and merely exist as a way to provoke a validateable response in 100% of cases. Therefore the only logical method is to is ask your users to write their own questions and answers and not to force them to choose between your choices in an Adventure Gamebook style!
When offering choices for security questions they have to:
2. PEOPLE FORGET - Fact is we are all getting older and our memories fail us, so asking a teenager "What is the name of you first teacher?" will likely provoke a consistent response more frequently than a 40 year old.
3. PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES - Even though we are all sharing in this global digital experiment they call the Internets, our personal experiences are different depending on our age, sex, nationality and culture. Ask a person from India "What is the first car you have owned?" and they may never have owned a car. If subsequent question choices always contain one car question then you have dramatically reduced their options for selecting a question that they can reliably answer in a consistent fashion (see 1 above).
4. IF YOU'RE GOING TO FORCE PEOPLE TO SUPPLY 3 DIFFERENT ANSWERS DON'T HAVE QUESTIONS WHICH CAN PROVOKE THE SAME ANSWERS - If you ask "What was your first car?" and then in another question "What was your favourite car?" don't be suprised if people choose the same answer!! They may have only ever owned one car, but more importantly people often have a fondness for their first of any experience. I can remember the number plate of my very first car almost 20 years ago yet I can't remember the number plate the car that I own now!!
What annoyed me most is that there was simply no reason for this to happen, and it wouldn't if Steve Jobs had gotten wind of it. The content of the question and it's answer are entirely irrelevant and merely exist as a way to provoke a validateable response in 100% of cases. Therefore the only logical method is to is ask your users to write their own questions and answers and not to force them to choose between your choices in an Adventure Gamebook style!
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