Sunday’s last game was John’s Fate of Ringworld. There was a pretty brief introduction to the setting — not much needed, because we were all at least mostly familiar with Niven’s Ringworld — then character generation. John had added two … Continue reading
Tag Archives: SF
Saturday night, I had somehow managed to get tickets for two two-hour blocks of Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator in a row. As I’ve mentioned before, I find this game to be pretty revolutionary — it’s equal parts LARP, LAN game, … Continue reading
I was just reading over my notes about time travel and RPGs. I mentioned towards the end that a game where players could go back and change the events that had happened would probably require some sort of publicly-visible chronology, … Continue reading
This is, I think, the Dollar Store Dungeons purchase I’m least certain to use in a game, but so cool I couldn’t pass it up: Four die-cast vehicles: a helicopter, a patrol boat, a van and an APC. Not especially … Continue reading
Check out Space Engine. It’s a free (but not open source) program that allows you to fly to and explore a vast array of real and procedurally-generated places in the universe. It’s Windows-native, but seems to run quite happily in … Continue reading
My friend John is doing a cross-blog community project called From the Zones. Folks are describing weird places, things and notions set in the universe(s) of the novel Roadside Picnic and the movie Stalker. Here’s a contribution from me: a … Continue reading
Someone on Metafilter recently linked to a Twitter account called Hard Sci-Fi Movies. SF movie plots + slightly harder science – huge coincidences and plot conveniences = hilarity. The Metafilter thread is just as much fun, if I do say … Continue reading
Last time, I mentioned the two poles of time travel theory: one, that the past is inelastic, and any change you make will always find a way to reset itself somehow; and two, that any change you make will have … Continue reading
One of my favorite time travel stories — no, strike that, my favorite time travel story — is “Vincent Van Gogh”, by Sever Gansovsky. It postulates a future year (1996, a couple decades away when the story was written) where … Continue reading
If you’ve seen Pacific Rim or its advertising, you’ve seen the work of Wayne Barlowe. He’s done concept design work for lots of other movies, shows and games, and it’s very distinctive. If you know his work, you might even … Continue reading