I watched The Girl Who Lept Through Time a few nights ago. It is perhaps the only work by Madhouse that I like without reservation -- excepting, of course, films directed by Kon Satoshi, though even that doesn't always save 'em. Sure, it starts with a textbook cliché... assuming your textbook is Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, and the passage from ( Read more... )

I'm in love with Sign in Stranger's defining feature.

In Emily Care Boss's work in progress you play colonists who've volunteered to leave the Earth forever and live among utterly alien sentients on their bizarre worlds. The various worlds the colonists may choose from are composed Mad Libs-like, by filling in one detail at a time, folding the ( Read more... )

It seems I spoke too soon about the first claim in my last entry.

I was seduced by the siren song of In a Wicked Age and did not join Nick for Agon.  Wow - we had two tables of five players last night!

Anyway, one of the oracle entries I wrote was drawn -- "Upon being released from prison, an ex-yakuza hitman gets embroiled in a plot of love, ( Read more... )

Montsegur 1244 was a pleasure to play and much different from what I expected. The game tasks players to make sense of some of the 200 Cathars who chose to burn at the stake rather than renounce their faith and join the Roman Catholic Church. The mechanics are focused almost entirely on pacing: the game tells you when to stop playing vignettes ( Read more... )

Tonight, Justin O'Dell showed up at The Compleat Strategist, and the two of us played John Harper's two page RPG Ghost/Echo (pdf link) with a guy named Drew. The rest of the crew played Dogs in the Vineyard. I was really skeptical about running Ghost/Echo at first, but it turned out great. The document consists of a page of flavorful lists, a ( Read more... )

Thursday, I talked about gaming in a parking lot until a quarter to one. Immediately prior to that, I talked about gaming inside The Compleat Strategist. Before that, I played Paul Czege's My Life With Master for the first time. I actually looked through my financial records and confirmed that I bought the game in October of 2005, making it the ( Read more... )

I just won fourteen games of freecell. Let's move on to healthier things, shall we?

This entry was going to be titled "H. Rider Haggard? I hardly know her!" 'Cause I finished King Solomon's Mines almost a month. Though I didn't outline my plan last time I wrote one of these, it seems I'm doing the exact opposite of what I intended. See, I ( Read more... )

The Thursday Night crew helped playtest Brennan Taylor's How We Came to Live Here. It's a South-Western Native American myth kind of role-playing game that's not quite finished. Until it gets finished, you can download it for free. As you already know, I've enjoyed playing his game Mortal Coil, and I've got his crazy d20 space game Bulldogs! on ( Read more... )

Or: "The Entry Formerly Known as Part 2"

But first, election day shenanigans! I composed a half serious response to my friend Rob's LJ post on the election, but I've decided to post it here instead, in all of its out of context-ness and half-serious glory:What about the bond issue on parks? And how did I not remember that all of Fairfax City (or ( Read more... )

Last week, I ran a session of PDQ Sharp for the Thursday night crew, but I have a post in the works all about that. I will say that my one-shot would have stayed a one-shot and not the start of a campaign were it not for an inspired suggestion from Jeff H.

I think I'm done with Old Attic Comedy for the time being. I finished The Frogs and re- ( Read more... )