23 October, 2013

Quick Review: OS X Mavericks; UPDATE: Better Battery Life

Posted by blackcampbell under Computers, Technology | Tags: |
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If you want the usual “look how great Mavericks is on the latest hardware!” kind of review, go to the big blog sites. I’m reviewing Mavericks or OS 10.9 on the kind of machine many users would — an older laptop, in this case a late 2010 13″ MacBook Air with 128gb SSD and 4gb RAM. It’s the kind of machine people might have rushed out to buy because it was the thinnest, lightest, and hippest laptop of the time. My wife bought me one because I liked my iPad so much, and I travel by motorcycle a lot, requiring a lightweight and small computer.

I heard OS X Mavericks was going to be free (at least yesterday) for download, so I backed up my data to an external drive and went for it. The download took 32 minutes on Comcast’s “Blast” internet (I’m pulling about 57-59Mb/s) for slightly more than 5gb. It took another 25 minutes for the OS to load and come up. Sign up is quick, but Mavericks forces you to create a new user profile for the computer — this caused some trouble as the new profile had all the admin privileges, so when I deleted it, I had to call Apple and have them help to repair my rights on the machine, as I could access the external drive. Your old profile will still be there, complete with all your files, settings, etc.

Now for the performance: Battery life is supposed to be much improved with the new OS. I did a couple of battery tests over the last day. The first showed a sharply reduced battery life, but I finally bothered to check and found it had been doing a 64gb backup through the first test, and was burning up the airwaves with the wifi transmitter. Even then, I got about 4 hours on the charge with moderate use. Today, I fired it up and did a usual work morning. Here’s how it looked.

Over two hours, with the screen at 40% brightness, bluetooth off,  wifi up and running a few tabs on Chrome, six Pages files open, mail up and running, the calculator, and notes open, Caffeine, a temp monitor and Sophos running in the background, I averaged about 4 minutes/1% of battery power, or a battery life of roughly seven hours. This is right about where the old Air was running under a similar load. The battery usage doubles if you have Flash intensive sites or iTunes streaming a movie, which is about what I was seeing with Mountain Lion.

So, no — you won’t get better battery life on an older machine, but you won’t see a measurable drop, either.

Heat and the screaming fans of doom was a feature that Mountain Lion brought to my Air. During the first battery test with the backup running, the internet seeing mild use, I was running between 150-190F, about 50F higher than usual. I would only see temps like this when I was ripping a CD or DVD under Mountain Lion. I was worried this would be the normal operating temperature (not good, and not just for the loud fan action.) The next day, after a rest, the Air was running at about 80/80F on the processors. I opened email and Chrome running up to five tabs, some with Flash. The temperature peaked at 169/175F with Daily Caller and other Flash intensive sites up and running. It dropped to 124/133F after a few minutes, once the Flash-enabled sites were closed. With the load mentioned for the battery test, the temp spiked at 117/129F and sat at 109/109F most of the time. So, Mavericks seems to run cooler for most tasks than Mountain Lion — but under any load, the heat spikes faster and seems to hold longer.

The last big thing is the memory management. Allegedly, the new OS compresses RAM use and makes it seem like you have about 50% more RAM than you do. I don’t tend to buy into this and remember software compression for memory that was out for Windows and worked about as well as a sieve to stay dry in the rain. This is unscientific, and totally anecdotal, but yes — I’m seeing more speed out of the Air. Boot time seems slower, as does shutdown — I would usually see about 20 seconds to boot up and 30 to close down; Mavericks is about a third slower coming up, and about the same shutting down.

I just tested a few apps I use regularly to see what I would get. iPhoto is a pig on the best of days — it opened and was usable in 5 seconds and shut down in about the same time; this is about 3x faster than it was. iTunes is similarly terrible about booting up — it came up in 5 seconds, but took 15 to connect to the external drive and bring everything up. It was laggy for another 10 seconds while it connected to my iPad. This is a good 3-4x faster than it was. Acrobat is a bit slow, but came up to a graphics heavy book in Acrobat in five seconds and closed immediately. Pages opened to a graphics heavy file in 3 seconds and closed immediately; Keynote was the slowest of the iWork suite at 7 seconds for a 20 slide presentation, and 5 seconds to close. Word took 26 seconds to open to a blank file — way to go, Microsoft! Thinking this might be related to the program being used the first time, I closed it (it closed immediately), I opened to a file. Three seconds. Fast enough to be well within my comfort zone.

So is Mavericks faster? Depends on the program or application, but it is noticeably faster.

There’s a bunch of additions to the OS — a maps program like iOS7 (won’t use it.) and improved Messages integration (but it’s still not syncing with messages received by the iPad and iPhone.) The notification center is mostly untouched, as are the gestures. iBooks is included (a nice touch and one I will use.)

Is OS X 10.9 Mavericks worth it? Yes. Even on an older machine, it seems to improve performance, without any real loss of battery life (nor an improvement on the late 2010 Air.) It will make your machine run hotter, but it seems to come in spikes, or whenever you are running Flash or video. Heavy wifi use seems to be tied to the heat. There’s a couple of new features that you might notice and a few your most likely won’t.

UPDATE: I’ve had a few days to play with the new OS X and I’m now more happy than I had been. I had a night out working for four hours with documents and a few images — in four hours I was at 71% battery, about a third better than I’d usually get. Not content to have one good cycle, I pulled the plug this morning at 1212 hours and spent the first hour streaming music from my external media drive, and bluetoothing it to an iHome speaker, while working on the internet and playing with Pages 5 (DISAPPOINTED!!!) and at this time, it’s been a bit over six hours with steady internet usage and writing and I’m at 38%. That’s roughly 10 hours of use out of a 2010 Air, or about a 25-30% increase in power.

 

12 October, 2013

Quick Review: iOS7

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I got my iPhone 5 (no bloody C or S) for Virgin Mobile about a month ago, and it’s been a marvelous device. The iPhone seems to much better access the Sprint/Virgin network in Albuquerque much better than the old HTC or the dumbphone I had before that. Here’s the original review when it was still on iOS6, so we’ll concentrate on the move to iOS7 here. I turned to the iPhone because the user experience of the iPad 2 has been so good, that I figured it would be recreated on the small phone. I was not wrong. So how did the new iOS7 change the user experience?

For me, it was an excellent switch. There’s a ton of articles online about the technical aspects, the bugs and glitches, the various interface aspects of the software. You can Google them if that’s what you are looking for, but here’s my experience with iOS7: The new interface is cleaner and the “flat” design and new typeface makes it easier to see and use for my LASIK modified eyes. (I’m now mildly farsighted.) The new notification center can be accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen and works from the lock screen, so you can check the weather or any message notes — this makes it very easy to do quick checks of your calendar, etc. without having to punch in your password. (No fingerprint crap here.) The command center, or whatever they call it, swipes up from the bottom. You can set airplane mode or do not disturb from here, use the camera, or the camera flash as a flashlight (a feature I’ve used more than I expected), or adjust the sound or screen brightness without going through your passcode screen.

Once you’ve passcoded into the phone, it operates no differently from iOS6; easy, intuitive, and I saw no slow down in performance, nor issues with phone or wifi reception. Battery life did drop about 10-15% percent. I can get through two days of use with a bit of internet access, messaging, and the occasional phone call. I was able to cut about half of the new battery drain by killing the background app updates, the fancy parallax effects, and limiting the location services to the essential apps. (By the way, if the parallax stuff is giving you some kind of motion sickness, you’re way too damned sensitive; I couldn’t even notice it unless i really concentrated — hence why I turned it off.)

The integration of email/Twitter/Facebook/other app sharing across the platform makes it easy to do most things you might need. Siri works better than I thought it would when accessing functionality on the phone, but still isn’t much use as a search engine. The voice recognition for speech-to-text is quite good and can handle my strange Amero-Scottish accent without too much trouble.

Otherwise, there’s it’s much the same user experience — just cleaner and a bit better integrated than the last iteration of the OS.

Now, on the iPad 2, the experience is much improved. I know others might be having issues with the upgrade; I’m not. As with the iPhone, the new notifications and command centers are handy; and the interface is cleaner, easier to read, but here the functionality is much improved by the ability to still get out of an app to the “switcher” with a quick four-finger flick up. (I wish the iPhone incorporated this, as it would save the double tapping on the Home button and increase the life of the device.) Once in the switcher, you simply flick with a finger the app closed. It cuts down on the use of the home button on the iPad — you almost don’t need it. I’ve also seen not dramatic drop in performance of the device — none of the reported keyboard lag, no hanging apps or sudden app closures (although I do occasionally get one on the phone.) Even Real Racing 3, which is a resource hog of Texas boar proportions (and kinda sucks now that they’re trying to squeeze every last dime out of the player with their new freemium paradigm) runs well, with just a few jitters in the initial menu screens.

So, was the update worth it? Yes, even for an older iPad 2. (My wife also reports no issues on her iPad 3.)

Style: 5 out of 5 — the new look is modern, simple, and easier to use than iOS6. Substance: 4.5 out of 5 — the OS works as advertised and integrates a lot of the functions in ways that make it easy for the user to access. Siri still isn’t too impressive, and Maps is still slower than the DMV if you use a sat or hybrid view; stick to the straight map function and this isn’t an issue.

 

11 October, 2013

Palate Cleanser: Danger Zone

Posted by blackcampbell under Life Unconstructed, Television | Tags: , |
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11 October, 2013

Quick Review: Gravity

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Go see it. No spoilers in this

Alfonso Cuarón did a fantastic job with the movie, which must have required a staggering amount of scene blocking to mesh the CGI, lighting, and live action together. (Apparently, they had to design a large lightbox set to get the lighting correct.) The sound design is superb and uses a combination of silence, transmitted sound (you are hearing things as the characters would, transmitted through touch, and the use of musical queues (particularly heartbeat like percussion.)

There’s a few inaccuracies for the people that have to piss on everything they see — yes, the shuttle’s no longer flying; yes, the debris comes from an odd direction and shuttle activity and comms satellites are at different altitudes. If you’re thinking about that stuff, either go home or start watching the movie. You know, the part with the characters in it. I stop noticing any of this about 10 minutes in when the action starts. The pace is well done, with moments of near panic broken by interludes of character development.

The visuals are stunning and the 3D — which I abhor — was used properly, to create depth of field. It’s probably the most effective use of the technology since Avatar. There’s a moment when Bullock’s character, Dr. Stone, opined, “I hate space.” I had the exact opposite response — the beauty of the setting makes me want to go up even more.

Speaking of Bullock: The movie hinges on her performance. She’s the only one on screen for 90% of the movie, and she’s superb in the role. They didn’t pretty her up, and the character’s backstory is tragic without being too saccharine. The sense of hopelessness and loneliness she evokes was grand.

Style: 5 out of 5. Substance: 4 out of 5 — it’s a straight out action survival pic, but there’s a lot of nice touches that boost it from 3 to 4 for me…mostly due to Bullock’s performance.

It’s a must see and even worth the full price for 3D.

 

10 September, 2013

Quick Review: iPhone5 (Virgin Mobile)

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I’ve been using an HTC One V for a little over a year now on the Virgin Mobile service. It was a serviceable smart phone, but was increasingly buggy and twitchy. Even cleaning every cache, removing unused apps, etc. would not fix the issues, which included more and more dropped calls and bad reception. I finally broke down and decided to take the hit and buy an iPhone 5 (yes, I know the 5S is coming out at the end of the month, but I doubt it’ll hit VM before the year’s end…and I really don’t need a fingerprint sensor on my home button…)

So, was it worth it? In a word: yes! I’m relatively platform agnostic, but over the last few years i find myself gravitating toward Apple products. It started with the iPad, which I still adore, and then my wife bought me a MacBook Air back in 2010. It’s still going strong with 98% of the original battery capacity, it’s still as fast, and it still works great. I like that the Apple devices talk to each other easily and — outside of the craphill that is iTunes (Seriously, Apple…fix the damned thing!) — I have no complaints. Yes, the interface isn’t as customizable as Android. Yes, it’s a “walled” ecosphere — I still get pretty much all the performance I want. Yes, they’re bloody expensive — the main sticking point for me.

I figured I would like the iPhone — it’s a small iPad with a phone, after all. Except the integration of the apps is astounding. Everything talks to each other. Siri isn’t the greatest search engine, but it makes it easy to use the phone without hunting for the right app — call Mom. Facetime with Paul. Where’s the local Chinese joint? It works. Just don’t ask it if there’s a local distributor for McEwan’s Scotch Ale; it gets confused.

The texting/Message feature is good, and Facetime is quick and stable for video calls (my mother was thrilled to talk to her granddaughter face-to-face.) The voice recognition is about 90% — pretty good for my screwy Pennsylvania-Scottish accent, which throws it on the strangest words.

It looks good, build quality is top-notch — something the HTC also had going for it — and it’s no larger than the One V was. I find iOS6 much more user friendly than the back/home/app button combo of the One V, and i think the stability of the OS build is immediately noticeable.

The big downsides: yes, the interface looks a bit plain compared to Android, which you can customize, but that wasn’t much of a selling point to me; I want to find what I’m looking for fast and be able to hit the icon without worrying about my fingers being too big. This might not be an issue on the billboard-sized Samsungs and Droids coming out, but I want to stick with something phone-sized. Second: No true multitasking. I found with my HTC that multitasking on the Android phone blew through battery life pretty quickly. It’s a good best we’ll see the same issue once iOS7 brings it to the iPhone. Another is battery life. It wasn’t great on the One V, but I only had to charge it every two or three days with average use. The iPhone looks to burn through a charge will average usage (for me a couple of calls, a bit of texting, and some data usage) in about two days. A heavy user would have to charge the thing every day. I assume the same with an Android or Windows phone, as well.

As to the Virgin Mobile service for the iPhone. You can pay $55/month for unlimited everything, but I run the $45/month for the 1200 minutes and everything else unlimited. After taxes and fees, I’m still only paying $50…about half of the big boys, including Sprint, on whose network Virgin functions. Even paying up front for the phone, full price, over the life of a contract period, I pay $932 less. And yes, you can swap the SIM cards and run on other networks. So is it worth a bigger hit at the start for the overall savings? Especially if you can use the PayPal Buy It Now (or whatever they’re calling it) promotion of six months with no payments or interest — yes. Pay it off in a couple of chunks. You’re much better off than with AT&T or Verizon, from a price point.

But what about the quality and coverage? Not as good. I get 3G in Albuquerque and the surrounding New Mexico area with a bunch of dead zones thanks to the massive areas of nothing out here between towns. (911 service, however, has been available in the same places I’d get it on other networks.) You do need to leave LTE on if you want to do anything data-intensive or the performance is glacial; with it on, it’s speedy enough for a Facebook check or to do a quick internet search for whatever. I haven’t bothered to try streaming anything yet, but I suspect it will be a bit jumpy. Call quality is good, for those of you who realized you can use a telephone to speak to people, instead of conducting a 2 minute conversation over the course of an afternoon by text.

Style: 5 out of 5 — you really can’t fault Apple’s aesthetics. Simple, yet pretty; the interface is simple and easy to use. Substance: 5 out of 5 — it’s the largest app store in the world, and you can find just about anything you need. The operating system is almost bulletproof stable, call quality is good, and it’s packed with a host of baked in features.

Additionally, the preview of the iOS7 features and new look is another draw — at least for me — to the phone.

 

10 September, 2013

Stunning: A Life in Four Minutes

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Here’s Danielle, a project by Anthony Cerniello and company showing the effects of aging from child to old age…stick with it, it’s worth the time.

 

7 September, 2013

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG or Some Practical Examples of Good GM/Player Action

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , |
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I was reading over a couple of pieces on 11 Things to Help Your Players Be Better Roleplayers over on Gnome Stew, and the referenced 11 Ways to be a Better Roleplayer on LOOK, ROBOT and realized that several of their ideas were on display at this week’s game session.

The last few weeks have been a clusterf#$% regarding player attendance — between GenCon for one, another as a speaker at the Transformers convention over in England, and the third have to be away for work and other issues, we’ve been at least one player low all month. The past two weeks had me adapt to this by throwing together a murder mystery for our Battlestar Galactica game, set on one of the ships in the civilian fleet.

The two characters are members of the new Colonial Marshals Service, tasked with looking into violent crime, hoarding, and other immediate issues to fleet security. “Victimless” crime is ignored. However, in the aftermath of the Fall of the Colonies, there have been an understandable spate of suicides and suspicious deaths…they all have to be investigated. The veteran, Chaplain, is annoyed by this — he wants to focus on the Cylon menace, but I need the guy investigating crimes for this episode…right here, the player was doing what Grant highlighted in the second piece as points 3 and 4 — “Don’t Try to Stop Things” and “Take Control of Your Character”: The player didn’t pull the “my character wouldn’t do that” shtick — he followed the instructions of his boss, who told him he needed these cases closed and to get on it; the second character also had a case on the same ship — a missing 16 year old girl. The two decided to pool resources and investigate. The characters both bitched about their assignments — that was fully in character, and they were given the opportunity to harangue their boss…but they’re doing their jobs. In that, I was engaging in point 2 of Phil’s piece on Gnome Stew, Create Opportunities for the Players to Express Their Characters.

Points 3, 4 and 9 of the Gnome Stew article come into play here: One of the things I’ve always tried to do was act more as a director than a writer in games. The characters were given enough information to take action on their own. The players don’t lolligag — they immediately start looking into their respective cases. The whole time, I try to not just play the NPCs, but give possible queues that they might miss in the action, or might not have occurred to them while playing that tie into their character — getting inside the heads of the characters, as it were. Example: The new guy is a geek, an overweight former programmer than helped stop one of the prongs of the Cylon attack. He’s a coward, but he takes on the responsibility of being a cop seriously. As he realizes the parents of the missing girl are hiding something, and the younger brother is upset, I suggested that — this guy, the guy that no one would notice at college, that spent all his time playing a hero in RPGs and computer games, was suddenly the one guy that actually could make a difference and save this girl — he might find this both terrifying, but also an important moment for his self-esteem and personality. The player ran with it. They didn’t have to.

The veteran realizes that the suicide couldn’t possibly have happened as the report says — the safety protocols, etc. are too complex for a guy who was, in essence, the garbageman of the ship. He was murdered. The character is pissed, because now it’s not a check the box suicide investigation…he has to take it seriously. The two both run into a lot of stonewalling by crew and passengers and start to realize they are in real trouble…there’s something going on aboard the ship. They could, at this point, try to get backup or something, but they investigate further (Point 1: Do Something), checking the ship’s cargo manifests and the coming and goings of cargo ships and shuttles (the vessel is a major logistics hub for the fleet.) They also note the tattoos on the security men and crew of the ship — they realize it’s a Ha’la’tha (Tauron mafia) ship. They get the brother of the missing girl alone and find out she’s was sold to the HLT for extra food and clothing rations.

Point 3 for the GM: Keep things moving. Paraphrasing Raymond Chandler, the pulp mystery writer, when a scene bogs down, have guys with guns burst in. That’s what happened here. We’d been building up the suspense for a while and it was time to get things moving. The newbie’s questioning of the kid brings the gangsters after him. There’s a chase and hiding from the bad guys scene in a crew habitat that I described as being a lot like the living quarters in Outland. (I wanted the catwalks, the multiple tiers with points that would require jumping from level to the next. See the movie — it’s a great action set piece.) The vet has to come rescue him and they proceed to kick serious ass. Having done that, they find out they work for a HLT lieutenat operating out of the “box city” — an area of interconnected pressurized cargo containers (like those on a real cargo ship, but with pressure doors, etc.) The same place where the suicide-now-murder took place.

The encounter the bad guys, whom the vet taunts for their obvious lack of forethought on trying to kill them. “What do you think is going to happen? You’ll just wind up with more cops of the marines in here!” Of course, the gangsters are planning on scattering and changing their identities — easy enough with the terrible record keeping currently in the civilian fleet (it’s less than a month from the Holocaust.) It’s a Mexican (or in this case, Tauron, showdown…)

At this point I realize we’re getting close to quitting time for the night and seek to wrap the night before they get to the part where they rescue the girls. The question — do I go for the anticlimactic “Oh, you’re right, here’s the girls” ending, or step it up. I go Chandler — the area is suddenly sealed by other bad guys and the “big bad” (now just a minor functionary) tells them they’re all dead. The gangsters included. The trail will dead end here.

The area is getting vented and the characters had a series of misadventures trying to get to safety including attempting the classic air duct crawl…only to get stuck. Really stuck. Two botches in a roll stuck. At this point I invoke point 10 in Phil’s piece: Make Failure Interesting. The vet is stuck and goes seriously claustrophobic/ upset that after all the shit he’s been through with Cylons and other dangers, he’s going to die stuck in an air vent…and he doesn’t even know why! The players embraced failure, as grant suggested and ran with it. Eventually, they managed to get clear, but it gave a great half hour of entertainment.

One point grant had: Don’t try to stop things came into play here: the newbie is a coward, had been nearly killed, had to shoot a man, and he’s a wreck…his beloved top-end datapad was shot (saving his life) in the hab fight. He wants to get on the first ship off the craft, but the vet knows the HLT isn’t going to let them do that. They settle for hacking the comms system and firing off a report/call for backup from the CMS before they go after the big bad (see above.) The characters argue, they alter each other’s pans, but they don’t try to undo what the other player is doing. They built on it.

We ended for the night with the characters stuck on a gangster controlled ship, who were nearly killed by nameless baddies, but they know where the brothel/club that the HLT is running is on the ship and the newbie — cowardice pushed aside by pride and the chance to be a hero — is determined to save them.

The thing for players and GM to remember is that RPGs are a collaborative form of storytelling and play. The GM (at least in more traditional sorts of games) creates the outlines of the world and the players flesh it out with their actions. Sometimes it’s just offhand comments like the newbie stating the bad guys were trying to make their deaths look like accidents. Well, no, I was trying to come up with a quick ending that didn’t involve the characters getting killed by the ready to shoot villains…but it sounded good, so I ran with it. Take what the players are doing and mold it to work with what you intended — or it their idea’s better, purloin it [without telling them] and run with it. Ultimately, as long as everyone is having fun, you’re doing it right.

 

6 September, 2013

Sci-Fi Short: From the Future With Love

Posted by blackcampbell under Movies, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction
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A short dealing with privatized policing. Of course, it only goes for the dystopian view, while missing some of the benefits — like state-sponsored coercion and violence.

There’s some real sci-fi/cyberpunk RPG gold in this

 

30 August, 2013

Setting the Scene: The Teaser

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Having really cut my teeth as a GM with the James Bond: 007 RPG in the 1980s, one of the techniques I used to introduce characters and/or stories was inspired by the Bond movies (and many other television series and action movies) is the teaser.

The teaser allows you to give a player(s) the chance to intro his or their characters in a simple action sequence. You begin in media res — the action is already underway. The teaser can have a connection to the rest of the story or not; you can make this the tail end of another unrelated mission, or you can connect it to the upcoming plotline through either a recurring villain or NPC, or some aspect of the teaser that eventually ties to the rest of the adventure upcoming.

The teaser should place the character firmly in their element of expertise, and play to the characters’ strengths and weaknesses. Let’s use Skyfall as an example. In this, we’ll stick with three “new” characters — Bond, Eve, and Tanner. (Why Tanner? We’re using him as the “eye in the sky” or hacker/backup for purposes of example.) You’re looking for a missing hard drive. We think we know who the guy is that has it. (Bad guy NPC Patrice.) One of our agents has tracked him down and is now not responding. Bond is our brick/fighting guy — the experienced, jaded one; Eve is our wheelman with some combat skills — she’s new and a bit unsure of herself; Tanner is their “hacker” — he’s the guy with the satellite feeds, the maps for them to use to try and get ahead of people, the guy that can get medical to you. He can coordinate the action between the characters when they are separated, effectively keeping everyone together, even if the characters are in different locations. He is, in essence, the glue between what could be completely separate scenes, and hence keep all the players involved.

Bond should have a moment to play to his jaded nature (he finds the injured agent — stabilize him or get after the bad guy?), he should have a combat sequence — fistfight or gun fight (or both) to show his combat prowess. Eve should have a chance to use her driving skills in a chase. (He’s in the black Audi!) She should have the chance to get into combat, but try to keep Bond in the spotlight for this. Tanner should be the guy directing them in the case (He’s turned left! If you go through the market you should be able to get ahead of them! [Give the Eve or Bond character some kind of bonus if Tanner gets a good roll on an appropriate skill to help manage the operation.])

Teasers should be short — around 30 minutes or so for a three hour session, but sometimes, they can be intensely fun on their own. I’ve had teasers run most of a game session (2 hours) for particularly complex action sequences. Example (let’s use Bond movies again, this time Goldeneye): The beginning of Goldeneye has a fairly complex action sequence involving Bond sneaking into a secret Soviet weapons plant and linking up with 003. The new characters might be just Bond, or Bond and Alec (003). They have to slip into the main portion of the factor to blow it up. They get cornered and have to escape while still destroying the place. A teaser like this, I can tell you from experience, is probably a one to 1.5 hour affair, minimum. There’s a lot of moving parts, but they do the same thing — Bond does action stuff like base jumping, shooting, and some stealth. Alec, if played by a player, would have to either be doing the same, or come in from a different direction. They would have some moment to play up their friendship or animosity, depending on the weaknesses with which they were designed. (Imagine the base jump’s the only way in  and one of the characters is acrophobic — golden!)

The teaser is a great method for introducing the characters: get them into their element, give them a few challenges that play to their strengths and weaknesses, then move onto the main story or campaign. But it’s also good for reintroducing the characters after a break, or introducing the next plotline.

The Living Daylights begins, as many Bond movies do, with a short mission that seems unrelated to the main story. Bond is training in Gibraltar with other 00s when one is killed by SMERSH. But SMERSH was deactivated! He chases down the assassin but the man is killed in typical spectacular fashion. It seems completely disconnected from the “main mission” — evacuate a Soviet general from Czechoslovakia who is under sniper protection…until the general is spirited out of the Blaydon safe house by SMERSH. Eventually, the plot would reveal the recaptured general is actually behind the SMERSH attack at Gibraltar in an attempt to get rid of a rival in the Soviet intelligence community who is closing in on his dirty opium for diamonds for guns operation.

You might have a character who encountered serious issues in a previous adventure. You might introduce the character in a teaser where an old bad guy turns up to have them murdered, and this drags them back into a life of action. Or that thief who was retired but has burned through his money, or is presented with a challenge just too juicy to ignore — reintroduce them living happily, then hit them with some minor action piece that plays to their diminishing money or requires them to use their mad thieving skills…boy, don’t you miss the rush…?

Hopefully, these few suggestions can give you a new tool in your GM kit to help the players connect with their characters and with the world/adventures you are presenting. While I’ve used primarily modern day examples, you can easily adapt the teaser to any genre you might be playing.

 

20 August, 2013

Spoiler: a Zombie Short

Posted by blackcampbell under Movies, Science Fiction
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Here’s how to do it, Hollywood…

 

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