Another Round of Links

Since its Monday, I figured I provide another round to various interesting things on web. Hopefully, later today I'll get around to posting a session overview of my first Serenity session.

10 under-rated Classic Who Stories - what the title says. A neat read.

Doctor Who Series 5 Spoiler - links to a bunch of photo stills although this page does provide the major spoiler. If true, Series 5 will have a much different tone than I thought. Hint: the initials R.S.

Matt Smith in Doctor Who Costume - definately not the goth look I thought it was going to be. Like the nice old/young man contrast.

The Comic Book Database - describes itself.

The last three posts of RPGBlog II's Palladium Week Coverage:
Robotech - as mentioned by Jason Marker whose contributing to practically the entire line.
Bill Coffin: Palladium Alumnus
A Look Back

Serenity: Give, or Don't Give, Me Four Secrets

The next Serenity session, this Tuesday, has one major bottleneck. Our crew will have a chance to bond by sharing an event. They get be interrogated together. Here's where we get to the bottleneck. You see the interrogator is not just interrogating them for basic information. Rather, he wants information. Secrets that is. Four of them to be precise. These four secrets should be valuable to the PC. Both valuable and secretive, ie not easily given up, to the PC and interrogator alike.

Normally I wouldn't broadcast this ahead of time. Its a matter of time. I don't want too much session time consumed by players coming up with pertinent secrets of their PC's. So at the beginning of the session, I plan on having the players come up with four questions that there PCs would not easily part with the answers to. For those of my players who read this blog, consider this an advance spoiler.

Castle is Now on Hulu

The ABC show Castle is now available on Hulu. Why is this pertinent to this blog? Very, very tangentially. Nathan Fillion who starred in Firefly/Serenity currently stars in Castle. So for those curious where the actor who play Captain Malcolm Reynolds is up to, here is one of his current roles. While I have seen a couple episodes, I didn't see all of them. Since its now on Hulu, for however long that may be, I have chance to watch the entire show.

Serenity: A House Rule or Two

Since my Serenity game session are roughly three hours long and consists of Greenhorn characters going through Veteran level adventures, I have decided to make a house rule. Instead of excess plot points converting to advancement points at the end of a session, conversion occurs at the end of the adventure. That way the players will have access to more plot points for such challenging adventures.

On a related note, character advancement occurs at the end of the module. Unless it situations warrant, it doesn't make much narrative sense for characters to all of sudden improve during a situation. The Serenity crew didn't advance during the course of a story. Not because of their skill level. Half the crew were awful at combat and had plenty of room to improve in that regard.

Furthermore, I am making a modification to the advancement rules. After the first two modules, two skill can be learned or improved instead of only one. That way the characters can improve a little bit faster.

Distractions

Been meaning to post more especially in regards to my Serenity game. Instead I keep getting distracted. Some are things I normally wouldn't comment on while others I have been meaning to comment on. So I figure I'd just list them as that would be cathartic.

Here they are:
Politics, the economy, and workplace drama - don't want to discuss why on this blog. Suffice it to say I haven't been in the mood to post Serenity stuff all week. Especially today...

The Mishler ramblings on the industry - This occupied a night or two of my time. Spent last night read all three threads on ENWorld. Meant to comment but I have decided against it as it would pointless now.

There's another negative reason, or two actually, why I haven't been in the mood to post more; but I'm not going to mention them here.

Other more blog related reasons:
1) I'm reading X-page previews of comics online again. I used to check out the preview pages of the next week's comics all the time. Stopped doing that for a couple years. Only recently have I started reading comics previews on Newsarama. So yeah I have been reading some comics, albeit only five or six pages. Its been reinvigorating.

2) Been working on storing my comics as well as figure out what trimming my pull list. Hit a bottleneck on the former. That has prompted me to focus on what to cut from my comics pull list. I admit that its funny that not keeping up with everything that I purchase doesn't discourage me but storage issues does. That may or may not lead to future post.

3) Worked and turned in my July-September Previews order at my LCS. Took a lot of time. Plus I had to resist the urge to add a lot of stuff. May actually comment on the comics/books I decided not to pre-order.

4) The 50% off Criterion Collection at Barnes and Noble has drawn a lot of attention. Fellini's 8 and half served as a major influence on LARP I ran several years ago and thus has been an item I have wanted for awhile now. Ditto Seven Samurai - although that didn't influence any game I ran, directly anyway. Because its a major influence of Star Wars, Hidden Fortress has been on my radar. Only now have I found a copy available. While browsing the sale, other Criterion Collection movies have grabbed my attention. Sigh...

First 3 Days of RPG Blog II Palladium Coverage

In celebration of both another Tuesday Night Rifts session and more Palladium content on the blogosphere, I figured I'd provide links to the first three days worth of Palladium coverage on RPG Blog II. Haven't read them yet. When I do I may provide my comments.

Mega-Interview with Kevin Siembieda - a recent, as in July-ish, interview with the main man at Palladium.

Being a Palladium Freelancer - Interview with Jason Richards - contains a nice summation of Chaos Earth among other things.

Into the Fire: Tips for Running Rifts - title says it all. I do have an opinion on some of the tips...

Links to some neat blog posts

Another light post. I figured I'd provide some links to some blog posts I liked on the blogsphere.

Luck a neat OSRIC/1E/other earlier D&D simulacra house rule from Mike Mearls - Does I nice job of spicing up what would otherwise be an "aw shucks" moment. Also, not unbalancing.

A quick crit rule - an elegantly simple rule from RPG Blog II. Definately beats rolling on random tables.

Brave Halfling Publishing abandons OSR - read this on Beyond the Black Gate Blog. Find it interesting the BHP is leaving the Old School Rennaissance publishing. Although I can understand why given the reasons provided...

The Problem with Weapon Proficiencies - a well-written arguement against weapon proficiencies courtesy of Beyond the Black Gate.

Herculoids converted to AD&D stats - I'm always a sucker for pop culture character adaptations to game rules. For fans of the Herculoids here's a link to link. Haven't actually gone to the specific link yet...

Hackmaster Basic is out...

Well, Hackmaster Basic is available. Just trying to figure out how and when I want to acquire a copy. Do I order a copy through my LGS or through Kenzer? Wait until August or order it now?

Trying to resist spending too much time on Kenzer boards. After all, I have a Serenity game to prepare for. That and I want to watch Transformers 2 tonight...

IN: ScienceDaily July 4th links

As I write this, its technically July 5th. However, I decided to post links to some interesting articles on ScienceDaily. A light post for now what with July 4th celebrations...

Optical transistor made from a single molecule - faster computers with less heat generated... eventually. According to this article, optical transistors are becoming much closer to reality.

New Treatment for Receding Gums - a potential alternative to taking grafts from the roof of one's mouth.

People Sometimes Seek Truth, prefer like-minded views - even though seemingly obvious, I think everyone should read this article.

More fuel for the embryonic stem cell debate - molecular differences between embryonic stem cells and reprogrammed skin cells

Light sensitive compounds that aid in cancer therapy

Material derived from paper sludge that can replace plastics - I am very intrigued by this. Wonder if more details will be released?

Another Rifts Blog

I want to thank Outsyder Gaming for pointing out another Rifts related blog. Like author of said blog, I probably wouldn't read said blog since I'm only monolingual. However, the Outsyder Gaming blog pointed out that there's a translate it feature at the top of the blog. Again, like said author, I wasn't aware of such a feature. Now I am able to read that blog.

At last, here is another Palladium, albeit Rifts, related blog. In english, its called Featherfall squad. I think this might be the link for the english translation...

Edit: as it turns out that link just takes you to Google translate. Here is the link: Escamot Featherfall

If you can't read the language like me just scroll to translate it feature. Guess there's no short cut for it.