YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS: Delia Derbyshire - The original Doctor Who theme

Okay, so pretty much everybody's already heard this: the original Doctor Who theme from 1963. But, really, ain't it just goddamned amazing that anyone was able to produce a piece like this back then? Seriously, check it out, and try to imagine how it was possible.

Turns out, it was possible because the BBC Radiophonic Workshop hired an electronic music pioneer named Delia Derbyshire. The theme itself was composed by Ron Grainer--complete with unusual notations about "sweeps", "swoops", "wind clouds", and "wind bubbles"--but actually produced by Derbyshire. The final piece was all electronically-produced sounds, but this was the era before synthesizers, so she produced it all with electronic oscillators and other arcane gear, and assembled them all by physically splicing together bits of audio tape. Grainer was apparently so amazed and impressed with the result that he tried to get the BBC to Derbyshire credit--and royalties--as co-composer.

Anyway, she's also done a bunch of other cool, weird, atmospheric stuff, and you can download some of it at this site. It's very much worth checking out, especially "Dreams" and "Moogies Bloogies".

[video games] LittleBigPlanet

It is a goddamned crime that LittleBigPlanet is only coming out for the PlayStation 3. Seriously, why does God hate me so much?

Hey, folks.

Yeah, and this would be why I've been so slow on posting, lately: I've finally put together a custom template for this site. I can't stand just choosing a pre-created one from a list, and also, this one will let me post wider images without breaking the tables.


I promise to restrain myself, though. 14% of Web users are still suffering through an 800x600 resolution, right?

Anyway, let me know if this new template starts breaking horribly for anybody. I'm trying out a couple slightly weird things, here, and I'm not too certain how they'll work for all browsers. (Although I did jump through hoops to make sure IE 5.5 would actually handle that dropshadow effect on the logo. Goddamned IE 5.5.)

I'm breaking a bunch of Web development rules by using tables for the layout instead of CSS-based positioning. I gave it a very serious try, but my CSS interacted with Blogger's CSS in some weird, bad ways. And, let's be honest: CSS layouts require a lot of dirty hacks and contortion acts in order to achieve results that would be incredibly simple and reliable for tables. I know CSS layouts are the right way to do things, though. So, maybe next time. For now, I just want something that works.

LWaSH session 2: More character creation

The Tuesday Night crew continued--but didn't quite complete--development of their Van Helsing Society operatives last night, and it was loads of fun.

The players finally got to do the "guest star" phases of character-building, meaning that they all picked names out of a hat and then had to figure out ways to work their characters into guest roles into each others' pulp novels. This lead to some weird and difficult chronology questions, and one character only got a single guest star in his book, since it took place too early in history for most of the group to logically participate in it (which, of course, lead to another book getting three guest stars instead of two).

I think if I had to do it all over again, I'd hack the standard SotC character generation so that Phase Three was the character's solo novel (and, probably, canonical first adventure), while Phases Four and Five are for team-up novels with only two stars each. I think that'd be a lot easier to manage.

Anyway, we didn't quite complete everybody's guest star roles, but we did manage to get a whole lot of skills-and-stunts stuff done. I'm hoping to help people finish up via email.

Highlights of the session include:

• One player deciding that the aspect she got out of a guest-starring role was a competitive, anything-he-can-do-I-can-do-better relationship with the main character . . . which is the character's way of expressing a crush that's obvious to everyone but her


• That same player deciding that her plane, "Blaze of Glory", is less a specific aircraft than a title and role that's bestowed upon any plane she flies . . . as long as the previous Blaze has been destroyed (That is so freaking brilliant!)


• Much discussion--and even a drawing!--of Marko Kraljevic's arch enemy, a steam-powered war robot built by the Ottoman Empire called The Mechanical Turk


• Lots of moments where people's various novel plots and the specialties of their guest stars clicked together perfectly


• Cool decisions about where to get photos to illustrate the character sheets: Marko the Slavic folk hero is likely to be played by Rade Serbedzija, Arthur the gentleman thief will be David Tennant, and Abraham the cultist-fighting gunslinger will be Lance freaking Henriksen.


• The Hitler character's "Unausprechlichen Namen" aspect, describing his state of metaphysical namelessness after his identity was stolen by the demon who went on to become der Fuhrer (people have trouble even remembering him, and could never possibly believe he's actually Adolf Hitler, even in the face of evidence)


• Outside of the game, the near-unanimity of our Chinese orders, leading several of us to become General Tso's Army

So, all in all, a lot of good fun, and we're not even playing, yet. The hypothetical pulp novels this session produced are so cool I wish I could commission an artist to do a nice color piece for each, which I could then Photoshop into a set of book covers.

[M&M] Martial artist character builds

So, pretty recently, I ran across a post by Rob Donoghue (one of the creators of my current favorite-game-in-the-whole-world, Spirit of the Century) where he laments the lack of good RPG systems for flavorful, diverse, and mechanically-deep martial arts action. And he mentioned that systems where "Martial Arts builds like superpowers" are lacking because they only offer "different color for mechanically identical characters".

And that seems kind of odd to me, since I've always figured that if I was gonna run something with a lot of martial arts focus, I would almost certainly use Mutants & Masterminds, because it would offer a tremendous amount of mechanical variation between fighting styles. So maybe Rob just meant "mechanically identical" in the sense that martial artists in most superhero games would just be built with the same subsystems as any mutant, vigilante, or sorcerer? That would make sense, although it's definitely not something that I'd call a drawback.

Anyway, the whole thing really makes me want to test out M&M's capabilities with martial arts character builds, just to see if I can actually do the stuff I think I can with it. I don't think I've really got time to properly get into such an experiment right now, but I can at least write up a few thoughts.

The way I'd like to start is by taking the classical five animal styles of kung fu and defining them very vaguely (and with little to no regard for their real life characteristics) in the mechanical terms of Mutants & Masterminds. Let's give it a try, shall we?

Tiger Style

• decently high Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution


• high-damage unarmed attacks based on Strike power (possibly lethal damage--Tiger Claw Fist!--and definitely with the Mighty feat)


• low Attack bonus, plus a few ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and Attack Specialization for that Strike power (kung fu basasses shouldn't be any good with guns, after all)


• maybe a rank (or even two) of the Rage feat, or--for a more super-power martial artist--the Boost power (applied to Strength, possibly Constitution)


• Takedown Attack feat, so that tiger practitioners can tear through multiple enemies in their fury


• Improved Block, Improved Sunder, and Weapon Break feats, because shattering weapons sounds thematically appropriate

Crane Style

• high Dexterity


• high-damage Strike power (non-lethal, maybe without the Mighty feat, and possibly even with a Limited: Humans Only flaw, because crane practitioners are striking at pressure points)


• again, low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and Attack Specialization with Strike


• a few ranks of the Improved Block, maybe some Improved Disarm and Weapon Bind feats (disarming dudes just seems right)


• Improved Throw and Improved Trip feats (knocking dudes down also seems right)


• Acrobatic Bluff and Redirect feats, and of course some ranks of the Acrobatics skill (crane practitioners make dudes hit their friends, but they do it through deceptive movement rather than guile)

Leopard Style

• decent Strength, high Dexterity


• low-damage Strike power (probably non-lethal damage, probably with the Mighty feat, and--here's something cool--with the Autofire extra, which should actually work quite nicely with melee attacks, especially ones with more accuracy than power)


• low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and plenty ranks of Attack Specialization with Strike


• Move-By Action feat and (maybe) a little bit of the Speed power, for hit-and-run goodness


• Instant Up feat


• the Stealth skill seems kind of appropriate

Snake Style

• high Dexterity


• high-damage Strike power (maybe lethal, maybe without the Mighty feat, and possibly with a Limited: Humans Only flaw, because the pressure point thing makes sense for snake practitioners, too)


• low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and plenty ranks of Attack Specialization with Strike


• Stunning Attack feat (combined with a powerful Strike, this should be pretty potent, and fits a "venom" theme)


• maybe some ranks of the Defensive Roll and Evasion feats (snake practitioners might not be sturdy, but they're resilient because they're flexible)


• Elusive Target feat, because snakes as wiggly and hard to aim at from a distance


• Prone Fighting feat, because snakes are low to the ground


• a rank or two of the Improved Initiative feat, because snakes strike quickly


• maybe some ranks of the Escape Artist skill, possibly also Medicine, as it fits with the pressure points and venom themes

Dragon Style

• high Strength and Constitution (because one of these these has to be the brick style), and also a decent Charisma


• decent Strike power (lethal or non-lethal, most defintiely with the Mighty feat)


• low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and plenty ranks of Attack Specialization with Strike


• a few ranks of the Protection power (non-Impervious, maybe with the Limited: Physical Damage flaw


• maybe a bit of the Immovable power, because nobody gets to push a dragon around


• All-Out Attack feat (great resilience means dragon practitioners can throw caution to the wind, sometimes)


• Improved Grab, Improved Grapple, and Improved Pin feats, since the brick ought to get the wrestling abilities


• Fast Overrun and Improved Overrun feats (charging through crowds of enemies all impressively seems right for the dragon style)


• several ranks of the Fearsome Presence feat, also the Distract, Fascinate, Fearless, and Startle feats, and finally some ranks of the Intimidate skill (scary and impressive seems to work with the dragon theme, to me)

There are a lot of other styles I can think of trying--like a monkey style, or drunken boxing, or something involving weapons--and of course things get extremely crazy (and awesome) if you start including blatantly superhuman wuxia-style abilities, which is something I'd also like to play around with a bit. I definitely think Mutants & Masterminds could handle a hell of a martial arts campaign, with characters that are completely distinctive in terms of both flavor and mechanics. And, damn, I'd really love to try it some time.

LWaSH session 1: Character creation

Okay, the Tuesday Night crew got together last night for our first Lost Worlds and Secret Histories session. Six players showed up for this one instead of the four which I'd originally been expecting. I kind of worry about the difficulties inherent in getting a total of seven adults with jobs and lives together for a few hours every week, but the two new players are awesome folks, and I'm really excited about having them involved.

Anyway, since we only meet for very short sessions (and have a fairly dire pre-game chatting problem), we only managed to make it through the first three phases of character creation, but it was loads of fun, and the characters that they're creating are cool as all hell. I'll have to see if I have everybody's permission to actually talk about my players by name (and hopefully link to their websites, too), but I figure it's okay to discuss their character concepts. So get a load of this:

• Scottish street urchin raised by nuns and trained by the Vatican as a thief to retrieve sacred or dangerous artifacts


• Intrepid girl reporter, socialite, and gay divorcee; sort of a character from the pulp subgenre of "thrilling romance", and also very Brenda Starr


• Religious, gun-toting, supernatural-evil-fighting cowboy; sort of a latter-day Solomon Kane with a little Charlton Heston thrown in


• Immortal, superhumanly-strong Serbian folk hero Kraljevic Marko, a legend searching for a place in the modern world


• Tomboyish, chainsmoking daredevil pilot with a plane called "Blaze of Glory" and a mysterious connection to a Native American thunderbird spirit


• ADOLF FREAKING HITLER. The idea here being that this guy, the real Hitler, was supplanted by a demon who then went on to lead the Nazi party and Germany itself. So this ought to be interesting.

Can you see why I'm all excited? This is going to rock hard.

Anyway, we're setting this game in 1937 instead of Spirit of the Century's default of 1922 or thereabouts. Also, instead of the Century Club, the PCs are going to be members of the Van Helsing Society, a group dedicated thwarting supernatural evils. We'll figure out the details together as we go along.

Next Tuesday, we'll do the remaining phases of character generation, in which they'll all figure out how they guest-starred in each other's adventures--giving them all some amount of shared history--and then we'll get to the mechanical stuff, choosing skills and stunts. Skills should go pretty quickly, but I should probably put together some stunt suggestions to speed that part along.

When they're done with everything, I'll be able to give them all their custom character sheets. I've almost got the design done already, actually, but I wanna type in all their info for them instead of having them actually write it all down all over again.

YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS: Saul Williams - Ohm

I've been seriously busy this weekend working on both a new design for this blog, and also a custom character sheet for the Spirit of the Century campaign I'm gonna be running. Oh, and I probably ought to do my freaking taxes, too, huh?

Anyway, here's some music you need to hear.

Saul Williams is a poetry / spoken word guy whose work achieves sublime, transcendent awesomeness when it's set to a hip-hop beat. I think he might have gotten some wider notice, kinda recently--I noticed that "Black Stacey", off his self-titled album, actually got a pretty serious video--but I first learned about him through his contribution to the first Lyricist Lounge compilation. And that's the song I want to share with you folks today: Saul Williams' "Ohm".