The FATE Core kickstarter is in it's last day, and I strongly recommend that  if you haven't pledged yet, you go ahead and do so now. For a measly dollar, you get a PDF draft of the FATE Core document, and for $10.00, you get a huge amount of extra PDFs. Plus, if they make the 400K mark, then they'll be putting out a simplified version of the Dresdin Files game system. This is one of the best bargains I've ever seen in a kickstarter.

It's been a mystery that has been observed in deserts around the world, and has been noted by travelers including Marco Polo: the low thrumming sound that large sand dunes make, known as The Singing Sands.

Now, a team of engineers may have solved the mystery: according to them, the interaction between sliding sand on large dunes and the hard-packed cores set up a standing wave that makes the sounds. As this video shows, they picked an interesting experimental style to demonstrate the phenomenon:

Mightygodking, previously known for his brilliant redubbing of the Marvel comics Civil War series and (NSFW) Ultimate Power, as well as the most dead-on snarky Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows review, has actually done some serious work.

For instance, he has written the Best Alternate Universe Beatles Story, EVER.

This isn't just fanfic. How good is it? Well, I got over my Beatles fan phase years ago, and still I wish this could have happened. Starting  from the real life event where Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles $30000 to appear on Saturday Night Live, real life event, we see a small change made, and then watch as the changes ripple out, and become larger and larger. And then at the end, we see the subtle twist that explains everything.

It's utterly brilliant. I recommend it highly.

So with the recent release of the 2nd. edition of the Mongoose Runequest rules, the question arose about which was the best version of Runequest. I was amazed at how many people favored Runequest III (Mythic Earth- ick!) Or MRQ II (I guess I'll have to have a look at it). Things do change, I guess. As for me...

For me, the best version of Runequest is always going to be the version I started playing over 25 years ago: Runequest 2nd. It had chargen that was simple and straightforward without adding up fiddly percentages, and included enough examples of extended experience that player could create their own previous experience templates. Likewise the rules for combat, encumberance and magic were simple and straightforward, a quality later editions lost. The basic set gave one enough world to build on, without overly constraining the GM or players. And if one wanted more cultural info, the supplements were wonderful. Sure you could still see bits and pieces where Runequest was derived from D&D, but at the time it was the go-to game for people who wanted things like a skill system, flexible character advancement, gritty combat and hit locations, all that stuff.

Best of all, the modularity of BRP let us combine stuff from other Chaosium games as they came out to make a melange that would make game world purists cry: Superworld? Yay! Japanese schooolgirls with superpowers invade Glorantha! Ringworld? Yay! There's a colony of prehistoric Kzinti on Glorantha! Call of Cthulhu? Yay! My Kzinti schoolgirl Rune Priestess tries to bind Cthulhu!

Oh yeah, we were young and didn't know any better, we were the original "Plug and Play" generation, and we made Rifts look well thought out. What we lacked in professionalism or literary merit we made up with in enthusiasm. Good times, good times.

Now this is cosplay old school style.

Over on the Sweetjuniper Log, Dutch describes how his kid wanted to be Robocop. Dad agreed, but instead of doing the traditional thing and going to the store, he went down too the basement and gatghered a ferw scraps. A few coats of paint later, and ta-daa! Robokid!

Here's a description of how it all worked out, and some more pictures here.  I myself am absolutely enchanted by this costume.







And Robokid with the cops he's going to replace. Dig the totally serious expression on Robokid's face.

I swear I've seen cheesy martial arts movies based on this premise.

So stop me if you've heard this one before: two sisters, Lin and Yin Xiao are expert martial artists, and disappointed by the crop of weaklings they find on dating sites. So what to do to find a good, strong man? Obviously go back to the traditional custom of holding a kung fu tournament to find husbands for warrior princesses. At the end of the three day tournament, which includes archery and crossing sharpened bamboo stakes carrying heavy weights, if the would-be suiter can defeat one of them in no-holds-barred combat, then he can actually propose to one of  them.

I guess they're just old-fashioned girls.




The contest surprisingly has attracted fairly few contestants, sincew there's not thatmany old-fashioned guys around.  However, the real problem is, as people have noted, that they'll probably end up with THIS guy:






...well at least their outfits will match.

Ju8st to get you through that lousy Wednesday, here's a couple of vids from some bands I'm listening to these days. They can be classified as Indy, but only just- they don't meet the "must be tedious" qualifation. In fact, all of these are pretty peppy, as befitting a Wednesday.

( Let the Music Begin! )

And that's that. Now back to your dull trudge through Wednesday Afternoon.

I had a nice review of The Secret of Kells ready to go, and naturally I had to restart Firefox and lost it. Oh well.

It's truly a sad pity I lost the review, because I went into detail on what a beautiful movie it is, not only in terms of the abstract but detailed art, but also thematically. Not to mention that in terms of storytelling it's far more sophisticated than its peers in animated movies. I enthused about the symbolism in shapes and colors, and the fact that Aisling, the Tuatha Dé Danann moved like how a faerie should move; graceful infused with magic, more like a wind or animal than a human. How Aisling at once was nonhuman in appearance and movement, and yet human in feeling.

Oh and in this wonderful lost review I also went into detail about the contrast between the beauty of nature (as represented by the Tuatha de Danan Aisling) which Branden and the artistic monks can see, and the rigid fearfulness of the Abbot; likewise, I examined the contrast again between the greed and violence of the Vikings, and the hope represented by the Book of Kells.  I talked extensively about the way it shows (not tells!) important values, like courage, standing up for what one believes in, and being open to the natural world...without engaging in the easy solution-based moralizing that most cartoons do. I pointed out that the ending is bittersweet, in terms of loss- the Book of Kells may absolve and heal, but it can't bring back the people that were lost, either killed or separated from due to their different natures.

More's the pity, in my most brilliant section, I pointed out how The Secret of Kells is a wonderful example of Irish-style syncretism; the old gods are not destroyed or absorbed, but made accommodation for. While I admitted in the review that there's a degree of playing fast and loose with some myths to fit the story, I also make the case that it's probably no more than Irish storyteller's have done since time immemorial. And if an Irish director can't borrow some myths, who can?

Anyway, it's a terrible terrible sad thing that you can't read that review, because it was wonderful Long and detailed and authoritative. All I can do , all that's left for me to do now then I suppose, is recommend Secret of Kells wholeheartedly. Go and see it, hopefully in a theater that, unlike mine, has a good speaker system, and watch that beautiful film.  Myself, I'll just be staying in tonight and mourning my review.

That is, Earth has got to get itself a ring system. Why? Because from he ground, it would be stunningly beautiful, as this video shows:




Can you imagine what it would be like if Earth had had those rings throughout history? The entire history of astronomy would be different, as there would be no doubt that the earth was round. And beyond that, the effect on religion and mythology I can't even imagine.

So there's obviously only one thing we can do: move a largish asteroid, say the sized of Ceres into close orbit, and convert it into rings. We owe it to future generations.