I realise its basically just an advert for a book.  But its a really well done advert for a book.

I’ve done a fairly large overhaul of both my blogs and changed the way I’m using them from now on.

blog.TheIlluminatedEngineer.com is expanding to be my main personal blog. I’ll post anything about work, technology, holidays and my photography there. If your a member of my family that’s the one you want to follow. Any software projects I work on will also be covered there.

As part of this I’ve moved most of my image hosting on to Flickr which should make it easier for me to upload larger numbers of images. Keep an eye on the recent pictures widget for new photos that don’t warrant a post of their own.

blog.TheCircularSnake.com will be reduced down to just geek and gaming topics. It’s where I’ll cover rpg and computer games, movies, comics, music, found videos and web-sites. Gaming projects, like the GEAR setting or my Artesia system updates, also go on this site.

Hopefully this means both blogs are more likely to be active and have a clean delineation of content.

Nice mashup of Annie Lenox music videos.

In the last post I settled on a mechanic for the game but left a few threads hanging.  This post will address them.

This weeks random steam punk picture is a picture of a steampunk horse by dasAdam.

There’s no lore sections in here.  I’ve been banging my head against a wall with them for a week now with no real inspiration so I’ve decided its better to get this post out without them than have it sit here any longer.  Just pretend I said something entertaining at the start of each section. Continue Reading…

If you read my earlier post on PAX East 2010 you’ll perhaps remember I ranted a little about a terrible RPG demo I took part in for Wizards of the Coast’s upcoming re-release of Dark Sun.  Dark Sun was my favourite of the old school AD&D settings, I was excited to see if finally return and that the demo was so bad really annoyed me.  In this post I hope to cover some thoughts and guidelines on running RPG game demos.

You might be asking what qualifies me to make these recommendations.  Very little if I’m honest; I’ve never actually run one myself.  What I have done however is run an awful lot of different games, of differing styles, using different systems over the years.  I’ve also taken part in a fair number of demos. Continue Reading…

Retro gaming meets Hollywood blockbuster style special effects

Part 2 of my review of PAX East 2010.  You can find part 1 here. Continue Reading…

I’ve not posted much recently as I’m still recovering from a manic and hectic few days over in Boston for PAX East.  This was the first PAX East so it had a few rough edges but overall it was a good 3 days.  Travel to Boston is much easier than Seattle so I can see PAX East being a more common venue for us Europeans than PAX prime (as the main PAX is now being referred to).

What follows is a rambling, though vaguely chronological, record of some highlights from the 3 days split over two posts. Continue Reading…

In the last post I discussed the general kind of dice mechanics available and settled on a Bucket’O'Dice system.  In this post I’ll look at the core probabilities and difficulty levels of the system.  This is probably the single most important post of the entire system, everything hinges on getting good probabilities set down here.  Mistakes will be compounded and expanded through the rest of the system.

This weeks random steam punk picture is a photo of a difference engine by IvanAndrevich. Continue Reading…

I really don’t want to think how much practice it takes not to drop any.  Perhaps not as impressive as the naked woman hanging 20 foot over the stage with no safety net while keeping 20 going at once during the Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas, but still good to watch.