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Movies reviewed this week: American Hustle.

Mostly thanks to Hillfolk and the enabling influence of Kickstarter, I’ve wound up with a number of decks of playing cards. As one does. In a feeble but well-meaning attempt to justify the trickle of ten buck pledge levels, I’m going to write up some quick little DramaSystem series pitches based on said decks. I am not committing to running a DramaSystem game based on each deck. Primus, the system works better when it’s in campaign mode. Secundus, not insane. This is the Urban Punk Bicycle Deck (original) from UncommonBeat. (Click to enlarge, cause they’re better-looking full sized.) I am not sure if they’re still available or not; the Web site says Coming Soon. Email ’em and find out! It is not my favorite deck or even in the top half. The backs are really garish without being graffiti-inspired, while the court cards are oddly 80s-flavored. I still love the concept and the spray painted outlines on the pips. OK, so what can we do with this? Nutshell Ten years after the Global Financial Crisis was not averted, all politics are local. All governments are local, for that matter: it takes too much energy and too much effort to worry about what’s happening fifty miles away. The clock is ticking, as the storehouses of resources dwindle away, but it’s hard to care much about that.

1 bottle vanilla soda (we used Dry) 1 shot vodka (Tito’s!) 1/2 clementine, peeled and segmented Squirt of lemon or lime juice Pinch of ginger Ice I imagine the procedure here is pretty obvious. I squeezed one of the clementine segments over the drink and dropped the husk in, but the rest go in unmolested so you can eat them at the end after they absorb some vodka. The ginger is sprinkled over the top once you’ve mixed it.

Movies reviewed this week: Movie 43.

This post has an expiration date, which is approximately three days from publication. Reading it after 9/28? You missed out. The current Bundle of Holding is for a bunch of GUMSHOE games and it seemed worth going over what you get. It might appear that there’s a lot of duplication in the bundle, since all four of the full RPGs are based on the same ruleset. Not so! Night’s Black Agents is the easy sell: technothrillers meet vampires. Spy action, bloodsuckers, Ronin and Alias and so on. You get the basic GUMSHOE rules tuned for action, which had not been a particular strength until this point. Also you get The Zalozhniy Quartet which is probably a solid 8-12 sessions of play, at a guess. Maybe more. ...

Movies reviewed this week: Yor, the Hunter from the Future.

As always, thank you.

Quick notes from the 1 PM Novels You Should Have Read Since Chicon 7 panel. Any errors are wholly mine. Panelists: Elizabeth Bear (moderator), Willie Siros, and Jess Nevins. Any really outstanding books? Siros: Sea Change, S. M. Wheeler fairy tale fable, internal logic, compared to The Last Unicorn Nevins: Brian Catling’s The Vorrh fantasy that avoids the usual fantasy tropes Bear: Cassandra Rose Clark, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter SF, robot civil rights, riff on “Bicentennial Man” issues of climate change, peak oil, global cultural change as background elements Siros: Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata ...

I wanted to give the class creation system in Adventurer Conquerer King a spin, so I cranked out a Warlord class. This is untested.

Redhat has a shiny new Openstack (original) install process, which includes an all-in-one configuration. This beats DevStack on Ubuntu for me because it’s persistent, which DevStack is not. And I’m a bit too lazy to work through the install by hand if there are options available. I’m pretty sure this guide (original) would have been useful if I wasn’t lazy, FWIW. Anyhow, I’m running through the install now. Only one snag so far; the Quickstart fails to tell you that you need to install puppet. Do this before step 3: ...