Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Reviews
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Continuing my series of posts on the Japanese RPG Make You Kingdom, here I present a single table from the random Kingdom generation section. In this section you choose how many rooms your Kingdom will have (1 to 9), then you generate each room randomly. To do this, you first roll a d6 to see…
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As a follow-up to recent posts on race in the Lord of the Rings, I think I should have a look at the possible multicultural symbols in the books. This is both a nice counterstory to my recent criticisms of his politics, and provides useful background information on the politics of Tolkien’s fascist admirers. How…
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I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, having read all the stories, including his famous meeting with Harry Flashman, VC, and seen at least part of the classic Brett[1] television series, which is generally acclaimed as the best of the lot. I think Holmes is an important character in the pre-history of both steampunk and…
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Yesterday I went with my partner and two friends to see this remarkable taiko group, Tao Taiko. Taiko is Japanese drumming, which consists of a group of drummers using keg-shaped drums of various sizes, from about that of a man’s chest to about the size of a small car. The drumming is traditionally done as…
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This is basically Mamoru Oshii (of Ghost in the Shell fame) does dogfights. Great movie. Didn’t understand anything though. And what’s with the dog?
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Kraken, by China Mieville, is another “city-within-a-city” novel, like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Mieville’s previous (rather lacklustre) effort, UnLunDun. In this case the city-wthin-the-city is a supernatural world of grafters, shonksters and magicians, all oriented around a plethora of cults who worship “cast-off” deities and apocalyptic visions, all residing within London. There are some parts…
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Based on the Robert E Howard novel of the same name, this movie will probably attract the usual ire of Howard fans, who worry perenially that his work will be mocked in film – a fear I can understand, though I don’t agree with it. In any case, in this situation it doesn’t matter, since…
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It’s as if James Cameron sat down one day 10 years ago and asked himself (as everyone should!), “how can I make a movie that is perfectly designed to please faustusnotes?” and, before he’d even had a chance to put his hand to his forehead, out of the blue came the answer: combine Nausicaa, Last…
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Because there isn’t a great deal of easy work in steamy Beppu, I’ve taken up some freelance editing work while I wait on certain work opportunities to develop over the next few months. This editing work involves editing about 100 very short (200 word or so) articles by adult Japanese students of English, written casually…
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I have noticed recently a tiny debate going on between two blogs concerning whether or not it is sensible to assign the class of people called peasants a different distribution of ability scores to the class of people called lords. The distinction in question – 2d6 for peasants, 3d6 for lords – seems roughly fine…
Compromise and Conceit 