Outlander, Avatar and District 9

Okay, so I've sat down and watched all three of these films in the last few days. I've had my intense sci-fi head on recently as I'm working on new material so I was probably a bit more involved than usual.

Outlander was pretty stupid but it was good fun. The fact that the hero of the story was from outer space and he found himself in the age of Vikings made no impact on the story and it was a shame that not more was made of who he was or where he came from - that ruined it a bit for me. The whole backstory he tells towards the end was great, though, and could have been a movie of it's own. It was good, and the action scenes were great. Ron Perlman as a Viking nutjob - cinema gold.

Avatar was what I expected it to be. It was very involving and looked amazing - there were moments you forget the smurfs are digitally rendered and you really get involved with them and their culture. Truth be told, though, the story was hardly original - in fact, it was pretty dull - and the characters were a bit bland and predictable, especially the loud-'n-nasty military leader. It was a great film and I really enjoyed it. The action scenes were amazing and the world of Pandora was fantastic. I hope we get to visit it again soon.

District 9 was my favourite of the bunch. The mixture of documentary, fly-on-the-wall, security cameras, news footage and standard filmaking was a fantastic mix, and the story and characters were so well defined, especially the alien Christopher, that you felt part of the whole thing. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. If Moon hadn't blown me away so completely then this would have been my best movie of the last year.

Great films. I can recommend them all.

A book of mine

I've decided to re-release a book I wrote about tips for roleplayers a long, long time ago.

The Book Of Roleplaying Hints, Tips and Ideas was a collection of articles I had written for the hobby, work that had primarily been published on http://www.roleplayingtips.com/ and had also appeared in my old ODDS e-zine. I was pretty please with it and it didn't sell too badly when I first published it. It's available for print or download from Lulu now.

Post Apocalyptic amateur movie

I love me some Fallout, and I love me some post-apocalyptic craziness, and I love me some amateur movies. That's a win-win-win with this film, then!

It's a great little movie and I'm looking forward to seeing what else they come up with. Good job, guys.

Fantasy to Sci-Fi

I wonder just how easy it would be to convert a fantasy roleplaying game to a science fiction one?

I'm looking at running Traveller after my Dragon Warriors campaign finishes, but I was thinking - we've all got used to playing Dragon Warriors, so would it be possible to modify the system to suit a science fiction setting? Add rules for ranged weapons and starships, maybe even modify or add some new skills and change the aspects of the proffesions. The system is certainly simple enough to modify. I did something similar with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay so that I could run a WH40K and that turned out pretty good.

That's a good idea, that. A sci-fi Dragon Warriors... I'd have to give it a new name. 'Star Warriors' or something.

District 9 and Outlander

For sci-fi design and inspiration I picked up two dirt-cheap DVDs today - District 9, a film I've wanted to see for the better part of a year, and Outlander, the first half-hour of which I have seen and actually enjoyed.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Get outta my house!

I've been reading some RPG message boards and one of the most common occurences seems to be problem players and how to deal with them. A general theme seems to be the act of kicking the players from the game, which to me seems a bit strange.

In 26 years I've only ever had to seriously address a player for their behaviour once. It was a game of WFRP and he was desperate to interpret certain skills to benefit his character. After a while I simply said, 'That's not how it's going to be done in the game, so like it or lump it.' We never saw him again, but as far as I'm concerned I never kicked him out - I gave him a choice and a chance and he decided not to attend.

Still, if I had ditched him from the game I wouldn't have felt that guilty about it, especially since his behaviour was being disruptive outside the game as well as during it.

I guess, even after all these years, I still see roleplaying as 'just a game'. I love it, I enjoy doing it, but I'm not going to get bent out of shape over problem players or generate bad feelings. There is no problem bad enough that a quick adult conversation can't cure.

Unless the guy's psychotic, then you just kick the freak to the curb and move house.

Designing my Sci-Fi game

And that's 'Sci-Fi'. Not 'SyFy'. How ridiculous.

Anyway, now that 'Traveller' is going to be my next campaign after 'Dragon Warriors' finishes (and we're rapidly approaching the conclusion of that campaign), I'm starting to wonder what kind of game I want to run. Light, bright and intellectual like '2001: A Space Odyssey', down-to-earth and grungy like 'Silent Running' or 'Moon', or dark and dangerous like 'Alien' or 'Dead Space'?

I guess I'll design something generic and make my mind up closer to the campaign, but right now I'm thinking of something dark and dangerous, not so much for the horror but just the aesthetic.

Do any of you have any success with any other kind of sci-fi look and design? Feel free to leave me some suggestions in the comments.

What the fudge...? Traveller confuses me...

So, I've been doing some more reading regarding Marc Miller's 'Traveller' and the more I read the more I'm regretting buying 4th edition. Everything is virtually the same with regards to the system and game itself, but the task resolution is different. Where the Classic and new Mongoose editions used the 2D6 with skill and difficulty modifiers versus a target number of eight, 4th edition uses a set target number based on skill and attribute totals and the difficulty is decided by the number of dice you roll against that target number - the more difficult the more dice you roll, and the low rolls are better. That all sounds fine, yes?

Well, I was hoping to get closer to Classic Traveller, to be honest, the game my players know. I'm wondering if I should have just got the new Mongoose Traveller books so that I can stay in line with the material that's coming out now, and with the Classic players who have been running the game since day one.

Bummer. I just bought a virtually brand new copy of T4's 'First Survey' book, as well. I should have hung on to my old copies of MegaTraveller, at least that game was closer in line with Classic. I'll run some games, see how we get on. It'll all come out in the wash.

I was hoping to be a D6...

You are a d8: You are the true adventurer! Dragons rescued, princesses slayed, and all that business while O Fortuna plays in the background. Your social calender is crammed with heroic deeds, and you've personally saved the world from ultimate destruction at least twice. You are reliable, perhaps a bit predictable, but overall a shining example of what happens when courage meets determination.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Marc Miller's 'Traveller'

I was at Spirit Games in Burton today and I found Marc Miller's Traveller there for a whole seven quid.

I played Traveller a grand total of twice back in the 1980s. It was basically a Star Wars game - the West End Games D6 game was only a couple of years away so it would have been about 1985/1986. Anyway, it was utter rubbish. The GM was basically trying to emulate Star Wars but kept throwing in Star Trek technology, and the second game wasn't much better. I didn't run a decent hard sci-fi game until 2300AD came out and I couldn't get the players.

My Dragon Warriors campaign is approaching it's conclusion and we're looking at doing a bit of a sci-fi campaign next before Jason starts his Pathfinder games. I primarily got this version because of the Chris Foss art inside - brilliant, inspirational stuff. My wife recently bought me some old copies of Asimov's Foundation books and Chris Foss did the covers. I grew up with this guy and his imagery is what I want to capture in my games.

So this book was perfect for me, then. Great find.