Monday, April 25, 2005

The Obligitory Weekend Post

Well if this is how exciting Leicester gets I must go back to Dundee soon or I'll be insane. I had so little to do at work on Friday I finished at 2:30pm and went into town.

I looked into getting my phone fixed. Maybe its me but I realise that mobile phones in this day and age are disposable but the numbers in this particular phone are not. It's not like I can just, say, phone someone up and ask them their mobile number is it? The guy in Vodafone basically told me to go buy a new phone from their crappy range, while some geezer down the market had the phone out of my hand and in pieces trying to work out why it was broke before I could say, "Oi! That's my phone."

As you may recall the problem with the phone is the power-charger interface is worn away on both the phone and the charger so geezer reckons for £10 he could get me an external charger to get the battery working again. When he slipped in a new battery the phone worked fine, so I am going to invest the £10 now to get my numbers back and then buy a new contract phone in the next 2 months or so.

Spent most of the weekend puttering around the flat doing DIY stuff like nailing down the carpet on the stairs, sorting out the light bulbs and buying a dust-devil to clean out the car with. The latter led me to discover just how ugly 1 year's worth of dirt in a car is, muchless the remnants of my dad's bananas and pears he'd eaten all the way to Dundee.

Overdosed on chocolate, ice cream and other nice things but I ate 2 bananas a day and extra veg with my roast beef dinner so that's cool. I watched the cinematic treat of Krull, the latest Doctor Who and the Paul McGann Doctor Who movie (which is still pretty good in my mind at least).

I even bought a copy of the "War of the Ring" and spent most of Saturday convinced I was the Alexander of Middle Earth (barring the Irish/Greek accent, 70s Pat Sharp quiff and homo-eroticism of course) until I got so bored I abandoned all sense of tactics, let Frodo wander off on his own and get killed by an orc and still completed the damn mission with 7 of the Fellowship dead or missing in Lothlorien. Obviously the "Easy Mode" does what it says on the tin. And I am no amazing general.

I also invested in the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system. The book printing itself is fantastic, the insanity system is much more debilitating (like you no longer gain heroic idiocy: immunity to fear, but rather really chilling abberations like pyromania, paranoia and obsession are all distinct possibilities), the combat system does feel a little suspiciously D&D/D20 in that it is now divided into 2 half-actions, typically a move-attack combo, or with Charge and Defencive options (was this the case before?).

They don't use D20s though, the old percantile mechanic is still left in. Also you no longer get any choice on your starting character, in the olden days you chose Ranger, Fighter, Wizard or Academic if I remember correctly. Now it's all completely random.

Nice book though.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

They were kinda archetypes, then you could choose classes from those types, i.e. Wizards Apprentice and Scholar were both Academics.

Any changes they've made to the magic and combat system... good! They were dreadful origionally.

Also the guys who wrote the book were DMing it at the nationals. Neil played it (and almost got a free copy of the book) and reckons its MUCH better than the last edition.

Anonymous said...

The only thing I remember of the old warhammer roleplaying systems (it must be more than ten years since I last played it) was all the German names for people and places. Nice touch for you British, but a bit boring for Germans. Do they still have these warpstones/chaosstones or whatever?

Stuart said...

I'm sure you picked Ranger, Warrior or Academic then. Academics also included priests, wizards and even just scholars. When I last played it I wound up as a woodsman which is at least vaguely useful as opposed to Bawd or some such.

Anonymous said...

*cough* saddos *cough*

Anonymous said...

*cough* Said the person who has a song to remember the spelling Onomatopoeia!!! *cough*

Stuart said...

I have researched this (because I am indeed sad) and you chose Warrior, Ranger, Rogue and Academic and then rolled on a table. Now you just roll twice and choose from the available options.