Elaine

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• Commented on Announcement time!
  In my head for the last decade I've had Arthur Darvill as Bob and Karen Gillan as Mo. For those who don't know them, they played companions to Matt Smith's eleventh Doctor. Darvill had the perfect haplessness veneered over competence...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  I have to wonder how much of what she was spouting she actually believed. At that level pols use speech writers and from what I've seen of the speech it sounds like a bunch of audience-targeted claptrap (clickbait for the...
• Commented on Worldcon in the news
  The CIC rules are (sightly, not much) extra to a regular company but less onerous than registering as a charity. There's no charity commission oversight, nothing required about proving that you're worthy to be regarded as a charity. The main...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Libertarianism / Objectivism - I was introduced to game theory in a "maths camp" kind of thing in my final year of high school (where they were trying to excite would-be university maths students about the possibilities; we got the...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  ...given lack of concern for work place safety pre-OSHA (and UK eqv) just about everyone had minor and oft major injuries accumulate over a life time... Ask an old-timer (up to, say, the 90s) at the UK naval nuclear depot...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  In the deep future there are going to be a lot of rectilinear formations dug into bedrock that will be there over tens of millions of years, and artificial placements of minerals or traces of tar and other materials in...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  ...these "humans" have to play a central role in whatever happens. This parallels what I've seen of developers, where you rarely meet the financiers. Development battles are creepy cold wars... That's The City We Became and sequel The World We...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  A couple of space opera sub-tropes you've nodded to but not much: Big Dumb Objects, yes Missile Gap, but that's all I can recall; Deep History, which you kind of do in Palimpsest but that's more about the time-travel-ness of...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  ^...will there be a way to intimidate, or otherwise force people (or bureaucrats) aside, to pass them, without using force?* I don't doubt there will be, CoC had the Credit Rating skill and the latest iteration of World of Darkness...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Cheers, it's still more notions and notes than a workable game, but when I've got a beta version I'll put it up on itch.io...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  For a while I've been tinkering with Blades... to make a game about civil disobedience - instead of playing a crew conducting criminal ops, the players are a group of protesters running actions from demos and zines to pipe plugging...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  ...GUMSHOE, so clearly some people think the rules work for action games! You could run a Laundry campaign using Dungeons & Dragons, that's what D20 is after all, I guess you could use GUMSHOE. I'd want to use a setup...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Do you think GUMSHOE would support a Laundry campaign...? I don't think so, there's a lot more action-spy-style shenanigans in the early books than investigation, even in the Deighton-like Atrocity Archives. If OGH had included a John Le Carre-inspired book...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  I like Trail of Cthulhu, I like the way the GUMSHOE system supports the investigation without getting in the way. I just bought the revamped Delta Green in a sale, not impressed at all. I really liked the original DG,...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  when did it last snow significantly in London? 1991 I think. I had to walk home ten miles from wurk because the trains weren't running overground, dunno if there's been snow there like it since. But per your point, it...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Haven't played RPGs for a long time, but I enjoy reading the books and noodling with rules systems. I'll look forward to the new one coming out. For me it was 1983 and school friends who were into a combination...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  The right-wingers are currently also a problem and they see profiteering as the means to stripping people of power for all of their goals, hierarchy, authority, cruelty, etc. And the standard economic model that was composed by oligarchs' court jesters...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Well, if you're selling your computer services for money, but no one will give you food or vital services because your attitude, appearance, beliefs, etm. annoy the local charity that gives out vital services, what are you going to do...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  No, it's just basic printing as from before movable type - see Sir Pterry's The Truth for an example. You write the paper, a mundane process, the only magic is that the sorcerer is writing a textbook of what they...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  A pal of mine pilots those - passengers tend to be one or a couple of rich folk or sports people or kleptocrats plus family plus entourage: servants / nannies, bodyguards / goons, trainers / coaches, etc. So moving the...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  Your taste is your taste of course, but I think you are comparing apples with oranges; Sir Pterry was writing adventure fantasy with a humanist subtext, while OGH is writing horror with a humanist subtext. I read the Laundry books...
• Commented on Minor updates
  ... secret cardinals ... Names have power and a covert ecclesiastical organisation would be headed by a cardinal. Makes sense that the Vatican Laundry's chief would be one of these....
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Greg, the thing in Scotland is that the Scottish Government is pushing through a bill to allow trans people to self-certify their identities in the Gender Recognition Certificate scheme. Currently the system is that you are judged by a panel...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Greg, yes, that's right. The thing to do is accept the person as they present themself to you and not worry about their history unless it's actually germane, which in most cases it isn't. A trans woman is a woman,...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Greg, would you please use the accepted terminology for trans people, i.e. "trans male" and "trans female" or better, trans men, trans women, and non-binary people. Your coinage emphasises the assigned-at-birth gender rather than the actual gender, which is derogatory...
• Commented on I can't even
  One estimate, using the latest YouGov voting intentions data, gives Labour a 450-seat majority if a snap election were to be held... https://twitter.com/ballotboxmedia/status/1575534002781331456 The problem with the pragmatic Tories is that the ones with experience, principles and backbone were culled...
• Commented on London Bridge
  In Scotland the crown court is the Sheriff Cout and the judge is the Sheriff; magitrates are Justices of the Peace, and the crown prosecutor is called the Procurator Fiscal. Given that the derivation of sheriff is from "Shire Reeve"...
• Commented on An update on the revolutionary experiment
  So the editor of the Daily Mail has stepped down. Wonder which came first, him targeting the Tories or Rothermere targeting him? Or was it because he set his sights on Tory offshore dealings and sailed too close to R's...
• Commented on An update on the revolutionary experiment
  Thank you....
• Commented on A death in the Firm
  that's a short-term outlook. The LSE, when not currying favour with the government, would tend to agree...