RPG Brain Dump

I thought of something an hour ago and I want to get some record of it down. So, here goes (I'll try keep it succinct).

I was reading some Shaintar today (a Savage Worlds setting). Its quite good. Its also very high fantasy. A bit high for my taste but the game has enough going for it for me to keep giving it my time every now and then. One of the things I like is all the Empires and Societies that it has scattered around its world. It also integrates the different races of the world quite well. They often co-inhabit without killing each other. But its still too high fantasy (HF) for me, I much prefer the idea of a Swords and Sorcery game with more factions and less loaming evil and cosmic campaigns. I don't like the idea of loosing the other races though. Which got me thinking.

Many HF games have the race of Elves and Dwarfs dieing out. They were big an age ago but are now depleting. Some games (LotR) also have the idea of half elves. But what if this idea was taken further. What if we took LotR and advanced the clock another Age, but instead of the Elves and Dwarfs and Orcs having died out, how about having them absorbed into the Human Gene pool. Characters could then have linages (much like Artesia) instead of being a race. I think this would help with a few problems. First, it wouldn't mater if you had a lot of non humans in your group. It would also lower the power level of such races a touch. In turn this would let you add in a Wheel of Time of L5R or Game of Thrones type setting on top with reasonable ease. I donno, might not sound great but it appealed to me a couple of hours ago.

Lastly, I thought I'd add a logical extension of this. Instead of Elves Orcs and Dwarfs you could go more mythical. Angels and Demons, Minotaurs and Satyrs, Mermaids and Fairies, Vampires and Werewolves, Dragons and Giants. What if they existed ages ago, and as the world grew up, the myths faded. But lived on in the gene pool. Everyone would still be human but some people might show strong aspects of the mythical beginnings......

....just and idea....

Kaiyodo Figure Museum

A few months ago I bought myself a copy of "the Otaku Encyclopedia" in which are details of many interesting little places an Otaku might go in Japan. Upon reading it I had particular interest to go see the Kaiyodo Figure Museum. This was partly because its pretty close by, and partly because I really like Japanese Figures as an art form or something. So, for my birthday, we decided to spend a long weekend on a trip to Shiga. To see, primarily, the figures.

In short, it was well worth it. The museum is not very big but does contain a few thousand small figures, so if you take your time its easy to spend an hour or so looking round. Some of them are just really well made. I especially like the really small ones, often they seem to have the most detail. But the star of the show for me was a set of 3 Goddesses on pedestals. These big figures greet you as you go up the stairs and look stunning. It had almost a 3 Graces feel to it or something, which some might feel is a blasphemy to art but bleh, I liked it. Also, I was going to take some pictures of the BONE (prolific figure maker) stuff, but it was a bit too provocative and I didn't feel like taking a picture.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the place. As ever you can find more if you follow the right links.

Pair of Unrelated Items

Two things I felt like talking briefly about.

Firstly, I completed Prince of Persia last week (the new one) after sitting down for a bit and forcing through it. I stopped playing it a while back because I got bored but I managed to return to it and rushed to the end. It was a really odd game.... it was just one bit quick time event. See a pad press triangle, press circle for rings, press cross for everything else. That's about it. It got really annoying in the last part of the game due to a 3 minute sequence of the things that I kept failing. Nearly gave up at that point. It looked really good but it just didn't make up for the lack of game play. Bleh .... least I didn't spend much on it.

Secondly, I watched through Torchwood - Children of Earth over the last few days. I'm a bit torn on how I feel about this one. On the one hand I obviously really enjoyed it, I was enthralled each time I sat down to watch it and plowed through it as quickly as I could. The story was solid and I really liked the aliens reason for wanting the children, that was just disturbing. But I felt it was let down a little by a poor ending. Well..... actually.... it was just let down by Captain Jack in general. Its a really good character but it seemed like they didn't know which way to write him - tortured old soul, hardened warrior capably of making tough sacrifices, or loving family man and protector of all that is good. They could have picked 2 of these, or some combination of their different parts. But they picked all three and it was just a mess. Combine that with John Barrowman (he has good days sometimes......) and well ........ bleh. On the whole I enjoyed it though.

Now what should I play and watch next.....?