Christopher Moore

I just finished reading a book for the first time since July. Really, it was two books and the book I read in July was just a very long online cyberpunk serialization that was book length. I am pretty pleased with myself. It is not often that I read these days. I've been spending so much time working on my projects that I resent taking the time away from them to do something as frivious as reading. Nevertheless I did just spend like 20 hours playing Fallout in the past week, saw the new Bond (disappointing) and spent some time staring at nothing.

Back to the books -- The first I read was Bloodsucking Fiends, by Christoper Moore. I had to read it because I also purchased You Suck by the same. It would not have made any sense to read You Suck and not Bloodsucking Fiends, as the former is a written-twelve-years-later-takes-place-20-minutes-later sequel to the the later. First off, they are very quick reads. I started reading them at 6pm last night and finished this morning -- about 5 hours per book. I tend to read a bit slower than I used to because I noticed myself "speed reading" through the books to suck up the plot (hehe, suck) and ignore the prose. This pattern is even more apparent when I read comic books -- I read them super fast because there is not much dialog; probably the reason I don't enjoy reading them very much.

Both books are about newb vampires being hunted/taunted/attacked/courted by an older vampire. The books take place in San Francisco. I haven't read a book based in San Francisco that I can remember (or cross reference with my list, http://joelapenna.com/vanity.html) then again, I have a terrible memory when it comes to books; hence I keep a list of books I've read.

The things I liked about the books: The dialog was very witty and felt very natural. The characters frequently had this "what the hell?" confusion about them which was funny. Not so great was the lack of "what the hell?" confusion going on in the second book. The saving grace of the second book was a new character "Abby Normal," who if I had to describe using an Internet phenomena is the Robert Hamburger of Vampires; the prototypical high school goth chick. Her chapters in the second book are had me laughing most. I enjoyed that so much of what was going on was just outrageous enough that aside from the vampirism you would keep asking yourself "This probably could happen, huh..."

On odd thing about these stories is that two years ago my friend Josh recommended them both to me. I think I might have to trust his book opinion a little more. The reason I picked these up was that another friend, an avid reader also recommended them to me. When she mentioned the author I recalled Josh's suggestion and their powers combined caused me to read for all of the last ten of my waking hours.

Labels: books, cyberpunk, San Francisco

9:57 AM 0 comments links to this post

Fallout 3

Seems like a fun game so far! I played for two hours last night. I never played the other Fallout games so I don't get some of the contextual jokes but then again, I don't have the-old-game-wasn't-like-this baggage.

Labels: cyberpunk, games

9:27 AM 0 comments links to this post

How to run the hacking part of a cyberpunk game. Part I

This was taken from a recent email exchange I had with some friends in regards to running our own cyberpunk game.

First off, to dash Josh's hopes and dreams: This is a cool idea but of all the games we play, this is going to be one of the more expensive ones. Plastic tubes, foam and duct tape are cheap compared to any projectile driving device. Second, if you're going to represent technology, then it has to be to some degree realistic, what game are you playing if your "internets" is just a hand wavy alternate dimension/plane with the minor environmental effects? I think in both cases you'll require some sort of investment in enabling technology. GPS, airsoft guns, light or wireless access points. Something that will bring out the cyber part.

Making the interwebs is a very difficult prospect. I've tried games like "uplink" and have spent much time figuring out how to make "hacking" anything other than a drab and boring experience; mostly because its a drab boring experience. If life were more like the movie Hackers we'd be much better off but there would probably be more capsized oil tankers in the seas and far more dead artists threating the world for 25 million dollars. Row ... row ... row ...

I think one thing that could make this whole game more fun is distributed involvement. Because you have communication devices at your disposal, its possible to involve people who are not physically located at the game. For example. Joe schmoe is busy one weekend and cannot be onsite. He happens to be the puzzle solver sort of person so he knows a lot of what is going on. During game play something comes up, a player calls Joe schmoe and joe schmoe looks up on wikipedia the solution to the puzzle. Winner! Or, do you not want to consider the world wide web at your disposal?

I think another source of inspiration for this sort of game are ARGs. They do a good job of blending reality with gaming and since we're already in a derivative of the cyberpunk, dealing with real world tech in game would not be a bad thing. This game is also going to need much more preparation than another rpg because writing a website is not as easy as writing in script on a parchment.

Because we're not playing a tabletop game we can look at what shadowrun /current/ edition does with Decking. Because of the way networks have firewalled themselves from the internet a lot of decking is done inside. The running team gets the decker into the corp network, then they do their thing. Or they kidnap someone with approprate access and use their accounts. They did a good job of getting a character class that was essentially a solo gig and made it in integral part of the runner team. In otherwords even your hacker characters are going to have to get in there and be involved in modules. This also means that where people are in meatspace is relevant to where they are on the "interwebs."

Now, here is my pitch and Josh is in disagreement with me here. I think that you need a software framework to be easily able to build and interact with virtual puzzles. I think you'll need multiple gps enabled smart phones (iphone, android or s60) or wireless network + PCs, a server, wireless networking to get this game off the ground. Communications play a large part in the cyberpunk world -- especially when they go out and the players who have come to rely on their decker or their off-site drones lose some control. I also think you need some evolution of my software (http://missing.googlecode.com) or something like it (hopefully there is something better than the crap I have put together) to build any sort of technological layer on top of your game. Now the problem is you need this stuff to be accessible which means, like I mentioned earlier smart phones and laptops for the game.

Labels: Android, code, cyberpunk, missing

10:05 AM 1 comments links to this post

Tweets for Today

• 17:33 When did being a Gargoyle become justin.tv? What happened to all the cool subterfuge and working for the library of congress? #

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Labels: cyberpunk

6:05 PM 0 comments links to this post

Transmetropolitan

As Drew suggested (after writing about "Crooked Little Vein") I started reading Transmetropolitan, a Vertigo comic by Warren Ellis. Its a fantastic series and would suggest it to anyone who likes cyberpunk, bastards or abusive journalists.

Funny thing about the series. Last Saturday I got kicked out of a bar for berating people. I think it was because I had read two Transmet tradebacks before heading out and getting smashed. I felt it was my duty to inform people that they were assholes. DJs at bars don't like that, patrons don't like that and security guards don't like that. I left peacefully though so no broken nose.

Labels: comics, cyberpunk

1:08 PM 1 comments links to this post