Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in kshandr's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
5:59 pm	From an interview with Pinball Legend Steve Kordek in the Chicago Tribune... "The secret to designing a good game is to attract the player," Kordek said. "What attracts a player, first, is the pictures on the backglass of the game. Second, if what he sees on the play field is different, that's a success. And when the features are so exciting that he wants to put more money in it, you've got him." Current Mood: intrigued Current Music: Pogo - Under A Spell (Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
10:38 pm	Games and competitions... Well... second game of D&D with Elliot. This one a more involved affair than before. We took his Fighter and cat_rant's Cleric into a small dungeon with four locations and some monsters, all done with miniatures and dungeon tiles, covered off for that "fog of war" effect. I've never played D&D with that level of "prop" before, but I can see it working for small children. He's not as hack-and-slash as I feared, rather he hands treasure out to his party-mates. A few traps will teach him that perhaps it's not *always* a good idea to reach for the chest straightaway. Lessons learned - I'll be being a lot more frugal with the random treasure table. I don't remember Treasure Type C being *quite* that Monty Haul. I think I got the story level right (the local church got flooded, and they found a hidden door when the floods receded. Part of the scenario involved finding a tapestry with a map on it. "Can we go there *now*?" asked a wide-eyed boy. "Maybe that's for next time" I said.) I worried a bit about the first encounter, but they managed to make it through without (much) dice fudging on my part. Both level 2 now, thanks to the 1gp = 1xp rule and the aforementioned Treasure Type C. Like the dungeon tiles but I need to make/print my own. Like miniatures, but yikes - with some of the dungeons we used to run it'd take *hundreds* of euros to get enough models! Time for WoW-style "this kobold looks much like the other kobold. The one you killed. Yeah." In other news, me and paperfl0wers over at IrishGaming.Com have just launched our first competition today. We're offering a prize to the best scenario of no less than 5000 words to be written to our specification by Sunday night, 8pm. Rules over that way if you're interested - Only Irish types need apply. First of many events and competitions, I hope. Current Mood: satisfied (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
11:23 am	Gaming Project #1294612 - Escape MUSH It's nice to be doing some "reasonable" role-playing online again... The "Escape" MUSH that we set up a while back has blossomed into something pleasant, with what I consider to be a lovely group of people. I thought I'd do a quick post here about how we set the thing up and how we progressed it. Most of us are coming from Tapestries MUCK, dissatisfied with the lack of "plot" role-playing there, though there's heaps of "day to day" role-playing there (it sort of comes and goes in waves.) We decided we'd set up a game for ourselves to play, and had some chats about theme etc. We wanted to have many races, and we wanted something new, so we decided on a sci-fi game with a sort of "Voyager"/"Lost In Space" feel to it. A starship with an experimental intergalactic drive flips itself out into uncharted space and is stuck there. We set up a wiki (using WetPaint) so we could pool ideas, and everyone created a race, some of us throwing together some technology ideas and other background bits and pieces. While it's mostly a hippy "everyone throw plot at the wall" kind of affair, we've got a couple of people trying to "steer" the whole thing. Mostly successfully. I'm sysadmin (God help them) for the project and I chose PennMUSH 1.8.3 as the thing I know best (mostly from all that Vamp MUSHing in the 90s.) I set up an account with Genesis MUDs and we're based there for now on a very basic account. It's not like we're huge in terms of locations or players, so we'll expand as necessary. We spent a few weeks building our major locations - I'm heavily involved with that as well, and it's about the only thing I'm not happy with regarding the project. I keep getting bogged down in role-playing and haven't finished all the building/coding stuff I want to finish! So we've kicked off plots, our characters have met each other. We've flipped the ship into unknown space and we've started meeting the locals. We're using a variety of MU* gaming techniques such as keeping one (wizard) character "dark" and relaying information as a GM. We've discussed possible plots between us and used our regular characters to implement them. We've spent time just interacting IC. We're all (actually not quite - I'm not, but I will be) playing multiple characters to make the ship look more populated than it actually is. We've lost a couple of people from the original group. We've also gained some people, which is nice to see. We're stable for a few weeks now with seven people and there's a couple more floating around the periphery who may or may not become "regulars." The group we've got is hugely creative, and we've got a couple of incredibly experienced gamers and GMs, a couple of amateur writers, a couple of pretty talented artists (our wiki has bios and ackshual character pictures for the "bridge crew"!)and some fantastic imaginations. I'm really pleased to say I'm part of the group. We're neatly split down the middle for nationality (hence timezones) and are usually active in the mornings and the evenings; less so in the afternoons. I think with time we're going to gravitate toward "big" events happening on certain days so we can all be there at once - it's like having a regular gaming session where we can also dip in and out during the week. Loving it. Current Mood: satisfied Current Music: Mike Oldfield - Weightless (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
4:02 pm	Casual Games I play a bunch of online games. Just casual browser-based games. I'm currently playing "Hero World" and "Bejeweled Blitz" on Facebook. I've spent a long time playing the likes of "Legends of Zork", "D&D Tiny Adventures", "Kingdom of Loathing", "Raven Black's Dark Alleyway", "Battle Faeries", "The Wolfen", "Farm Town", "Twilight Heroes." I'm getting bored. I'm looking for a game that I can pick up and play without much effort. That I can play for a minute or two in between doing work stuff. I want something that might have a bunch of grinding to do (grinding suits minutes taken between work items.) I want something that gives me a feeling of being rewarded. Ideally something not flash-based. But it needs to be complex enough to make me come back. "Farm Town" and "Hero World", while diverting, don't last long. "Kingdom of Loathing" was brilliant. That's the sort of thing I want to see. Can anyone recommend anything? If not, is it time to start trying to write something like this? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
11:22 am	Inexcusable... It is, isn't it? I've not updated here in ages and ages. Bah. What's been going on? Not a lot... I've been "quiet" for a little while, so you don't hear so much, dear Reader. I went to Maelstrom, I've been working on a couple of my own projects (status: we'll see... depends on too many things to say anything out loud yet.) But mostly I've been being quiet. I thought it was worth mentioning a few things. Both related to gaming. Firstly, Elliot created his first D&D character - a fighter - at the weekend. I was using the (2.5?) rules - D&D Red Box Basic. We didn't do much other than create characters, the pair of us, and run through a quick combat (his character versus a kobold (he won.)) But I think there's more to come in that camp. "It's like World of Warcraft, Dad. But without the computer." My family have been taken over by Civilisation Revolution. My mother and elder nephew are playing it a lot on XBox - Me and Elliot enjoyed pootling along with them the other weeeknd, so I bought a copy. I'm apparently going to be playing threeway with Mum and said nephew on XBox Live this evening - the trash talking has already begun. It's great to be able to game with kids and remember why I started down this route in the first place. Lastly, Gaelcon have accepted two LARPs from me for the con this year - And one of them is JumpTech. So I'll be running an "indy" JumpTech game in August before that happens. It will be in Cassidy's on the evening of Wednesday August 19th. Proper announcements to come, but keep the weekend free, please. Exploratory emails from new and old JumpTech players welcome! Current Mood: ticking over (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
1:03 pm	Bullet point life Went to cat_rant's drama group's show last night, which was pretty cool. Met people there who have more or less passed out of my life, both of whom I've been utterly plastered in front of. Which is about the only connection they have with one another. Poor cat_rant isn't getting any sleep at all, so me and El Huff are gonna make ourselves scarce tomorrow and let her sleep all the way through the day. I spent yesterday in another workshop related to .NET and properly object-oriented code, which was really interesting. We're building a sort of framework from the ground up that we can then use to auto-generate a whole bunch of the code we use in here, then once we have all of that we're intending to re-write every piece of software we have to new standards. Big project; sounds pretty awesome to me and I'm loving it. Feeling a lot a lot better that of late today - looks like the week of making sure I do all the right things has worked. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: Peter Bjorn And John - Erik's Fishing Trip (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
10:09 am	Bah... lack of updateage It's gotten to the point where I was a few years ago when everything I posted here was a meme (most of Facebook seems to be going through that phase right about now.) I'm one of those people who hates the Twitter-mapped-to-LJ thing that we're going through as well. I guess I have many reasons for blogging as much as I can. Instead I'm very quiet of late. It's not because I'm not doing anything. In fact, I'm pretty frantically busy with a bunch of areas in my life. However, I'm worried I'm going to start doing a specky_ie if I start talking about the projects I'm working on without saying anything about them (and I don't want to say anything about them for fear of jinxing.) I suppose the challenge is to actually make those things happen so that I can talk about them, but once bitten... I've also got some lingering paranoia recently (I blame the total lack of reasonable weather recently) and that's severely damaging one of the projects on the grounds that I can't help thinking the people involved are talking about me behind my back and saying things that make me less likely to want to deal with them. People suck :) cat_rant is out of the house a lot at the moment doing stage management for the No Drama Drama Group, which is giving me a lot of time to write stuff down and play WoW... I *have* submitted some games to Gaelcon, with more to come. I *have* been out and about, most recently geocaching at the weekend with the Huffer before settling in to watch the Eurovision together (still loving Sweden's entry.) My back is getting better after I wrenched it with the bookcase (and the bookcase is a thing of beauty!) IrishGaming.Com continues to grow apace, though lack of scenario donations means we're currently experimenting with different content generation ideas. I've been really enjoying the Argent Tournament thing in WoW, and it fits into my longterm project of getting the "50 mounts" achievement. I've spent 45 minutes - 1 hour on the game each day for the last two weeks or so working through the "Champion Of..." achievements. The wonderful jiituomas ran my "Communing in Darkness" again in Finland, this time generating some really handy feedback that I think I'll be using for stuff going forward. Current Mood: content and busy (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
2:05 pm	Dollhouse. Dollhouse. Second Season. Squee! Current Mood: joyful (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
6:13 pm	I've not been having a very good week... Bit busy, bit stressed. But I just found something that made it all better and restored my faith in the Internet always being able to cheer me up. Dear Readers, I give you... the Manualist. In other news, roll on the Eurovision (I predict Norway will win.) Current Mood: boggled (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 11th, 2009
10:53 am	Scout sites... Question: With the exception of Larch Hill (which I know the status of), has anyone ever investigated the possibility of running a LARP in tents at any of the Irish scouting facilities? (4 Comments |Comment on this)
9:37 am	Star Trek I watched Star Trek. Some of the science was utterly bogus and stupid, but d'you know what? The rest of the movie was so mind-bogglingly awesome that it totally made up for everything. Not gonna say anything else for fear of spoiling, but the bottom line is two thumbs up. Elliot may allow me to borrow a hand for the fabled three thumbs up, but he hasn't seen it (yet.) In other news, there was plotting with natural_20 at the weekend. Which was productive, and it was nice to see him. And lastly, there was stress-generating stuff over the weekend, but that's for another day. Current Mood: stressed (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
4:05 pm	Tytsjerk! I was doing GPS stuff at work, and discovered somewhere new by reversing a co-ordinate... I work close to "Stillorgan" but never really found it funny until emergencyfriend pointed it out to me, being as how he's a fifteen-year-old-girl and all. I can't help wondering if the residents of "Tytsjerk" in the Netherlands would class me as a fifteen-year-old girl for giggling my head off when I read it this morning. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
9:25 am	A feast or a feast. And I did my back in... Gaming's a feast or a famine lately... The winter was quiet and not very involved. Now... Maelstrom, Gaelcon submissions, JumpTech, potentially another residential LARP weekend and three other personal projects which are in a planning phase and all of which would be lovely if they happened (for different reasons.) Talking about them here would be jinxing them, but y'know... I'll be the first to rave about them from the treetops here if they happen. Escape MUSH is running now and we've done some ackshual role-play, so that's nice too. The weekend was pretty awesome - Bought a new bookcase to replace the DVD shelves that overbalanced and tipped DVDs and lego and a houseplant everywhere a few weeks back. The downside of building the bookcase was knackering my back - I'm having trouble bending over without pain the last couple of days. cat_rant got frustrated enough with me making funny noises that she tied my shoelaces for me yesterday - today I'm wearing slip-ons. I'm alright standing and walking, though, so it didn't stop us from going out to Glendalough with the wee man and having a picnic and a walk (in the rain) yesterday. Everything's coming up Milhouse! Current Mood: Milhouse (Comment on this)
Monday, April 27th, 2009
11:51 am	I feel bog-awful today... Didn't sleep enough at the weekend and it rained a lot. Today my brain is so full of rubbish I can barely type properly. Blecch. Current Mood: unimpressed Current Music: o2 - C64Last v8 (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
11:00 am	Too many projects! It's that time of year :) So I've got JumpTech's second season (y'know - the difficult second season!) on the go. And I submitted some scenarios to Gaelcon as well at the weekend. And then I got talking with emergencyfriend about MUSH gaming and we decided we'd play with setting up a sci-fi MUSH for people that we know and already role-play with. Hosting, compiling, creation of a wiki, frenzied MUSH building and a whole bunch of creative people later we're looking to start actually role-playing the week after next. Maelstrom IC mails are still being fired back and forth. Looks good for making the next event (which is 5th-7th of June, if anyone is interested... not sure if we can offer you a car space what with all the camping gear and set dressing and stuff, but you're welcome to the "guest bedroom" in the OOC tent and we'd love to have more people in the IC group. So yeah - quite a lot going on. Work's being quite busy right now as well, which doesn't help, and then the glorious and wonderful cat_rant went and bought me "Rock Band: AC/DC" which is... y'know... more choons I can "play" on my toy gee-tarr. AC/DC choons. Awesome. Current Mood: happy Current Music: The Adventuring Party - adventuring party 2009/04/21 (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
4:53 pm	Right. JumpTech. I'm swapping threads back onto JumpTech for a bit while it's downtime in Maelstrom-land. I want to get two games organised between now and Gaelcon, and I need to organise a scenario submission for at least a third JumpTech game (and probably some others) for that. I think I need to spend some evenings thinking and organising. On a totally seperate note, does anyone have any experience with storage companies? Y'know... like U-Store-It or whatever? I have this idea involving summer holidays, LARPing and stuff. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Reyn Ouwehand - Wizball [live at The Church] (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
10:26 am	Maelstrom. Khan's Nadaam. Am back now. This Maelstrom event has been brought to you by the phrase "If I wasn't a LARPer I'd have to start." Following are some observations and cool things that happened. ( Would You Like To Know More? ) Current Mood: tired and fab (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
12:18 pm	Open question about skullcaps... Y'know skullcaps that wizards wear in fantasy stuff? Like on the cover of Dragon Warriors book two (very small image here, bigger image sort of similar here)... Anyone know a trader that sells those? Current Music: Freestyle Express- Don't Stop The Rock (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 30th, 2009
5:57 pm	Oh! And I've just remembered! Toymaster in Dun Laoghaire at the weekend had a Nerf-knock-off grenade. Carries six darts and is powered by air pressure, pumped up when loaded. Thereafter, it goes off when you press the foam plunger at the bottom of the thing. So it can be thrown and it fires off darts everywhere. I really want to see if it's compatible with Nerf Tagger darts. &euro12.99, in case anyone's interested in it as well. I imagine Little Wars would benefit from one... Current Mood: happy Current Music: New Order - Vanishing Point (1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:03 am	Another weekend... I went to Dun Laoghaire ostensibly to buy hessian to do stuff with the front of the IC tent for Maelstrom. That was before I discovered "Pagoda" in the shopping center there. Gosh... it's like a prop shop. We bought a couple of chest-type boxes, and some candles, and hummed and hah'ed over an abacus and proper home-made paper and incense and all sorts of other stuff. That shopping center also holds two toy shops (so Elliot was well catered for) and the Pen Shop that's been there for as long as I can remember. We bought a quill pen there. Sundry other Maelstrom-related purchases were made. I'm very excited about Easter weekend now (probably means I'll be killed five minutes after arriving.) We also went to see "Monsters Vs. Aliens" on Saturday (it was previewing at Tallaght UCI.) Elliot enjoyed it, but I thought it was a little lacklustre. I was honestly expecting a little more than a glorified female empowerment story with a couple of good gags. Shame, that. Lastly... I started watching "Dollhouse" over the weekend - Watched the first three episodes last night. I am intrigued and wish to know more. "Pushing Daisies" it ain't, but it's definitely worthwhile, I think. This concludes my self-imposed holiday from TV. I'm gonna go back to "Fringe" for a bit as well and see the first season out. Assuming I can brave the bad science. Actually, *this* is lastly - I totally forgot to do the update on IrishGaming.Com on Friday night and the wonderful paperfl0wers picked it up for me. I am fail-KShandr. Current Mood: tired (6 Comments |Comment on this)