Where Worlds Collide

I paid a visit to my local model emporium, Waltons of Altrincham, this afternoon, and something was loitering in the display cabinet with intent to ambush my credit card. It’s Minitrix’s newly released Swiss Am840.

This is the only main line diesel in my fleet (the other is a tiny shunting tractor from Arnold). With the Swiss railway network 100% electrified, SBB has few diesels, and they’re not used for passenger or heavy freight work. It’s what Americans would call a ‘road switcher’, used for heavy shunting, local freights, and works trains.

The model has to be the best N gauge loco I’ve yet seen. Not only is the detail and paint finish superb, but the mechanism puts Kato to shame. It’s almost totally silent, and slows to a crawl even using my ancient Hammatt and Morgan “Duette” controller.

I wonder how long it will be before we see mass-market British outline N gauge models to this sort of standard?

Game WISH 95 talks morality:

How many colors do you like in your gaming? Do you prefer four-color games? Or should game morality be black and white or shades of grey, and if the latter, how many? Are “evil” characters acceptable? Does your preference depend on genre? Do your preferences affect the genres you like?

I’m going to talk about ‘Black and White’ versus ‘Shades of Grey’, simply because I don’t know what’s meant by ‘Four Colour Morality’ (I’m just not into the Superhero genre at all, either in comics or in gaming; I find too many of the tropes too ridiculous)

I live a strong sense of morality in games, but I strongly believe that it should come from the characters’ own motivations, not something hardwired into the setting.

I strongly dislike the idea, prevalent in some juvenile forms of hack-and-slash games, of crudely black and white settings, where one side is defined as good, and the other is defined as irredeemably evil, so that they can be slaughtered without mercy. To me, that’s not really morality at all, that’s complete amorality. There is no difference whatsoever between the black hats and the white hats when it comes down to the way they actually act. Evil orcs slaughter innocent elf children, so the elves are entitled to do the same back to the orcs. Such racial genocide has no place in any game I care to play in. Sadly, the mindset is all too common in the real world, but that’s another subject for another post.

I prefer ’shades of grey’ games where players are occasionally forced to make difficult moral choices. It can still be a ‘good vs evil’ setting; anything from a group of angels in In Nomine to a band of allied soldiers fighting in World War two. The moral conflict can come from decisions on just how far the end justifies the means. Is it ever justified to harm innocents to prevent a greater evil? Even ‘PCs as monsters’ games can have some morality; the one and only time I’ve player Vampire all the PCs decided not to drain the mortals we’d just defeated, but only drink enough blood not to cause lasting harm.

My own campaign setting, Kalyr, is a world with multiple conflicts, with one or two pretty evil groups, but no group that’s unambiguously good. It’s occurred to me that the most recent one-shot convention scenario I’ve run could, with a few minor adjustments, be run from the other side. It featured a clash between the Kandar technology guild and a bunch of human revolutionaries. The difference between them is no more than the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter.

As for ‘Evil PCs’ games, I haven’t really played much in that vein. The only one I can think of was a demonic In Nomine game at GenCon UK back in 2000. But that game was played strictly for laughs, culminating in a gunfight with Tony Blair’s bodyguards at a village fete in Devon. A complete contrast to the intense morality play of the last Angelic In Nomime game I played, a couple of Stabcons ago.

To sum up, black-and-white, bad; shades of grey, good. Because that’s the way the real world is.

BÖC are probably my favourite US band. Their multi-layered sound combined with high wierdness lyrics worthy of Ken Hite makes them a cut above most other hard rock bands from their era. In their 70s peak all five members of the band were songwriters, and most of them also sang, which gave them a hugely varied sound. While they could rock hard, I felt they were always more than just a heavy metal band; even if some diehard metalheads disliked some of their lighter songs. Buck Dharma in particular had (and still has) a knack for catchy pop songs with a darker, more sinister edge to them; their big hit (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, perhaps the only song of many people know, is just one of many.I’d never heard of this band until a friend at university, Mark Huggett, played me the live version of “Astronomy” from the album “Some Enchanted Evening”. That song, with it’s incredible extended solo at the end, put that album straight to the top of my ‘must buy as soon as I can scrape together enough pennies’ list. Not long after than, their next studio album, “Cultasaurus Erectus” appeared in the shops. Over the next few years I gradually accumulated all of their back catalogue, as well as buying each new album as it came out. I’ve even got the “Bad Channels” soundtrack, which has just two actual BÖC songs on it, since the rest is filled with cheese from several forgotten (and deservedly so!) late 80s hair metal acts.

Since they didn’t tour Britain that often, I didn’t get to see them live until 1988, when they were promoting “Imaginos”. It was well worth the wait, and still sticks in my memory as one of the best gigs I’ve attended. It was also the only time (as far as I know) that they ever played any material from Imaginos live.

They rather faded from sight in the early 90s, and I assumed the band had split. But no, although they didn’t release any albums for something like ten years (apart from that Bad Channels soundtrack), they continued touring the US, even if they were now playing clubs rather than enormodomes. In the late nineties they started releasing albums again, and came back to Europe. I’ve seen them three more times live, a disappointing show in London plagued by equipment problems, a much better show a couple of years later at the same venue, and a superb show in Manchester last year. Each time, the setlist was quite different, a testament to the strength of their extensive back catalogue.

As for that back catalogue, all their albums are good. Their best, in the opinion not only of me, but of most other fans, is their third, Secret Treaties. It’s one of those classic albums where every single song is outstanding, without any filler whatsoever. Other favourites are Agents of Fortune (which has their Big Hit Single), or their dark and mysterious debut. If by some strange quirk of fate you’ve never heard any of their albums, Secret Treaties is a very good place to start. Alternatively, of the many, many compilations of their work, the most complete is the double album “Workshop of the Telescopes”, which has almost all their standards, and manages to pick the standout tracks from their uneven late 80s albums.

Long live the Umlaut!

A big PBeM post this time, so big that I’ve had to split it into three when it came to updating the archives. The Funeral of Jaldaric covers the events of the evening, while To the City! covers the journey the next morning. I’ve doing this as a travelogue, since the players posting the most are playing characters warped in from Earth, who know next to nothing of Kalyr.

It’s interesting how its making me consider aspects of the economy and technology of my fictional world that I hadn’t previously paid much attention.

There is turmoil awaiting them in the city, as you can see in Tanala’s Nemesis.

I get a namecheck from Electric Nose, who’s talking DCCs and Ae8/8s. Magnificent beasts. It’s a pity I didn’t take more photos of them when they were in general service.

By the time of my most recent visit to Switzerland, only a single survivor was still working, on spoil trains for the Lötchberg base tunnel.

They will long continue to run in model form, by Roco in HO, and by Kato in N.

OMS: Marillion - Afraid of Sunlight

I meant to link to this yesterday. Making Light has written a piece on the events of Abu Ghraib that says it far better than I ever could.

I’ve taken down my flags and put them away until after the war is over. I love my flag and my country as much as ever, but I’m mourning actions that have been committed by our troops, under our banner.

This war against Al Queda (and just what did Saddam have to do with Osama?) is as much a war of memes, of values, as it is a war of shooting and blowing things up. The propaganda war is at least as important as the shooting war, and the real battleground is the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims and Arabs. If American (and sadly, British) troops are going to behave badly and commit these sorts of atrocities, they we’re simply not going to win.

The May 2004 edition of Dreamscribe is now online. Of particular interest is Neil “Shark” Marsden’s account of one of those rare things, a multi-year online game that ran to a conclusion, Hail the King.

Just to show I have been doing some railway modelling this weekend, I’ve been working on buildings for the Wominseebahn. I’ve now completed the Kibri Schönried station building kit, which will be Wominsee station, replacing the inappropriate German model I’d been using. Although not an authentic BLS model, the prototype being a station on the metre-gauge Montreux Oberland Bahn, it looks the part, and is at least from the same region of the country. I’m now about 75% of the way though the first of two Kibri chalet style houses, both based on prototypes from the village of Lenk, also in the Bernese Oberland.

The sole rolling stock work I’ve done is to attach the missing buffer from the Kato Re6/6 I’d purchased at the Derby show, a job taking a whole 15 seconds. (It actually took longer to phone MG Sharp to ask them to send me a buffer than it took me to fit it)

This week’s Game WISH is about Obnoxious Characters

How do you handle an obnoxious character who has habits that annoy other PCs? What do you do as a fellow player/GM? What has worked and not worked for you?

Obnoxious characters are a different issue from obnoxious players, although the two can be related. When it comes to obnoxious players, the worst case I’ve had to deal with was the time I had to expel a player from an online game for making unprovoked random attacks on other PCs. But that’s more an immature “Player Killer” type of player than an issue about the character; there was nothing indicating “psychopathic killer” on her character sheet. But I digress; that’s not really the question.

I don’t have much experience of dealing with obnoxious characters from ‘good’ players as a GM. My definition of a good player is one who doesn’t disrupt the game in a way that spoils things for other players. The ones that have given me problems as a GM in the past haven’t so much been those who are rude and insulting to other PCs, but the ones who’s background, goals and motivations just don’t mesh with any of the other PCs in the game. They have often ended up wandering off on their own in what effectively becomes a solo game. This increases my workload, since the ‘main game’ needs a critical mass of PCs to work, and any independent ’solo’ PC doesn’t form part of that critical mass.

When it comes to rude and insulting characters, I find I really enjoy playing them as NPCs when I GM. I’m not sure what that says about me. A favourite example in my online game was a sarcastic racist kandar NPC called Dhymerdh, who I had endlessly taunting a group of human PCs about how useless he thought humans were; I even tempted the powerful psychokinetic by having him sit on the windowsill of an open second story window while delivering these tirades. She resisted the temptation to defenestrate him, but she did move his chair just before he sat down.

Going back to the original subject, some conflict between PCs can give rise to good roleplaying. After all, it’s a common trope in fiction to throw incompatible character types together and force them cooperate. For instance, one of the pre-generated PCs I’ve created for a GURPS convention scenario has the disadvantages Bully and Callous. One of the others (the party’s combat specialist) has Pacifism: Cannot Harm Innocents; this is a recipe for conflict within the party, something the team leader (a third PC) will have to resolve.

To sum up, the definition of what makes an obnoxious PC is very subjective; I find a disruptive PC to be a very bad thing, but obnoxious is not the same thing as disruptive

1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don’t name the band, nor the album-title.

The way that the willow bows over the stream
Like a mourner crying for their loved one
Reminds me of last fall
When on one knee, I pledged myself to you

(From Cold Spring Shops)