Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 119

Korad: Defining Koradi Culture

Last week we spitballed ideas to flesh out the culture of the Koradi, the people who made the empire. Now it's time to choose which of the following ideas about their culture, customs, traditions and mores make the cut.

To come up with the stew of ideas that will define a culture, we need more than a starting point of three ideas. This time around we're going to experiment with a new poll methodology. The poll below allows you to approve as many of the ideas as you like. I'm saving myself some wiggle room, because I'm not sure how this is going to go. My first preference will be to approve any idea that gets more than a 50% result. However, if the bulk of the ideas pass that mark, I may institute some other cut-off—perhaps only choosing the upper half of the winners.

If two concepts seem contradictory, the higher-scoring winner will prevail.

I am likely to reckon that the ranking of ideas that make the cut will indicate their relative importance. So if plant distrusting comes out number one, that fact cuts to the heart of the Koradi beingi. Weird results may see me changing my tune.

And without further ado, here are the choices. I've categorized them a bit to make your complicated choosing process a tad more accessible.

View Poll: Koradi culture defined

See P. XX

Pelgrane's webzine drops its first issue of 2011, and as usual it's crammed with goodness.

My eponymous column answers the question, "What does GUMSHOE do, aside from the clue finding mechanism everyone talks about?"

Simon tears the secrecy from the company's 2010 sales figures, finding PDF sales surging to fill the gap left by a falling distribution segment. He also teases a veritable cornucopia (for when have cornucopias been anything but veritable?) of gaming products new and forthcoming, from Trail of Cthulhu to Ashen Stars and beyond.

Is that all? Scarcely so! Here's what else awaits you, a mere click away:

A Project Covenant campaign frame for Trail of Cthulhu, by Mike Dauman.
The Royal Cartographers, on how to run The Scaum Valley Gazetteer as one large campaign, by Ian Thomson.
The Rise and Fall of a Book Collector: Part One, a real book collector for Bookhounds, by Mike Drew
The Trail into Dreams, enter Lovecraft's Dreamlands in Trail of Cthulhu, by Gareth Hanrahan
The Occult Guide, sample pages, by Paula Dempsey
Bookhounds of London, sample pages, by Kenneth Hite

You have nothing to lose but your electrons!

Six Cardinals Enter, Only One Will Leave

Speaking of Skulduggery, the roleplaying game of verbal fireworks and sudden reversals now has its first supplements, in the form of PDF scenario packs from Gareth Hanrahan.

Pacific's Six is your classic heist gone awry tale, in which criminal camaraderie goes wrong when it comes time to divvy the loot.

Black Smoke features a Renaissance-era intrigue for succession as cardinals gather to select the next pope.

They're tons of backstabbing fun. Snag 'em both!

Skulduggery In Cairo

The aspect of the still-unfolding Egypt story that most surprises me is its back-and-forthiness. From other uprisings, successful and failed, of the modern news era, we've grown used to a simple narrative structure. The protest builds, reaches an inflection point, at which point the regime either cracks or definitively cracks down.

As if the antagonists of the Egypt narrative have studied Hamlet's Hit Points, and are manipulating its up and down beats, we keep seeing reversals, with no clear inflection point in sight. The regime appears to crack, and is then revealed to be temporizing, deceiving, and regrouping. If the entrenched elite wins, it will be more by subterfuge and endurance than by force. (Force has been employed, resulting in a death toll in the hundreds, but no decisive win for the power structure.)

In short, Mubarak and his circle are playing a game of Skulduggery with the aspirations and lives of the Egyptian people. They may backstab each other in the process, but are all vying to be the new boss who is the same as the old boss.

I wish I knew enough about Egypt in particular or the Arab world in general to write a Skulduggery scenario to shed appropriately satiric light on the situation. Sadly my grasp on the region isn't strong enough to avoid misrepresentation and cliché.

It would make a great pitch for a PDF scenario pack for anyone out there who is better versed.

Pelgrane Offers Tempting Bribes to Gen Con GMs

Pelgrane Press is looking for enthusiastic GMs to run games listed in the regular Gen Con program book. In particular, it looks to showcase Ashen Stars and Bookhounds of London. Comply with this reasonable request and be handsomely rewarded.

The Birds

The updated archive is here!

Top Ten Movies

Having seen enough of the late-breaking 2010 films, I hereby declare this my provisional top ten movies list. Eligible films have received 2010 North American theatrical releases. (2010 DVD / VOD debuts would have qualified too.) I found this a great year for movies and, were it not for the competition, would have been happy to see anything from slots 11-20 make the top ten. With favorite films from three years of TIFF making their theatrical bows, foreign and indie film managed an unusually tight clawhold on the top ten. Less mainstreamy titles are linked.

1. Wild Grass
2. Dogtooth
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
4.Mother
5. True Grit
6. Shutter Island
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Trigger
9. Secret Sunshine
10. The Secret in Their Eyes

Top Ten Movies

It's that time of year again. Oscar fever holds filmland in its grip. The Christmas rush has given way to winter movie catch-up. Meaning that I have finally seen enough of '09's flicks to reveal to an anxiously trembling world my top ten movie list.

'08 was an iffy year, so it's only fitting that '09 brung it good. This year's sorting process, always a challenge, proved tougher than usual. Looking at my second rank of choices, from 11 to 20, I'm seeing a list of titles that could easily serve as a top ten list in some other, less bumper-croppy year.

But not to get ahead of myself, here's the ten that clawed their way to the top of the aesthetic heap:

1.      35 Shots Of Rum
2.      A Serious Man
3.      Where the Wild Things Are
4.      Star Trek
5.      Goodbye Solo
6.      Public Enemies
7.      In the Loop
8.      Bright Star
9.      A Town Called Panic
10.  The Fantastic Mr. Fox

My year-end lists don't usually brim with kid flicks, so it's a big surprise to see three of them make the ten.

I've Amazon-linked a couple of the obscurer titles that are already on DVD or headed there.

(Before you have to ask, here's the next ten:

11. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
12. Funny People
13. Inglourious Basterds
14. Moon
15. Tokyo Sonata
16. District 9
17. The Hurt Locker
18. Up In the Air
19. Still Walking
20. Girlfriend Experience)

Korad: The Koradi Way

Last week we designated home territories for two of our three non-human races. Polling chose the remote and mountainous province of Threniri as the domain of the symbiotic runes known as the Aesigils and the populous, haunted region of Ulthon as that of the carrion-eating, tribal Veytikka.



This creates an interesting dynamic, where the empire spends great resources growing food in the breadbasket provinces of Urkoradi and Barle, much of which goes to feed the inhuman Veytikka. Later we can decide if the grain is used to grow livestock which is then killed so they can eat it as carrion, or if they consume grain along with their dead meat.

When we get to these peoples, we can, as per reverancepavane's concerns, decide to what extent either of them constituted a nation.

But before we get there, it's time to start detailing the dominant culture of the empire, the one that conquered the other, established its still-pervasive (but cracking) ideology, and makes up its ruling class. They comprise the majority in their homeland of Urkoradi and certain far-flung colonies, and are elite movers and shakers throughout the empire.

This week's creative challenge is to characterize the culture from which the empire sprang. In the comments below, tell me one fundamental thing about Koradi beliefs, attitudes, customs or values. Confine your idea to 10 words or less. Confine yourself to a single idea.

From this we'll work backward to define their history, and forward to fill in the ideology that makes their empire tick.

Kobold Quarterly Interview

I am the proud subject of a profile and interview in the latest issue of Kobold Quarterly, #16. Catch up on GUMSHOE, Hamlet's Hit Points, Stone Skin Press and The Worldwound Gambit, not only from me but from boon colleagues Kenneth Hite, Simon Rogers and James Sutter. Thanks to Jeremy L. C. Jones and the rest of the vast kobold den.