…maybe. Actually, in many way, not habitable for us, in all likelihood.
Gilese 581g orbits a red dwarf 20 light years away and is tidally locked (or close to it),which would create sharp environmental zones ranging from 160 to -30F, depending on which side of the planet you were on. The terminator — the area of twilight on the planet — would be most livable…if you’re Eskimo or Norwegian, maybe, with a balmy -10 to 20 degree F climate. It’s three times the size of Earth, and if the composition is right, might not have devastatingly high gravity and should be able to hold an atmosphere.
Buy your ticket now!
The big test was tonight, running Battlestar Galactica. For this campaign, I’ve usually got several files open in WordPerfect on my computer — the night’s episode, the command staff NPC list, other NPC list, and the fleet vessels stats. About 400kb a file when moved over to .pdf for the big files.
The programs used were the same: Diceshaker, PDF Reader, and some light internet use at one point using Safari. The main concern for me was swapping between the adventure notes and NPC files — it worked fine and wasn’t particularly slow — one good point with PDF Reader: when you open files you’ve been using, it opens them in the last position in the manuscript you were, so I was always back to where I had been on the episode notes. Swapping over to Diceshaker was easy enough.
I had a slight issue with Diceshaker in that I had to set up a pair (in case a character/NPC had two of the same dice to roll) of each die that might be used for Cortex (d2-d12) and roll each pair separately to get the results (i.e. I need, say a d8+d6 for the character, so I roll the 2d6 and take the first, then roll the 2d8…) Problem? Not really. I’m just used to having the dice set to roll at one time on the laptop dice program.
No big battles, just a knockdock-dragout between a doped up deckhand (essentially on meth) and a couple of the players. Mirth and violence ensured with little trouble running it.
I’ve got to say, after a few times taking the tablet to the game table instead of the laptop…I like it. It’s small and light — a big consideration if you have to carry a bunch of books with you (and even better if you can just load those books onto the device!) or have limited carry space, as I do on my Triumph. The battery life is incredible, the screen is bright and easy to read (make sure you hide the screen behind a GM screen or something; players can often read the notes from several yards away.)
At this point I’m willing to give the iPad a qualified thumbs up as a GM/gamer tool.
I downloaded Blio — a new ebook reader/store that was promising a superior experience. While I wasn’t falling for the hyperbole, I did like that it was available for the Windows 7 platform. Problem: there’s no matching app for readers; you have to read your shiny ebooks on a computer.
There’s a lot of people that have computers and no reader — this program is for them. Unfortunately, much like iBooks, there’s not real selection.
I downloaded a couple of free books that caught my eye and was going to use Calibre to transfer them over to the iBooks program on the iPad. I hadn’t used Calibre for a few months, and was displeased to find the program couldn’t find my iPad with its new iteration. When I hit the online FAQ, I found that you had to shunt any ebooks set up through Calibre had to go through a proprietary reader on the iPad, rather than the very simple prior system. I understand that this is to better service other readers, but it’s a pain in the ass — I already have several reader programs and the last thing I need is another app to read a book (especially as it’s in the same bloody format iBooks uses.)
In other words, Calibre and Blio…a duo of FAIL. Honorable Failure Mention goes to Nook, Barnes and Noble’s reader for iPad. It crashes more than one of those old three-wheeled Reliants from the 1970s.
The Samsung flipphone I had was dying — crappy battery and was doing strange things like not receiving my voicemail and texts. Since I was about due to reup my Verizon account, I decided to try something outside of the flipphone (especially as Verizon and other carriers are trying to force peple away from simply voice & basic text devices.) The only one that really caught my eye after a bit of reading was the Pantech Jest — mostly because I want a free phone if I’m locked into a contract.
The Pantech is nicely sized and fits into a pocket well. It’s got a handsome colorful screen that looks nice, but washes out something fierce in the sunlight. It doesn’t help that the screen gets scratched up pretty quickly — or did just sitting in my mesh motorcycle jacket pocket for a few days. There’s a slide out QWERTY keyboard that works decently for texting (the main purpose of the phone, I suspect), but it can make dialing a number a bit of a hassle, and is a real pain in the butt when you have to deal with phone menus at your bank or what have you. Build quality is solid: my cat spilled milk all over the phone and knocked it off the counter, but a quick bit of paper towels and snapping the battery back in, the phone did well. (I did have to pull the battery a few days later to get the phone to accurately read the battery gauge.)
Voice quality is so-so; turned up to the maximum microphone and earpiece setting, people do have trouble hearing me if there’s a lot of ambient noise and vice-versa. Just using it for the occasional phone call and text, I get about a 4-5 day charge on the Jest; I traveled through Scotland with the phone charged and off, so that I would have comms on returning to the States, and after that time, it still have a 2 or 4 bar charge. (It had been on for two days, so it kept trying to find a network in the UK — more on that later.) Heavy phone and text use will drop your time, and internet services will most likely kill a charge in less than a day.
The phone does have the ability to web surf, be used as a navigation tool, but I don’t tend to use those features. You can play music on the Jest, and there’s a dedicated note button for the feature. I’ve only tried it, but with headphones the sound quality isn’t bad. It’s not replacing my Sansa clip-on MP3 player soon.
The phone buttons are locked when the device is closed, you have to slide the keyboard out to unlock and use the device. This also turns the phone on from sleep mode and can be done by accident while removing it from a pocket, or shifting it around in a backpack (hence why my phone was on in the UK when it ought not to have been.) The control mechanism is a circular pressure or optical sensitive OK button. It works well sometimes, and other times make you want to dash the phone off of the nearest hard object. Even changing the sensitivity settings, I’ve had a devil of a time getting it to function well.
As a free phone, it’s a great little device. Had I had to pay more than $50 for it, I’d have been a bit upset. It looks nice, functions adequately as a phone and better as a text device, has decent battery life, and a very good 2mpx camera (no flash.) It’s a gateway phone, designed to give enough functionality to the teen social networking crowd to lure them up into a smartphone.
I spent last night reading over the Smallville RPG from Margaret Wies and company. I bought it in electronic format, so I can’t speak to the quality of the physical product, but my experience with MWP has been that their books are top-notch in production value. The .pdf has a wealth of pics from the show, is full color for all the pages, and includes a full table of contents so that you can navigate around the book quickly. (Funnily, the font for the TOC is illegible on the iPad, but that might have been due to the program I’m reading it on.)
The first chapter is the usual “What is a Roleplaying Game?” “What is Smallville?” filler. The meat starts in “Basics”. Here you get the basic format of the game: the GM is a “Watchtower”, player characters are “Leads”, major NPC/villains are “Features”, and Extras are minor NPCs. The effect is to try and capture some of the television quality of the show. Central to character creation is the Relationships of the Leads and these other elements. The book has a series of examples to show how the players and GM get together to craft an intricate web of tensions between the leads and features. It’s a great idea for mapping out a TV series, or a novel…it’s a bit daunting to new players, I suspect. Hell…I’ve been gaming 30+ years and I think it’s overly complex.
In essence, as you read through the character creation and basic system rules, they aren’t modeling a superhero game…it’s rules for a soap opera. I get the sense it does this quite well, but it is a shambles if you were looking to cook up a few characters easily and jump right into a game — one of the long-time strengths of Cortex.
The system is sharply different from Cortex — the engine for the other MWP works. Instead of the usual attributes for strength, intellect, etc. you have DRIVES — motivations that your character has attachments to , be they Power or Truth or Duty. These have a die rating from d4 to d12, in keeping with Cortex (d2s are gone.) you have ASSETS which are broken up into Distinctions — things that make your character unique like “Big Heart” or “Martial Artist”, and Abilities — in this case mostly superpowers. Abilities have a descriptor (Blast could be a heat beam from your eyes, or an electric shock from your hand…) and some kind of limitation where it won’t work (X-Ray vision and lead, for example.) You have RESOURCES — Extras (minor NPCs) and Locations. You don’t have Life Points (Hit Points for the D&D fans out there.) — you have STRESSES. Once again, the point is to emulate the various effects of the relationships. These tensions are rated in dice as you play and those dice can work against you in play. Stresses include Angry, Afraid, Exhausted, Injured, or Insecure…at first glance I really like this take on damage. The more I think about it, it could be a very good alternative damage system for Cortex, if it were done right.
Most of the rolling you’ll do in Smallville are contested feats: you’re rolling a combination of Drives, Assets, Abilities, or what have you vs. the most applicable of the NPCs or PCs you are trying to hit, convince, interrogate, whatever. the drives explain why you are doing something, your relationship die might add if it’s your friend in trouble, etc. You take the two highest results from the dice rolled and compare it to those of the other person. A failure can impart Stress on the loser, which can be used against them if the contests continue. It’s pretty simple and elegant…it’s not Cortex.
Speaking of character creation…it’s a nightmare. It might be easier if you are putting together characters together and spending an evening or two mapping out the campaign. There’s a series of charts using basic background archetypes and events to craft the character’s various (and I think too many) ratings in things. Relationships are mapped out at each stage. It means building a test character to see if you can do it while reading the book…not easy. I tried to build Wonder Woman, just to see if I could; she’s got tons of powers, etc. so I wanted to see if I could pull it off. I gave up halfway through. Without setting up the relationship web, it just doesn’t work.
Once again, if you want to go heavily collaborative and spend a ton of time spitballing character ideas and relationships…this could be oodles of fun. I’m not in that category. That said, there is a framework of a damned good game system here that is loose enough to handle superheroes — one of the more annoying genres for roleplaying as it tends to lead to very heavy bookkeeping for character building (Champions or GURPS.) The chart, the massive array of Drives, Abilities, Distinctions, Assets, Locations, Extras, Relationships…I think it’s overly complicated, and while that might give you a good framework for soap opera, it’s a pain in the @$$ for putting together a bunch of characters and getting into play quickly.
I will admit that some of the issues with the character creation might have come from using an electronic version of the book — lipping around to find explanations and examples I needed was annoying and often I would lose track of what i was looking for Wait…was that a Distinction? An ability? Oooo…Castle‘s on TV…
There is however, a wealth of good material for how to craft sotries, a campaign (or series), and how to handle interpersonal relationships in a game. It’s a fantastic GM resource for the new player, if you’re not using the system — lots of ideas that would be applicable to planning a game, how to set up scenes, how to maintain tension, etc…all stuff that can be learned from watching TV or movies. (Or searching this site for my Setting the Scene posts.)
There’s also a chapter on managing online gaming, which is no surprise as there’s a healthy PbP community on the Cortex Game website, and once again — it’s a fantastic resource for that. But as a playable game, I’m a bit dubious…and it makes me worry about what we’re going to see in Cortex Plus (the generic rules set that’s going to bolt rules from Smallville and Leverage onto the older set.)
Despite the wealth of examples and charts, the game is overly complex, in my opinion, and while I suspect it will do the job if your group wants to experience what its like to be in a series writers’ room, I don’t know how fun it would be. There are elements that could be bolted onto your Cortex game, with some work, but overall the main utility of this book is as a gamemaster advice book.
Cost was $19.99 at drivethrurpg.net, the physical book is $40. This is the first MWP product I can say I don’t feel I got my money’s worth.
The Black Campbell 