Golden Anvil

Copying a meme started by Optiker, I poked around a little to see  what was the oldest thing I have still sitting around that wasn't just sitting in a box somewhere.

I think I've got five categories of such things.

1) Games (roleplaying and such mostly): I've got Car Wars stuff here that dates back to early highschool. Now technically, I haven't played it in a while, but I really want to. Doesn't that count for something? I also have some Lost Worlds stuff that dates back to highschool. I've played that more recently, but it's still been a while. I'm sure I've got a couple other games that date back to at least late highschool.

Well, tonight was the first time our gaming group has gotten together for about three or four weeks. Monday is our usual play night, and I intend on keeping everyone up to date with what goes on.

Right now our group consists of me, MrsKheldar, RaNae (our teenaged friend from church), and two guys and one gal from my work. We all meet at my workplace, and MrsKheldar usually brings food for everyone. We've been playing for something over two years now, usually once a week, although sporadic at times due to scheduling problems. We've been playing a supers game set during World War II time period.

Having just finished up our last adventure prior to Christmas, we decide it was time to put the old campaign to rest for now (who knows, perhaps we'll pick it up again sometime) and start into something new. So, we spent a portion of the night talking about what we wanted to play.

The other day I picked up Castle Crashers for MrsKheldar and I to play on the XBox together. Yes, I know I just bought a bunch of games recently because of Steam. However... it turns out that when we find a game that my wife wants to play with me, all my resistance to spending money just goes straight out the window!

I would like to get back in the habit of reviewing books as soon as I finish reading them. So, lacking a better topic, now is a good time to start. I will always do my best to avoid any real spoilers.

The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues by Harry Harrison

This is book 3 according to the chronological order of the 11 book Stainless Steel Rat series. This sci-fi series is a humor series whose main character (Jim) is a master thief with a heart of gold. In this particular book, Jim is blackmailed into leading a team down to a prison planet in order to retrieve an alien artifact which was accidentally lost during transport. The team will be going in under cover, disguised as a band who was sentenced to the planet.

Silverhair by Stephen Baxter

I'm a big fan of Stephen Baxter. I've got a lot of his books. He does however tend to have a couple very common themes in his books, and if you aren't fond of that general theme, then he could put you off. That theme usually involves the destruction of the human race (except for one member), and/or the evolution of the human species. He usually tells a pretty interesting story, but it's frequently very centered around the concept of evolution.

This particular book is told entirely from the perspective of a mammoth, apparently one of the last few remaining alive. Mammoths are intelligent and have a rich history stretching back millions of years. The story is about one mammoth who is forced to interact with humans, that dreaded species which has taken over all of the world.

Longtusk by Stephen Baxter

Rather than continue where the first book left off, this book jumps back some huge amount of time and covers the life of the great mammoth hero, Longtusk. Each of the three parts begins with a myth about Longtusk as told by the main character in the first book. The book then goes on to tell the story, and you find that it's the real story from which the myth grew. This is a nice little touch to help draw the two time periods together.

Well, the plan tonight was to play Og. But... two of our four players revealed to me that they weren't going to make it (and seemed surprised that I wasn't aware of that fact), so we decided to postpone Og until next week.

Instead, we played another game of Power Grid. It would have been four of us, but another guy at work joined in so we had five. It was pretty fun, although I think I'm pretty much played out on that game for now. Not that it's a bad game. In fact a number of people at work have been playing it fanatically for the last month or so. I just don't feel a big urge to play again.

Anyway, so the whole roleplaying preparation bit is pushed back another week. (Well, except for the forum game, but that's a little more flexible on starting date.) Guess that means I've got another week to goof off before I have to get cracking!

Enough for now. It's late, and I need to head to bed.

I promised a review of Arkham Horror, so I'd better get to it. Before I get sidetracked and forget.

Arkham Horror is a cooperative game for anywhere from 1 to 8 players. The game is set in the 1920s, and the general theme and concept is that some vast alien monstrosity is trying to force it's way into our world. Once here, it will destroy everything. Each player has a character who is trying to prevent this unfortunate event.

I receive a monthly roleplaying magazine called Pyramid released as PDF by Steve Jackson games, the ones who publish my roleplaying game of choice (GURPS). They articles are usually not dependant on any particular roleplaying system although they sometimes include stats appropriate for GURPS. This month's issue was themed around post-apocalyptic adventuring. You know, after the nuclear bomb kind of stuff, or zombie survival. That kind of thing.

In general, it was a fairly good issue, but there was one article that just got my creative juices flowing. The article present a number of equations that would be useful in doing statistical modeling of populations. It talked about birth and death rates, reproductive rates, age distributions, growth limits, short and long term effects of things like wars, etc. It also provided links to online resources for furthering your own research.