MurderHobo.Club

Category: Musings

Rambling thoughts

  • Circular thoughts

    Circles of protection, often a ring of salt, occasionally a set of runes, are a staple of supernatural fiction; a mystic shield that protects the protagonists and imprisons antagonists.

    The problem is, a circle is a flat plane and we exist in more dimensions, so in order to protect us, the circle has to have more dimensions. But how are those dimensions defined and refined?

    One version would be that the circle is actually a sphere and the width determines the height, though humans tend to be taller than they are wide, and with that math many circles would leave heads exposed. Something that is rarely explored, but could be a good piece to a story.

    An obvious alternative is that the amount of energy used when empowering the circle determines how tall it is, and by habit most people make it taller than they are. This could even be argued to be a subconscious process, something picked up while learning the ritual in the first place. It could also explain how some circles are of limited use or appear to fail altogether; they were cast too short to be of much use. Potentially some interesting scenes there.

    The logical extension of this is if they can be empowered during their configuration or creation, is there a way this could be used to greater impact? We’ve seen circles on the ceiling used to trap things below. What about a vertically mounted circle being used to close a passage or to create a battering ram that only hits supernatural creatures?

    How about a dodecahedron, with circles carved into its faces, with a power source inside, allowing the circles to all expand at once? Certainly be a creative weapon in the right circumstances.

  • Ramblings

    It’s Christmas day, and aside from the dog managing to perform a Hoth manoeuvre on me, it’s been a good day. My wife bought me a new watch and despite her concerns about picking the right one, it’s probably a better choice than if I’d gone out and got one myself. I’d have probably just gone for a samsung smartwatch, as I’d seen they had a price drop recently and have decent reviews. What she got me was a nice Garmin with a whole slew of bells and whistles. Nearly a decade ago, I backed the pebble smartwatch and had one of those for a few years until it randomly became haunted. This reminds me of that, but better.

    I’ve previously owned a Garmin watch, a nice little GPS one that my parents bought for me, I’d used it to track my walking speed. When I logged into their system, I saw my data from back in 2011 and earlier, with a brief burst of activity in 2013. Based on Pebble’s wiki, I’d have replaced the Garmin with the pebble, until I’d retired it.

    Wearing a watch again, after having not for so long, it’ll take a bit to get used to.

    There are a variety of watch face options available, and I’ve gone with a text one, fuzzy time. I think I had it’s equivalent on my pebble back in the day. Not the exact time, just a rough approximation; Quarter after four, twenty to five, that sort of thing. For the most part, I think that suits my needs. I rarely need to know the exact time these days.

    Last night, we watched Bullet Train, and I enjoyed it. It reminded me of Smoking Aces by way of Snatch. Another friend said Lock Stock meets Knives Out.

    Speaking of Knives Out, we saw Glass Onion the night before, and it was fun. Better than I had expected. The rich successful idiot theme seemed very timely, especially in light of recent events.

  • Campaign Thoughts

    A few years back, I designed something we called the ARSE, Active Research System Experiment. It was a system agnostic way to handle historical knowledge in RPGs. The players would encounter a mystery they wanted to solve, such as the location of an object or the fate of an expedition, and they’d do their leg work to get an appropriate lead, such as a journal written by a member of the that expedition. At which point they’d be given a selection of character sheets to pick from; they would be taking on the roles of the members of that expedition, and the storyline that played out would give them the answers they’d sought in the future. Or not, as it was possible they wouldn’t solve the mystery, the lead turning out to be a dead end.

    This allowed us to experiment with different systems, settings, etc, and give players a break from a campaign, something that can prevent burnout. In theory, the system also allowed the GM to pull less punches, especially if there were more members of the expedition than in the party. One of them gets killed off, the player picks up one of the unpicked sheets and someone else has stepped up to fill in the vacancy left by the recently deceased.

    That system is still something I’ve had tucked away in my toolkit, for the day when I might actually need it.

    This post however, is about something a little different, thought it emerges from a similar stream of thoughts.

    I’d like to do a campaign loosely inspired by both Eternal Darkness from the Gamecube, and that recent Netflix series Fear Street, with it’s 3 parts taking place in three timelines. I’m sure there are other things that fit into this mould also, but those are the two that leap to mind currently. Also, I suppose it would owe some credit towards Doctor Who, with the various episodes that took place across human history. Or I suppose even the whole Assassin’s Creed series with the whole Abstergo operatives looking back through history.

    There would need to be a central threat or mystery, that the group was somehow exposed to, and having survived that, they’d have reason to seek the other groups who’d also encountered this, in an attempt to learn what they could about it.

    A basic framework like this gives you reason to visit places like Ancient Greece, Victorian London, and a whole variety of other evocative places.

  • Bureaus.

    The other day, I replayed a bit of Control, to test out the series S I’d picked up, before realizing that apparently Control hadn’t been optimized for the series S, only the series X. Still, it’s a good game, and I was enjoying it. So I loaded up my old save file on my PS4 Pro to play though the DLC. The DLC is not as good as the story in the base game. The way the mysteries unfold during the course of the game is just so good, it’s hard for anything else to really match it.

    That inspired me to check where the X-Files was streaming these days; turns out, it’s over on Disney plus, since they own Fox now. I’m part way through the first season. The two strongest episode have been the ones involving the locked room murders: Squeeze and Ghost in the Machine.

    In the latter, there are two scenes that were filmed at Metrotown, at the old Dolphin fountain, with the Skytrain in the background. It was weird to see that. It’ll be strange to see other things that I recognize from years back, some of which no longer exist.

  • Facial Cleanser

    For a few weeks now, maybe longer, I’ve been thinking I need to remove a couple of people from my friend’s list, as I don’t agree with their politics. A couple of them have been commenting on misogynist posts or others that are equally distasteful.

    I’ve known them several years, and over the years I’ve tried to discuss things with them, but their positions have been unassailable by logic.

    People say that you shouldn’t create drama by explaining why you’ve unfriended someone or cleaned up your list.

    People also say you should stand up to bigots and be clear that you don’t agree with them.

    So, what is the right way to approach the problem of people you have on Facebook, whose politics you don’t agree with, who continue to post things that go against your principles?

  • blocks

    I don’t write much anymore. For a while, I’d write but then not publish, and then at some point, I just stopped writing.

    Today, I wrote something. I should write more, but it’s hard to get into the right frame of mine and right space.

    I should probably take my laptop to the park or something.

  • Quick Warning to Office Staff

    Earlier today, my partner went into her office to attempt to do some things that she was unable to do while working remotely. It took her several tries to get the systems to work correctly. This was of course because of the office gremlins.

    Normally, they are fairly benign and will primarily interfere with printers to gather space materials to line their nests. Especially if someone was helpful and took the paper recycling out recently.

    They are known to sleep on routers and other machines that are left running, as they enjoy the warmth. As anyone working in IT can attest, a gremlin sleeping on your router can cause some irregularities in the signal strength, especially if you get a restless one who keeps shifting position. Occasional they’ll dislodge a power cord, or bump the power button, but in most cases these deactivations are temporary, due to their preference for the warmth.

    They are also known to hoard office supplies, stealing pens, tape, staplers and other things that they can easily carry off. Little is known about the purpose behind these thefts, as no obvious use of the supplies has been observed. Further study has been attempted, but the cameras that were deployed kept going missing.

    However, since everyone has been working remote for the last six months or so, they’ve gone a bit feral. They’d grown comfortable on their diet of leftover donuts and other assorted desk snacks, including the large bowl of candy that somehow often seemed to be in need of refilling, despite nobody ever observing anyone eating from it.

    So, just a quick warning, prepare for extra time when attempting administrative tasks after the return to the office. Either that, or bring a box of donuts and tuck it somewhere out of your line of sight.

  • D&D on my mind again.

    The other day, I picked up a copy of the new Icewind Dale book, a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure. I’ve not played much 5th edition. I’d done the two partial campaigns with Matt that I’d mentioned here, and that’s been about it. Before that, it was Pathfinder, which I did for a while though Dimestore and I found a few ways to break things in those. Before that, 3.5, with various folks, including the man who became Olaf. For someone who has been interested in D&D for so long, I haven’t really played all that much of it.

    Most of my gaming has been Shadowrun, which I find more narratively satisfying. The d20 system, always feels too random to me, while the d6 systems, where the better the skill, the more dice, feels like you still get a range of results, but the range is more closely tied to your skills. Though that might just be because I feel more in control of my destiny in Shadowrun. (I may have mentioned this in a previous post.)

    But, I’ve heard good things about this new set of D&D adventures, and I’ve been tempted to pick them up a few times. And this one, had some good buzz, and a great picture of a moose in it.

    In theory, there’s a plan to run it for some friends online, though before that, I will probably be running a few games to get my familiarity with the system back. For whatever reason, running games seems more appealing than playing in them, at the moment.

     

  • Conversations of the solo variety

    Yesterday, I thought twice about buying a foam case for this laptop, so if I dropped it, it won’t get damaged. Then, last night, I dropped it in the parking lot and chipped one of the corners. No real damage, it just looks a little roughed up now. Not quite as slick as it did before.

    I’m sitting here, listening to Weird Al playing on the apple tv, after having run some random errands. Last night, I fell asleep watching black mirror, apparently missed the end of the Striker’s episode. Then I got comfortable, and slept for about 6 hours. That’s pretty unusual for me, since lately I’ve been waking up every few hours to take a leak. I went back to sleep, and slept til 11 or so. In theory, I should reactivate that sleep tracking app on my cellphone to capture some data to go along with the data that the CPAP is already capturing. Especially since their data isn’t exactly easily accessible at this state. Some of the other CPAP machines have automatic syncing with their own online services, but this loaner doesn’t have that feature. My next appointment is next Thursday, at which point some of the issues will get addressed. I suspect instead of the basic nasal hose mask, I need a full face mask, since I suspect I’ll still be breathing through my mouth, which reduces the effectiveness of the CPAP.

    Tonight, a group of us are going to go see Brightburn, partially thanks to some free tickets I won via Facebook, from Tazmanian Comics. Which is nice, since it’s one that Dee had wanted to see. I’d been interested in it since it was James Gunn, and he’s generally been pretty entertaining. From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty solid.

    Recently, I got a message from someone overseas about one of the writings I’ve put up on another site, one that I hadn’t published here. It was strange. Somehow she found the piece, and it resonated with her. I’m debating moving a copy of it over here. Though it’s not quite the same tone as anything else here; it’s got an odd flavor to it. And it’s got a few errors that need to be cleaned up. I’ll probably do that later this week.

    Polka is strangely happy music, especially when it’s Weird Al converting modern music into Polka.

    Lately I’ve been playing Persona 5 on the PS4, slowly working my way through that strange slice of student life. I’ve fallen off playing Warframe, for some reason. Possibly because I installed it on the PS4 and the Switch, and while most of my progress is on the Switch, the PS4 looks just that little bit better and loads so much faster. Especially since I swapped the regular HDD on the PS4 with an SSD. (Those two acronyms have always bothered me. Hard Disk Drive, Solid State Drive. Of course HDD used to be HD, before High Definition became a thing.)

    In theory, I’m also playing Final Fantasy XII : Zodiac Age, on the switch, as well as a half dozen other switch games that I’ve bought that I’ve started and not made much progress in. Including Civilization VI, a game that I continue to bounce off of. I think it’s because I find it hard to judge how I’m doing, both relative to previous attempts and to my opponents. The majority of the game, I feel like I lack that feedback to figure out how to improve.

    I haven’t played many board games recently, played a couple of kickstarters when they came in a week or two ago. Towers of Arkanos, a cute little dice drafting game that perhaps deserves it’s own review. And we played Tiny Town, which is a city build that reminds me of the bear game, Triple Town. You are placing blocks in shapes that convert into a single space building and then block one of those spaces. So the trick is to build the buildings in a way that they don’t block the other building layouts.

    I really should get a haircut. I’ve just let it grow out and become shaggy, since there isn’t any real reason not to. But with the head straps, the hair gets in the way. On one hand, I’d like to get it cut into something stylish, take advantage of the fact that it’s longer. Then again, I don’t have a barber anymore, and it seems like a simple cut might make life easier.

    I’m not sure what the purpose of these longer rambling entries is, since very little of the information is useful or helpful or meaningful to anyone. Though I suppose it’s good to have notes, with my memory being what it is lately.

  • Why did this go dark so long?

    About two years back, I stopped working for the place where this blog had been hosted. And with the future of the hosting in question, I lost some of my motivation to maintain it. I’d made some efforts to get it moved somewhere better, but until recently, those efforts hadn’t borne any fruit. 

    Well, now they have, the site’s future is “secure” or at least it should be.