But I gotta know what's your fantasy

Now back to G making a character from every game he owns. Rosa's been ok about what she calls my 'stupid boy-project' because it keeps me quiet and means that I'll mibbee manage to sort out all the books that are boxed up in the spare room in time for the wedding. What this actually means is that books are now strewn about the ho0use as I leaf through loads of old stuff I forgot I had and decide that even though I haven't even considered digging a certain book out in 15 years I really don't want to get rid of it cos y'know I might need it at some point. Anyway whilst digging through my old stuff I've come across the first RPG I ever bought so lets make a chracter for Final Fantasy.

Sorry but that's the best image I could find.

This whole roleplaying thing started for me a little earlier when My Uncle Andy got me The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for my 10th birthday. I was immediately hooked into the choose your own adventure books and less than a year later when I picked up The Fighting Fantasy RPG at the incredible expense of £1.75 I was stuck with this as my hobby for life. Anyway let's get started,

Our adventurer has three statistics Skill, Stamina and Luck. We determine Skill by rolling a 6 sided die and adding 6, I roll a 5 making starting Skill 11, Stamina by rolling two dice and adding 12, I roll a 6 and a 1 so starting Stamina is 19, and Luck by rolling a 6 sided die and adding 6, I roll a 5 making starting Luck 11. The adventurer carries a sword, a backpack, a lantern, up to 10 provisions, amount is up to GM, which can be used to restore Stamina and a potion of Skill, Stamina or Luck which can restore the relevant statistic. And that's it really apart from naming him, let's call him Bob.

Combat is resolved by rolling 2 dice and adding Skill withe the loser losing two Stamina. Luck can be rolled equal or under to inflict more or take less damage though you lose a Luck point and run the risk of the opposite effect happening if you're unlucky. There are additional rules for multiple combatants and doing stuff like moving silently, pretty much all additional actions require you to roll under your Skill with 2 dice, but that's pretty much it. There then follows two dungeons for your players to explore done in a format familiar to anybody who's ever played a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. They're both good fun and we kids had quite a few happy hours of this.

I never got any of the other books as by the end of that year I was running a Middle Earth Roleplaying campaign which was a huge leap in complexity but I can't think of a better introduction to roleplaying. It cost so little that you could take a risk, already had a format which every bairn of my age was familiar with and whilst simple it still managed to do a decent though basic job. Top game!

Dundee United 0-1 Barcelona

Should have been 1-0 to United but the ref was an idiot who disallowed a clearly onside United goal then gave away a dodgy penalty.

Parochial News Day

There is only one story in the news this week and it's that Dundee United are set to give Barcelona another famous drubbing tonight!

BARCELONA THOUGHTS

Most thoughts at Dundee United today turned to Barcelona as preparations for Thursday’s glamour friendly against the Spanish giants got under way (writes Tom Duthie).

With a stand-in goalkeeper and a striker to find, however, Tangerines boss Craig Levein also had other things on his mind. Fan and player focus for the next few days, though, will be firmly on Barca, who flew into Edinburgh at lunchtime before heading for St Andrews, where they will be based for the rest of the week. With the Spanish season finishing little over a month ago, their pre-season work only started on Saturday and, as well as games against United and Hearts, Frank Rijkaard’s superstars face double training sessions most days here. Not on the plane from Spain were Copa America stars Lionel Messi and Raphael Marquez, they will remain on holiday until next week, while club captain and key defender Carles Puyol is missing pre-season work because of injury. Heading for Fife, though were the likes of Ronaldinho, Deco and, of course, massive summer signing from Arsenal Thierry Henry. At Tannadice, Craig Levein made no attempt to hide the fact the prospect of doing battle against such talent meant there was an extra buzz about the place when his players arrived for training this morning. “Of course there is. This is a game everyone wants to be involved in, and all the players will be trying to show they should be,” he said. “I’m no different. To be working towards a game against Barcelona is nice.” That won’t stop the gaffer taking care of the business he has to in the run up to the start of the SPL season on Saturday week, tickets for the opener against Aberdeen are on sale now, and his search for a striker continues. Now added to the many calls he’s been making about an attacker are enquiries concerning goalkeepers after it emerged Lukasz Zaluska had broken his foot and will be out for six weeks. “You’ve no idea just how much work I’ve been doing to fix up a striker. I’d like one for Thursday, but the most important thing is I get a player of the right quality so I can’t say that will happen,” added Craig. “Now I’ve also got the goalkeeping situation to think about as well. We knew Lukasz had a problem, but didn’t realise how bad it was until he got a scan and he didn’t either. “With the Barcelona game so close, it is obviously a big disappointment for him, but these things happen in football and now it is a case of looking around for cover.” Craig was happy with yesterday’s 2-2 draw against Raith at Stark’s Park, a game that saw young Ghanaian Prince Bauben make his debut. The 19-year-old has been on trial and has signed a three-year contract. He is seen as one for the future, but his early progress suggests he may force his way into the squad sooner than expected. “He’s got talent, though the reason he played yesterday was because he needed games. “The game was a good exercise and very competitive. “It gave the boys a good run out and I was pleased to see (Christian) Kalvenes and (Willo) Flood get action.”

I feel fully confident in a 2-1 victory for the Tigers and you all know how rarely my sports predictions are wrong.

It's the suede denim secret police!

So I'm off work after taking a fall off my bike leaving me with a bad arm, broken finger and awfy sair skint knees. Luckily I can report that wearing a helmet is now officially a good thing as though my old noggin was cracked hard on the pavement I ended up with nary a lump. So as I'm laid up at home I can actually start on my RPG characters with a new edition of an old game,


Now Paranoia's a strange one to start with because in many ways it's the antithesis of what's expected in RPG's. In most games players are expected to co-operate to achieve their goals whilst in Paranoia they are gleefully encouraged to stab each other in the backs, other games have a clearly defined mission whilst here the mission is invariably impossible, an excuse for players to stab each other in the back or a long-winded joke and finally where other less fun games discourage random player deaths it's unusual to play though 5 minutes of Paranoia without somebody getting theirs and it doesn't really matter as every character has five clone backups ready to take his place. This all makes Paranoia the Marmite of roleplaying, you either love it or hate it and very little will convince you otherwise.

Before we make the character a bit of a skiffy to the background. Paranoia is set in Alpha Complex a gigantic post-apocolyptal underground city ruled by The Computer. The Computer was originally installed to keep the citizens safe but has gone completely mad and is now involved in a perpetual hunt for mutant commie traitors. The players play Troubleshooters who's job it to hunt down traitors which of course they are. Think Brazil, THX 1138 and Big Brother chucked into a blender with The Marx brothers and you're about right. Okay on with the character,

First we're asked for the characters name and gender. Making him male's easy enough as to name this is a bit unusual in that it's done as Name - Clearance - Sector. He's red clearance so we'll call him Ronnie-R-Gun and not worry too much about it. We then hace to roll a 20 sided dice/2 for 6 skills the assign specialities and such. Rather than bore you with details I'll nip off and do that.

We now roll for the characters Service group and appropriate firm to find his day job. Ronnie is in the Armed Forces working as in the Ammunition Fresheners firm. You then pick a specialized skill, Ronnie gets energy weapons to make him leet with lasers. We then roll for the mutant power, having a mutant power is treason BTW, Ronnie get's Matter Eater which allows him to munch down on just about anything which can prove very handy when trying to eat at the staff canteen. After this is a quick roll to see what secret society Ronnie belongs to, being a member of a secret society is treasonous of course, and we get Communist. Ronnie is a Godless Communist out to destroy all that is good in Alpha Complex! He also gets more skills particularly Propoganda which is very very treasonous. To finish off we give Ronnie two tics, Ronnie is an habitual nose-picker and giggles like a girl when stressed. And here he is,

If anybody's wondering the base mechanic is to pick the relevant skill then try to roll under it's number with a 20 sided die eg Ronnie would have to roll under 12 to shoot somebody with his laser. You know it's not until now that it hit me that the new Paranoia doesn't have any of the normal stat we'd expect in an RPG like strength, intelligence etc but instead replaces them rather niftily with the general Knowledge and Action skills. This works really well for the loose type of play encouraged in the game by keeping everything simple.

That was actually quite fun though I'm not sure if it's interesting to read as peeps who don't play RPG's will probably find it even more incomprehensible than my normal blog but there you go. I'll inflict more on you soon.

In just 7 days I can make you a man!

I've never really mentioned my hobby of playing roleplaying games which I've been doing for about 24 years now. I'm currently running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay every week or so which was supposed to be an epic, dark fantasy quest but has turned out to be more Blackadder in Fantasyland as my players bumble their way from one mishap to another. A great example of this is Rosa's character Podwit a pie-obsessed, psychotic hobbit currently planning on faking his own death in order to avoid having to marry some lass he picked up in the pub when he should be concentrating on trying to save the world. I worry about Rosa sometimes.

Anyway this has all come up as this bloke mentioned in an RPG forum I visit his intention of creating a character for every game he owns and as I need a stupid project to distract me from all the wedding stuff I've decided to do it myself and inflict the results on you lot though I'll probably get distracted after the first few but it's something to do.

And yes you're right I am a sad wee geek who really should get out more but what can ye dae?

Will you buy this game?

Uh Oh We're In Trouble!

A short missive because I seem to have not blogged in some time. I've tried on a few different reasons for this and none of them seem to fit. In the end I think it's been a general laziness with the whole intraweb thing mixed with a growing unease about the upcoming nuptials.

Now don't be worried I'm just as sure as ever about getting wed to the daft Kiwigirl and it seems she's still deluded enough to think I'm worth it but this whole wedding thing is a complete pain. The bastard thing creeps into every part of your life until it seems everybody's talking about it and just when you seem to escape you find yourself babbling on about it. After this you start to chuck on everybodies elses expectations and you end up in some sort of twilight zone. It's late over here and I feel the need to shoot things in console land so I'll give you one really weird example...

Asking the Father of the Bride for her hand in marriage.

Now I personally consider this sort of crap to have gone out with brothel creepers and would never have considered asking Rosa's Dad as fucked up a question as this and wasn't surprised when Rosa said that despite being a bit old-fashioned it's not something he would expect. Now this is all knowing that Rosa's Dad is a Portuguese Catholic who could reasonably be expected to be a bit traditional, it's no a bad thing to be traditional, but if he didn't have trust in his children Rosa wouldn't be who she is. Contrast this with the lassies in my workplace who were all dying to know about me asking for my girls hand in marriage and what the father said. This is quite a wide mixture of age and education that all thought that decades of feminist thought should be thrown aside because it's 'romantic' for somebody to ask for their ownership. The question of course is what would happen if their fathers said no? Would they actually cast aside the love of their life because their dad wasnae keen? This sort of shite permeates peeps ideas about what weddings should be and it is really worrying. People are really fucked up!

Suffice to say it was important for both Rosa and I to speak to the respective parents and both her Mum and Dad were absolutely lovely when we dropped the bombshell, as were my auld dears, and whilst I'm quietly crapping myself about it I'm sure they'll be great when they come across.

Anyway it's now 5 weeks till the day so I promise to blog at least once a week til then.