All posts by Peter

The Ideal Pants (a treatise)

the mindlab

Groin.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this exercise it’s that you can’t very thoroughly describe an archtypal pair of pants without using the word “groin” a few times. Oh, I’m sure you can describe a lot of features of pants and vaguely give the location of those features, but if you want to give a position for anything above the knees and not directly associated with the waist, then you probably have to indicate some clue relating it’s proximity to the groin.

If you look at pants as being like a country then the cuffs and waist are sort of akin to the frontiers. The legs below the thigh are like far flung provinces. But ah, the groin! The groin is the like unto Grenich England from which all longitudes are judged, ancient Rome to which all roads lead, a sort of axis mundi of pants if you will.

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d20 Alternate Mechanics – Armor & Damage Reduction

Dragon's Den

As Bear and Loki pointed out in response to my last entry on the subject of D&D combat: the regular system may in some ways be strange or unrealistic, but it’s simple. There’s one die roll for attack and one set of dice rolled for damage.

There’s plenty of validity to this view. But D&D actually tries to cram alot of detail into the system with spells, combat maneuvers (at least in the 3.0 and 3.5 editions), and class abilities. My feeling is that the standard D&D/d20 system has come a long way but is stuck at a crossroads. On one hand it’s straddling a fence between the old amalgam of “sub-systems” (one set of rules for damage, one for spellcasting, one for skills, many for
other abilities) and a unified system (saving throws, skills, and attacks all work similarly). On the other hand it’s straddling a fence between a sort of simulationist attention to detail and a quicker, simpler system.

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“Dire-er and dire-er,” thought Alice.

the mindlab

Yesterday I was killing time on RPG.net and stumbled across this thread.

The premise, for those of you not well schooled in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, is that in recent editions D&D has been putting some unlikely looking things among it’s weapon choices for player characters. These include things like:

The Orc Double Axe – Think of two axes joined butt to butt.

The Dire Flail – two spiked ball and chains joined butt to butt.

The Dwarven Urgrosh – an axe with a spear point comming out of the butt.

The author starts out posting a few examples of progressively less likely weapons that he’s made up, like these. And then people take the ball (and chain) and run with it.

So, being the ardent embelisher of trends that I am, I tried my own hand at a couple.

Continue reading “Dire-er and dire-er,” thought Alice. →

Corporate Art – Part II (A Promising Career in Art Sales)

the mindlab

Initially the Corporate Art topic was intended to cover art works I’d actually done using found materials and stuff at work generally to spruce up the place. But procrastination beckoned, and now I’m getting back to it, but of course the digression must come first.

So today a little tangential story for yall. This falls more under the idea of “corporate art” I think loki probably suspected I was going to deal with when I mentioned the idea of these entries months ago.

From my experience, a more fitting title for this piece might have been:

The Road to Hell is Paved with Framed Classic Prints


And the Skulls of Salesmen Who Sell Them

But that seems a little on the long side so the original will have to suffice.

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Review: Returner (2002)

the mindlab

I was thinking of not reviewing Returner, but I feel that the word should get out on this one.

Synopsis: Skipping the lengthy rehashing of the plot on this one. Suffice it to say that the premise of the movie is what you would get if you combined the Terminator movies with E.T., then added a cup and a half of yakuza/Triads, topping the whole thing off with a sprinkling of CGI and cheap bullet-time effects (and is that a slight hint of The Professional I taste?).

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Fast & Loose Roleplaying, etc.

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I’ve been working on one of my roleplaying projects again and I think the groundwork, the basic system, is finally pretty much under control.

For a long time the working title of this game has been FaLoR (Fast & Loose Roleplaying). That’s one of the things I’d like to change at some point in the future. At the time I came up with it I thought it was short and had visual balance. But the more I read it the more it sounds like a cross between Valor and Fallacy, plus it’s got this weird EvErY OtHeR LeTtEr CaPs thing going on that is bugging me a bit.

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Review: Avalon (2001)

the mindlab

The deluge of reviews continues.

I have an enormous net-flix queue with something like 164 DVDs waiting to be seen. This is probably because any time something vaguely interesting pops on the screen I queue it. At this point I’ve figured that if I’m going to be watching all these things I may as well solidify a few thoughts on the subject, tout the things I love and warn others away from garbage. And here’s this handy blog-type-thing that might be of use in that capacity, so what the hey?

This week the question is asked, “Avalon (2001): Poor man’s Matrix or cyberpunk noir classic?”

The answer to this is mostly rhetorical, pretty subjective and at least in my case “a little of both”. But having answered this question I’m going to go ahead and expound on it for a few more paragraphs anyway.

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Love, Athena

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Apollo's amused
Lounges in the dawn
Clever with his lyre of goat horns and turtle
Shines his light down upon, upon the city.
Smile.

Hoplite helm, Aegis, spear and chiton
Zeus's nerdy daughter smiles over at you, down upon you
Shy and confident, joy in her eyes and smile.
She's in love
With you, mortal.
Smiling at you.

The sun is bright
The city spreads out ahead
Clever things for you to think and invent
The day is good.
Can't help smiling.

Athena loves you.