(the J is for)

It's no secret that I am a gamer. I'd rank role playing games as my number 1 favouritist genre and then strategy as a close 2nd. I've been playing RP games for years, focusing mainly on the d20 and Tristat systems. Both these systems are great and offer something different to the RP experience (i.e. d20 is class based and Tristat not). Best of all, both of these systems offer there core rules for free! Wow! Free! Great! I love free stuff. (Links @ my del.icio.us)

Now, I've played Vampire before. I thought that the system was fun and very good at conveying horror. Since I wanna run Cthulu-based horror games, I thought that I'd try and track down the core rules. Wizards of the Coast, the biggest players in RP and owners of d20, offer their core rules for free in rtf format. It's not pretty, but it's all you need. Try before you buy the expensive books. In fact, WotC offer a certain percentage of all their books for free. Whitewolf (creators of Vampire (and the World of Darkness)) do not. Well, I would have left things at that, but as fate would have it, I would soon discover that for about 3 weeks last year, Whitewolf was giving their core rulebook away as a free pdf download. Wow! Great! If I was looking for it last year. If you want to download it now, it's gonna cost you $9.99. Wow! That sucks.

Now I'm pretty good at 'finding' things on the net and it didn't take long to find somebody sharing their copy of White Wolf's core book - for free. Would it be morally wrong of me to download it?

We've been following paths our whole lives. Down this road and that street. Our means of mobility is so invasive. Our city infrastructures, our settlement patterns, our lives, our everything is dictated by how we move. How much time and space is being dedicated to mobility and thus wasted? We need to learn how to move differently. I'm not talking about teleportation and event horizons in every American's home. What we need is something more radical, so different, so beyond anything we can even imagine imagining. Wouldn't that be cool? And I bet that the trees would be happier too.

So I play Dungeons and Dragons (among other role playing games). I enjoy GMing (Game Master = Grand Pooba). I was recently running a Planescapish-hopping-around-the-multiverse campaign. I thought it was pretty cool game, as I got to use a lot of my old material from years back (cos the multiverse is infinite and quantum says I can rehash old plot hooks) and thus play the nostalgia card on the people I've been gaming with for these many years. I believed that my players enjoyed playing (I hope). Then it happened: a fight over Zombies! So the party broke up. Normally, that shouldn't be much of a biggie, but I had already planned the next two sessions based on the idea that the party wouldn't change. I just didn't feel like replanning and reworking the sessions and so I just put off running the next session, for near a month now. Very sad. I hate it when real-world outside crap meddles in my make-believe worlds. Bah.

Anyway, I've recently started reading some and playing some more Lovecraftian-styled stuff. And now I feel like running some Call of Cthulu. I'm so glad that I kept my abnormal psychology books.

Are you familiar with the terms 'open source' and 'open access'? Most academics and/or techies and/or geeks should have at least heard of these terms or made use of open source software (Example: Firefox) or open access works (Example: Wikipedia). In case you haven't noticed, there's currently a big drive towards open source and access. Herein lies one of the problems I have with Stellenbosch University. The university must be spending tonnes of cash annually on subscription and licensing fees, yet there are often better and free alternatives available. Why spend more when you don't need to?

Back, but not with much to say.

Lexi and I were watching some 80's music videos (because the 80's had cool music and synthesizers and piano-key ties) when a Whitney (bleh - not my type of cool 80's music) song came on. Whitney was standing on a small stage, with a mic, on a stand, in front of her. Her hand movements along the mic and its stand, the camera angle of the shots of her mouth near enveloping the mic were rather suggestive, but more trashy than sexy. Then, in a bout of feminism, Lexi proclaimed that the mic was a phallic symbol. Correct! It was. But then, I thought, surely it was not purposely designed to look like a penis. Ergonomics probably came first. Then what about the pen, the vibrating toothbrush (it exists), the hammer and any tool with a handle? Ergonomic design or Illuminati paternal oppression via subconscious reinforcement of phallic domination? It seemed that our species was designed to handle phallic symbols.

It's no longer about educating the uneducated. It's no longer about teaching the illiterate to read. It's no longer about empowering the powerless. It's no longer about freeing the oppressed. It's no longer about freeing the oppressors.

It's about freeing uncommon sense. No longer can it be called common as too many of us lack it. How can we get uncommon sense across to the stupid? You, my neighbour, are stupid.

The X-Com series of games are among my favourite games of all time, especially the first in the series, the 1994 classic UFO Defense. I'm sure there are many geeks out there that can still remember how cool this game was while they were still in their pre-chrysalis geekling phase of maturation. Those geeks would probably be happy to know that there's an open source project aiming to breathe new life into the X-Com styled games. The project, entitled UFO Alien Invasion, makes use of a modified Quake 2 engine and already looks great (despite only being in the beta stage of development).

Thanks to Reenen for the info. Can't wait to dish out some more turn-based alien death.