| HP RPG/Worldbuilding Game |
[04 Jul 2008|04:50pm] |
To the Harry Potter fans:
I haven't been actively in the fandom for ages, and I don't particularly intend to. However, I have always been fascinated by the world where the stories are set - the society, laws, day-to-day life, technology, education, etc. In particular, I am interested in how magical society works internationally, and how international relations would work out between magical societies worldwide, and across different cultures (how would a fundie Muslim react to having their child be a wizard? How about one who comes from a tribal magical culture? Are there such things as "Muggles" in some places?)
At first I had plot outlines for fanfic, but I was too lazy to write them. Then I realized that this could be a good backing idea for an RPG worldbuilding game.
If you know the game NationStates (or its clone on Facebook, Nations, which doesn't compare in quality :P), the whole premise is that you create your own country and then decide how it runs through resolving Issues. In the forums, the gameplay gets even more complex - wars break out, treaties and resolutions are written, agreements are made. It's basically like playing Model UN plus a strategy game.
How about taking that structure, but have the underlying concept be fleshing out the society and structure of the international magical world.
Groups of players collaborate and discuss on how your country is formed. Only real-life countries, and plausible magic-related places (such as Atlantis or Avalon, which could be magically hidden) are allowed. Players create and develop their magical countries through:
* Normal discussion and debate
* RP, whether within the country (so say the Prime Minister talking to his people) or inter-country
* Creative work - fanfiction, fanart, videos, etc
The world should be as close to real and established history as possible, and the magical elements should stick as closely to established canon. Obviously things like whether spells around the world would also be said in Latin would be up for discussion, but if you're building France, you should have a Beauxbatons in there. Things like eliminating Hitler's actions from history or making Harry Potter a girl - things that actively change canon/history - wouldn't be allowed. There may be occasions where the players assume something about canon but later information makes it incorrect - the challenge, then, is to reconcile this new information with the current game. The game would be played in current time - so as I write this entry, Bush is still US President, there's still war in Iraq, the Euro 2008 just ended.
Specific characters from HP canon need not be referred to (imagine this is post-Deathly Hallows) but you can mention them if you want.
The history should be shared and consistent. This would come from discussion & interaction with other players. So if you claim that your country was once invaded by Country X, the players dealing with Country X better agree with that. That's part of the challenge of the game - making it internally consistent.
There are a few games played on wikis where the challenge is to build a consistent fantasy world. This is made by writing wiki entries and finding ways to link them to each other. A similar structure can be used for this International HP Worldbuilding Game, with forums and chats (or even the Talk page) being the channel for RP activity. There would also be a resource site for multimedia such as images, fiction, anthems, and so on.
What do you think? Would you play a game like this? Do you know of any other games (perhaps in other fandoms) that work similarly?
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| Here's one for the film buffs... |
[04 Jul 2008|03:36am] |
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Film historians believe that they've discovered a complete 210-min print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The full version of the film (which later influenced everything from Blade Runner to...uh, The Bodyguard) was shown in 1927 in Germany but was heavily edited and re-written for foreign markets. It was believed that about 25% of the movie was permanently lost. The print reportedly contains footage that hasn't been seen by the public in about 80 years. How cool is that? *geeks out*
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| K-pop Wars |
[03 Jul 2008|09:14pm] |
Hey everyone. Remember back a few months when ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif) fandom_wank got it's first good dose of the crazy of the K-pop fangirls? If not the crazy is still here, and still quite frightening to read.
But it looks like there's another great wrong that is pissing off fans of several fan clubs of the Korean boy groups. This is namely a new girl group called SNSD or Girls Generation. Apparently fans don't think the girls of this group, and one in particular, Tiffany, are respectful enough of the boy bands and are 'making fun of' them. Here's a good write up that summarizes things by an angry fan, as everything else are a nice shade of tl:dr.
There are several accounts of the going ons of the 2008 Dream Concert, which was a concert that many of Korea's boy and girl groups performed at to promote national patriotism, ironically enough. The concert was ill-prepared for the crowd size they had, they expected 35,000 and 50,000 fans showed up, which did not help things at all as the concert progressed. There was mass shunning of SNSD as everyone that was not in the SNSD fan club turned their light sticks off (which at an Asian pop concert everybody has) during their performance and then preceded to boo and heckle the group. After that there are several reports of violence between the fan clubs were people claim to have been assaulted and banners made for the artists performing were torn during the concert.
This journal entry has a complete run down of what occurred, but the tl;dr and angry fangirl-ism is a bit daunting. But she gets to invoke Snacky's Law with:
This was done because of SNSD, why? Because these girls ARE rookies, they have NO respect for their sunbaes (seniors) they just jump around like their the popular girls in high school. And seriously, does the movie “mean Girls” not pop up when you think of a reality show in their dorms?
Of course according to her report the SNSD fan club, which seems to made up of mostly guys going by the reported accounts, acted violently against members of other fan clubs and to quote "According to fan accounts, other fan lclub members were beaten up by SNSD fanboys - some had their hair ripped out, raped, stabbed with a knife and had broken legs, and were taken to the hospital."
In another journal someone tries to rationalize that all the fighting between the fan clubs is a way that young people in Korea are releasing their pent up anger and frustration about the current political situation in Korea. And rounds it all out to blame the U.S. for wanting to export beef to Korea. Followed by a tangent about all that's going wrong in the world and ending by saying SNSD fans are just ignorant of how terrible the group is and don't know any better.
There are some blogs from SNSD fans and their take on the whole ordeal. Here is one that just doesn't repost information from every other blog about the incident.
And then there are even some much less unbiased reports about the concert here, here and here.
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| Vid rec: I Love the Whole World (Doctor Who) |
[03 Jul 2008|09:53pm] |
You know that awesome Discovery Channel commercial called "I love the whole world"?
Well ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) hllangel made a Doctor Who fan vid to it! Check it out.
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| Race Wank? In Who Fandom? It's just as likely as you'd think... |
[03 Jul 2008|03:24pm] |
As Whomageddon rolls on, doctorwho brings us another sterling gem. Or rather, two bright turds of wank, coupled together to form a synergistic pile of perfection.
First, cringer1982 shares that he's written a very pointed letter to the BBC about how they have portrayed Asians in their recent episode Turn Left. He neglects to mention that he's white as the fresh driven snow. Irish, in fact.
BBC officials respond with a letter that has nothing to do with anything.
Some people don't see his point.
( Meanwhile, back on the blog... )
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| Violet Blue: Not so wonderful anymore, apparently |
[02 Jul 2008|07:33pm] |
It's already on clairvoyantwank, but with 1000+ BoingBoing comments and half the blogosphere a-titter, this wank has matured.
San Francisco sex blogger Violet Blue used to be chummy with the folks at Boing Boing, and naturally, they linked her a lot. However, she recently discovered that they "unpublished" all posts that mentioned her, effectively excising her from the internet's most popular purveyor of wonderful things. Last week, VB wondered what happened (and note that all links to her blog are NSFW). Valleywag, "Silicon Valley's tech gossip rag" (must be thrilling) picked up the story, and promptly started sensationalizing the shit out of it: Did the Internet's free speech guardian try to hush up a girl-on-girl love affair?, they wondered, and speculated on How [Boing Boing editor] Xeni and Violet's Boing Boing affair went sour." It gets Dugg, of course, and pretty soon we're hearing about censorship, Trotsky and "strangely unethical" goings on. Violet posts a tiny-violin follow-up and people start pestering the Boing Boing editors in comments to unrelated posts.
So finally, Boing Boing responds. They say they did the "unpublishing" a year ago. They say they notified Blue. And then, in (*checks bottom of page*) 1100 comments and counting, the shit hits the fan. People accuse Boing Boing of hypocrisy, 1984 allusions fly all over the place, and the Boing Boing comment moderater completely fails to hold the moral high ground as she dances around explaining what Blue did that was so "evil." It's a huge game of they-said, she-said at this point, and figuring out what the hell is going on is frankly less interesting than tracking the endless comparisons to Stalinism. Nothing is like the gulags, people. Nothing.
Now with highlights!
Metafilter commenter sends BB a note from Winston Smith
Scalzi gets his teal deer on, defending Cory Doctorow from the mean metafilterians
Boing Boing's haters are worse than Donald Rumsfeld!
Whether it is redaction, bowdlerization, expurgation, or censorship I see no place for it here."
Boing Boing hates your freedom, just like the Republicans. :(
The OED doesn't deserve this kind of abuse.
BB Moderator Teresa COULD say something mean about that evil, lying attention-whore ... but she won't.
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| Attention Associates, wank spill in the freezer section. |
[02 Jul 2008|06:28pm] |
A bit of a mini wank that's a tad old, fortunately it freezes well.
Life Hacker posts a tip from Lunch in Box about a nifty way to freeze ground meat. Take your ground meat, put it in a gallon ziplock bag, pound it flat, and use a chopstick or ruler to press four lines into it to create nine square patties. Freeze. A nifty little hint that just takes a moment to do, saves bags, freezer space, and makes it easy to watch your portions.
It starts off well, with people posting their own helpful hints, but quickly goes downhill.
lionalbob,
Isn't this precise measuring procedure anal retentive or OCD symptoms?
People respond politely:
johnydover,
Or if you're on a diet and you're counting calories, or you can use the pre-proportions to make sure you don't break yourself off too much red meat at once, etc. It's a way of being aware of exactly how much you're eating.
A lot of people have dietary restrictions due to illness, too. Diabetics don't have to keep too much track of protein, but they're required to have a certain amount to balance out their limited carb consumption
Naturally, this doesn't go over too well:
Deprog Mori,
You don't need this for dietary restrictions. If you can't figure out how to limit your intake of X ingredient just by using common sense, you're screwed.
This is the OCD/AR version of portion control, but it really doesn't convey any sort of advantage to anyone.
Bruce A,
@Deprong Mori: Are you serious? OK, so let me run this by you: which is better? Being able to break off a couple patties which will thaw quickly or having to thaw a whole pound of ground beef when you only needed half a pound? I don't know about you, but I'm going to say option #1 is more advantageous.
Deprog Mori,
Nah, you don't freeze a whole pound of ground beef. Portion it any way you want, but don't be so AR/OCD about the whole thing. Duh.
Just portion your ground beef quickly. Just form a hamburger patty in the size and shape of a hamburger patty. Whether or not it's within 50 grams of a baseline amount is irrelevant.
Jesus, are you folks that fucking lame to not understand this?
And it goes on from there. Good times.
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| Have you ever seen a wall of zombies? |
[02 Jul 2008|10:05am] |
How has this not been posted yet?
At their World Wide Invitational, Blizzard announced Diablo 3! On the site they've already got a cinematic teaser, a narrated gameplay preview, and screen caps.
And Kotaku already scored an interview with the lead designer, who comments a bit on the lore, the similarities of WoW, and Battle.net.
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[02 Jul 2008|11:54am] |
Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation decided to do things a bit differently this week by dissing talking about webcomics including making jabs at certain popular ones like CAD. It's only been up for about an hour and there are about 100 forum replies already.
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| Wank not involving companions? Does not compute. |
[02 Jul 2008|05:47pm] |
Veteran Doctor Who wanker Kate Orman (Kate Orman) (aka lj user seeingred) is no fan of anonymous memes. Finding she was not not at all loved at the anonymous doctor who livejournal community - who_anon - Ms. Orman urged the meme's creator lolcoholic to shut the meme down.
But months later, Kate curiously starts her own anon community, which *surprise* attracts negative responses. ihasawall was up for zero point five seconds, so the amount of actual abuse is uncertain. But, not surprisingly, Kate continues the wank here at her macro community (ihasatardis) where she can log IP addresses, delete comments, and ban people.
Naturally, some readers are butthurt. Others are confused. Was there abuse? Who dares disparage the house of Orman? Luckily, readers repost examples of the hateful comments, such as the companion's identity is not a spoiler twelve episodes into the show. Kate and various minions respond with "oh my poor unspoiled eyes" and "I luff Kate."
The who_anon anonymice continue to not love Kate and are sad to have missed the opportunity to slag her at the dearly departed community.
Stay tuned. The wank is just beginning.
(Writeup by a mousie at wank_report.)
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| Boing? |
[02 Jul 2008|10:16am] |
I don't think I've ever seen BoingBoing wank here - is there a reason for that or just that nobody thinks to look there? The place explodes at least once a fortnight, and an experienced wanka can pick where the good stuff is gonna hit. The lastest 'splodey on the forum follows one of Cory Doctorow's posts - Hot day fun for kids - paint the house with water!
You can probably see where this is going: the "Don't you know there's a drought on?" folks are slugging it out with the "let the kids have their fun" folks, so there's fun for all.
Just a tip - for those who don't regularly frequent BoingBoing, it's a moderated forum - if someone has pissed a mod off you'll see their post come up "disemvowelled" - you can usually make out what is being said if you want to hard enough.
I couldn't find any tags that said "conservation" or "environmentalism", so I've left them off - sorry!
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| Minor Blogging Implosion |
[01 Jul 2008|06:54pm] |
Apparently, there've been some major rumblings going on at Boing Boing, relating to the unpublishing of articles by a specific blogger. In their rationale, they say they were troubled by her behavior, did not want to condone her behavior, but will not comment on her behavior.
And the comments begin.
Comments range from, "What'd she do???" to "CENSORSHIP! MILITARY STATE! OPPRESSION! 1984!" with a side of, apparently, a commenter who has declared war on vowels.
Will it grow? I sure hope so.
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| LITERARY AGENT SUES THE INTERNET FOR BEING MEAN TO HER. NEWS AT 11. |
[01 Jul 2008|12:57pm] |
It all started with a list - a list of questionable literary agencies and agents. Unfortunately, someone named Barbara Bauer was on this list. This made her very, very, very, very unhappy. (So unhappy, in fact, she demanded A BILLION DOLLARS from several bloggers for her pain and suffering.) Why, oh why won't they fork over the dough? And why are they laughing? What's a poor, maligned literary agent to do? SUE WIKIPEDIA AND THE BLOGOSPHERE!, that's what. Hmmph. That'll show 'em!
Oops...DISMISSED! Wikipedia, you bastard!
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| LJ down? |
[01 Jul 2008|10:58am] |
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Anybody else getting this message on LJ?
"Livejournal.com is currently unavailable for a brief emergency maintenance. We'll be up again shortly.
Thank you for your patience"
I tried checking status.livejournal.org but it's saying that there's no problems.
Edit: And it looks like it's already back up.
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| Something rotten in Furville. |
[30 Jun 2008|09:02pm] |
Pogoroo is a furry artist. This afternoon, there was an entry posted to his FurAffinity journal proclaiming his death on the 19th of June by a drunk driver. It was posted by his long distance girlfriend GhostlyDingo, who says that Pogoroo's mother called her shortly after the incident to advise her of what had happened. Due to grief, GhostlyDingo says she's been staying off the internet and this is why she did not make an announcement until now. (ETA: Original entry had been BAHLEETED, but someone posted a copy on their website which I've inserted.)
At first, there is much grieving. As expected people give their condolences. Then along comes the first shred of doubt by thefurwithoutaname, asking for proof. This irritates folks some, and admittedly thefurwithoutaname is not exactly the most polite person with his replies. It's pointed out that nobody seems to be able to locate any obituary online for Pogoroo, in spite of the death being almost two weeks ago.
The plot thickens further when it's pointed out that just a week ago, a post was made in Pogoroo's journal by another friend claiming he is without a computer for awhile. The most interesting part of the post was the mention that everyone that had purchased a commission from him will be fully refunded upon his return. After this journal is pointed out, it and all the previous journals (save for the death notice) are mysteriously deleted.
Some of the choicest comments in the thread are from Straitfox, a fellow with a 'fursona' of a criminally insane fox in a straight jacket known for doing his share of wanking:
"Oh i'm a nice person but I thin kyou have that backwards....I do not want to talk to you, YOu do not seem to be a person I can trust and ge along with so fuck that on your conscience you stupid TROLL!
OWNED! BOOYAH!"
Saving caps of the journal now, because I don't think it's long for this world either.
ETA: Also, something I just noted on my own. GhostlyDingo made a journal post about a week back complaining about people who beg her for free art. Kind of an odd thing to focus on when your boyfriend just died.
ETA II: Oh hey, and she also posted a week ago about commissioning her for fursuits, and to contact she or Pogoroo for concept art! Sheeesh. This has been a pretty messily faked death.
ETA III: Comment just recently left by Rhari (bolding mine): "Yeah I'm in now. Pogo, this is low. I hope wherever you move to, you can find new friends.
Also, Ghostlydingo's Husband contcted me today askin why she's so sad. Apparently he didn't know her internet boyfriend is le dead."
After this comment, GhostlyDingo is now starting to claim she's possibly been duped as well: "Remember when I said If anything was wrong with this it was that he got some other lady to call me and say that? Do you think maybe thats it?" Also she is claiming that the aforementioned husband is on his way to being her EX and that they still live in the same house.
ETA the last (?): All journals have been deleted, and the PogoRoo account has been banned by the mods while they investigate the situation. They did mention they found it linked to five other accounts, but they aren't mentioning which.
There was a second journal posted on PogoRoo's account after the first was deleted (and it was archived before it was also deleted), but since it supposedly contains the undead's phone number I won't be linking to it. I will however, give a summary: GhostlyDingo proclaims she has clearly also been duped, and that PogoRoo must have gotten some lady to call her pretending to be his mother. A couple folks buy it, but soon it's pointed out that it still doesn't explain the journal GhostlyDingo had written a few days after she would have thought he was dead advising people to contact EITHER of them for concept art for fursuits. At this time, the commentors notice that GhostlyDingo's account was only just created on the 12th of the month. It's suggested that GhostlyDingo IS PogoRoo, and he is attempting to escape his debts. To make his story more credible, he likely pretended to be GhostlyDingo's husband as well, asking Rhari why she was upset so that once folks got suspicious she could act as if she were duped as well. After this proclamation, there is no more commentary from GhostlyDingo.
NO WAIT MOAR ETA: The mods at FA have spoken to PogoRoo's former roomate. He confirmed PogoRoo moved out on the 22nd and that he's never heard of GhostlyDingo before.
WheelieMachine sums up the whole thing quite well: "What a shitty deal... first you die, then you're kicked out of your own parents' house.
Talk about insult to injury!"
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| another death in the fan-ily |
[01 Jul 2008|08:08am] |
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Don S. Davis, 1942-2008.
I only knew him from Stargate, but he did quite a few other shows and films, and everyone I know who met him said he was a sweetheart.
RIP "Hammond of Texas".
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