Tag Archives: rambling

“They drew first blood, not me.”

(A Nerf War scenario loosely inspired by Carl Purcell. Blame him for this)

A lone PATRIOTIC AMERICAN, who just wants to be left alone, has been pushed beyond his limits by a bunch of REDNECK COPS (Including a young Horatio *sunglasses* Caine) and escaped into the woods. The police are now searching for him in increasing numbers.All he wants is to be left alone, but they kept pushing. NOTHING IS OVER.Because YOU JUST DON’T TURN IT OFF!
OUR HERO starts at one end of the map, equipped only with a LARGE AND MANLY KNIFE, a total lack of sleeves and an occasionally understandable accent. The REDNECK COPS start at the corners of the other side and carry a series of Nerf blasters and ammunition. OUR HERO has to escape, the COPS have to take him down. What they don’t know is, he’s about to give them A WAR THEY WON’T BELIEVE!
rambo_-first-blood-part-ii-screenshot
OUR HERO’S job is to evade or incapacitate the COPS, making to the exit point on the other side of the map. He can take 5 hits from Nerf darts before being taken out, representing his natural AMERICAN SUPERIORITY. He can heal those only with a suitably ABSURD GESTURE, such as pretending to heat a knife to cauterize a wound, but with an especially loud and painful sounding yell. That should take at least 30 seconds in preparation and at least 10 seconds of shouting. The COPS can take 2 hits each and can assist each other in healing (Pretending to wrap bandages around each others wounds etc), which takes 30 seconds.
OUR HERO can also prepare traps (pool noodle punji sticks,hidden bubble wrap representing pit traps etc) from supplies left around the map. To extend the scenario, the COPS can respawn back in their deployment zone while there’s an arms cache left somewhere on the map for OUR HERO to loot (Representing the local gun store). NOTE: You can’t shoot the gun store owner. Just saying.

Should OUR HERO escape, he is ready to embark on a series of increasingly silly and over the top sequels, culminating in him helping create a terrorist group (Awkward…). The COPS are doomed to a future in police procedural TV shows and internet memes.

“Execute Order 66.”

So, I had an idea at the pub recently: Order 66: The LARP. There was a couple of chuckles and then we moved on with other terrible ideas. But the thing is, like a lot of my terrible ideas, I’ve been thinking about this one more and there’s potential. So, this is less a LARP and more a collection of Nerf war scenario ideas.

I’m still pondering how to represent Jedi abilities – there’s LARP weapons that can represent lightsabers, though I imagine most players aren’t as skilled in swatting Nerf darts out of the air. A vocal call and motion could represent Force Push and a ‘take a knee and chant for 10 seconds’ could make for healing. Jedi start with a bunch of hit points, say, 5 while clones have 2. The clones have the advantage though, in that they re-spawn at their entrance point to the scenarios. Blasters carried by clones do 1 point of damage per hit, Jedi lightsabers do 2. Anakin Skywalker one shot’s everything, the angsty prat. If you see him coming towards you, call him ‘Annie’ and then run.

1: EXECUTE ORDER 66…

execute-order-66

FORCES: Clones, Jedi, Separatist Droids

The Jedi and Clone forces are engaged in battle against the Separatists. What they don’t know, is that the Chancellor is about to issue the order that will all but destroy them.

Both sides (Jedi/Clones and the Separatists) start at either side of the map. At a random point during the scenario (Decided by the GM), the clones will receive Order 66. How they choose to execute the order is up to them – they could lead the Jedi into a trap, attempt to bring them in a storm of fire or a more… cunning… plan. The Jedi have to survive to escape, the Clones have to bring them all down. (This also requires the Jedi players not to be metagaming dicks and work with the clones until the moment of betrayal.)

2: ESCAPE

501st-ROTS

FORCES: Clones, Jedi, Separatist droids.

In the wake of the Jedi Council’s attempt to arrest Chancellor Palpatine, Order 66 was issued to clone commanders across the galaxy. The Order was simple – destroy all the Jedi…

The Jedi start out in a central area, with the clones and Separatists starting at either edge. The clones have several respawn points scattered throughout the map – if tagged by the Jedi they can return there, count to 10 and re-enter the battle. The scenario is over when either the surviving Jedi make it to the exit point (The Separatist deployment zone), or all the Jedi are killed.

2: OPERATION KNIGHTFALL

Knightfall2

Anakin Skywalker, the newly christened Darth Vader, leads the 501st Legion against the Jedi Temple.

FORCES: Jedi, Clones, angsty twat with a lightsaber, *cough* Anakin Skywalker.

The Jedi are massively outnumbered and outgunned, with mainly Padawans and older Jedi left in the temple. Some are trying to preserve their heritage/secret files and escape the slaughter, while others have been sent to retrofit the Temple signal beacon to warn others away (Yes, I know Yoda and Obi-Wan did that in the movie – work with me here)

The clones enter the map at one point (The entrance to the temple) and have to destroy all the Jedi. The Jedi have to A: survive, B: reprogram the beacon and C: escape with Jedi holobooks. The Jedi start in the central hall (Near the entrance).

The beacon is on one corner of the map, the Jedi archive in the other. The beacon reprogramming will take fiddling with the machine (Represented by some sort of prop) for 1 minute. The holobooks are in the Temple archives and are represented by a prop that takes one hand to carry.

Thoughts?

It’s only rock and roll, but I bloody love it.

Today has been One of Those Days. The lead up to Christmas in television land is always fairly awful, filled with deadlines and system breakages. There are a few things that can help me get through this without going nuts. My wife. My hobbies. Friends and family. But rock and/or roll music is possibly what helps the most. Those who know me should be well aware of my obsession with Iron Maiden, the Ramones and Radio Birdman, so I’m going to talk about some of the slightly more obscure bands on my playlist at the moment.

The Bellrays:

Easy description: The MC5 fronted by Tina Turner.

Take a garage rock band, put a top of the line soul singer on vocals and you get the Bellrays. Capable of stunning beauty and ferocious rage, they play a mix of rock and soul like few other bands I’ve heard. Look, just watch this and try to tell me I’m wrong:

Maximum rock and soul!

Gloryhammer:

Easy description: Early 80’s D&D games set to music.

A side project from the singer of Scottish pirate metallers Alestorm, they’re both amazing and silly in equal measure. The band’s first album, ‘Tales from the Kingdom of Fife’ is based around an alternate history of Scotland, where the evil wizard Zargothrax invades the city of Dundee with an army of undead unicorns under his control. If that sentence doesn’t make you either A: pick up a set of dice or B: want to air guitar, then this band may not be for you.

Any band that wears armour on stage, they have my attention.

The Hellacopters:

Easy description: A guitar solo looking for a song

Started by former Entombed drummer Nicke Andersson (Who shifted to guitars and lead vocals), they evolved from a scrappy bunch of maniacs (Debut album Supershitty to the Max! was recorded and mixed in 26 hours) to classic rockers in the MC5/Sonics Rendezvous Band tradition (Andersson started a soul project with Rendevous Band singer Scott Morgan called The Solution, whose albums are worth hunting down) Never ones to let good sense get in the way of a guitar solo, they split amicably in 2008 – a promised live album from the final tour still hasn’t materialised.

Or as I call it, my teenage years

Other bands I could talk about include the Powder Monkeys (An Australian Motorhead), the Dictators (Whose debut Go Girl Crazy! predates the Ramones), the Lime Spiders (Whose classic song Slave Girl was on the playlist at my wedding, but owing the incompetent DJ’s didn’t play) or the Celtic folk/punk rock of Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys. But that is another story…

Some thoughts on fandom

So yeah, the silence. *cough* Been busy writing other projects, new job etc. In an effort to post something, anything, here’s some thoughts on Doctor Who fandom.

I swear from the tone of some of the anti Steven Moffat comments I’ve seen of late, it’s like they think watching the new season is equivalent to being strapped down Clockwork Orange style and forced to watch Attack of the Cybermen on loop. (That’s one for the Classic Era fans – people who’ve only seen new Who can substitute either Fear Her, Love and Monsters or The Rings of Akhaten in it’s place) I’m just struggling to understand the sheer level of vitriol that’s been thrown his way over the last few weeks. Yeah, the episodes haven’t been as fantastic as we might have hoped (Robot of Sherwood wasn’t great, but I really enjoyed Into the Dalek), but they’ve been in no way deserving of the level of abuse I’ve seen.

acm7That’s the facial expression I pull whenever I watch Attack

I get it, you don’t like his work. That’s fine – everyone’s free to have opinions and I welcome that. The world would be incredibly dull were it one giant hive mind that agreed on everything. (Even if that was something that should be agreed upon, like how amazing the Ramones are) I’m not a huge fan of a fair chunk of his more recent work, but he hasn’t done anything on the scale of marrying Martha and Mickey. (Yes, that’s right – make sure the two black companions who’ve had no previous interest in each other should get together when she was already engaged to someone else. Thanks Russell T Davies!) There’s been ups and downs all through the show’s history – for every story as good as The Time Warrior we’ve had The Time Monster. Something as magnificent as The Caves of Androzani and something as rubbish as Time Flight.The horror of Time and the Rani is contrasted by the glory of The Happiness Patrol.(Fair warning: dislike Androzani and I mock you on the internet. Dislike Happiness and PISTOLS AT 10 PACES!) Give it a year or two, we’ll get a change of production team and a show that might be more to your taste again, or just give you more to bitch about. Or maybe you’re one of those people who will never be satisfied by anything Who ever does, in which case you’re dangerously close to turning into  Ian Levine and one of him is, frankly, more than enough. (Yes, he returned a lot of missing episodes and saved many others. but he also produced Take That’s first single.)

The Happiness Patrol 2*looks into mirror* Kandyman, Kandyman, Kandyman!

I guess what I’m trying to say is calm the hell down – it’s just a TV show. (Yes, it’s somewhat hypocritical of me to say that, but I’m trying a sense of perspective out. It’s still new and shiny!)  Put that anger toward something more productive, like curing cancer, fighting for social change, reversing the planned ABC budget cuts or just going out and mocking Jacqui Lambie. As much importance as I place on Who (And believe me, it’s a lot), I know there’s far more important things out there. But while Who is on, they can get stuffed!