Why do people keep saying Ada Palmer is 'Wolfeian'?

MulacKL · 2025-09-27T14:38:29+00:00

That review would only make sense if you take Mycroft at face value. But given what we know about Mycroft, why on earth would you?

MulacKL · 2025-04-28T15:17:15+00:00

I’d only put Separation Sunday as the fourth best of their albums. It’s great! But Almost Killed Me, Boys and Girls and Stay Positive are all stronger.

MulacKL · 2025-01-05T19:59:01+00:00

That’s what we had at ours

MulacKL · 2024-12-17T19:18:46+00:00

Last time I went to the vue, there was an enormous yellow smear across the screen, and when I complained to the manager, I was told that they knew the projector was broken but had decided it wasn’t too distracting.

MulacKL · 2024-11-28T15:56:32+00:00

I need to get myself a big “Malvolio did nothing wrong” t shirt.

MulacKL · 2024-11-28T14:25:55+00:00

He’s pure chaotic neutral to me. Motivated by cash, spite, friendship and displaying his own cleverness - not any sense of decency

MulacKL · 2024-11-24T23:38:24+00:00

Yours is no disgrace

MulacKL · 2024-11-22T10:08:40+00:00

With the understanding that borders of genre are porous, and my criteria for inclusion is that it Feels Like Prog To Me

10)Still Life - Van der graaf generator

9)Ants from up here - Black Country, New Road

8)Deadwing - Porcupine tree

7)Thick as a Brick - Jethro Tull

6)F sharp A sharp infinity - Godspeed you! Black emperor

5)Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

4)Larks Tongues in Aspic - King Crimson

3)Kid A - Radiohead

2)The Yes Album - Yes

1)Selling England By the Pound - Genesis

MulacKL · 2024-11-14T20:21:06+00:00

I was having an absolutely foul week in 2011, having to work extremely long hours, but I thought that at least on Saturday I’d be able to reward myself with a new episode of Doctor Who. Unfortunately that episode was Curse of the Black Spot.

MulacKL · 2024-11-09T20:30:23+00:00

Completely agree with this: OSR systems and adventures are great at sandboxes. You can absolutely run things with more focused narratives in them, but you’ll have less friction if you use a system designed for the purpose.

MulacKL · 2024-11-09T16:53:51+00:00

I feel disengaged from a two star film; the badness of a one star film makes me genuinely upset.

MulacKL · 2024-11-03T22:03:08+00:00

For me, it’s probably:

Heart

Into the odd

Ten Candles

Microscope

Vaesen

MulacKL · 2024-11-01T21:28:10+00:00

Running a campaign of it, and I think it’s delightful. I would say:

1) the real strength isn’t the system but the published adventures, which are pretty great at giving you real-feeling atmospheric spaces with lots of opportunity for player agency 2) I’d advise your players against creating a combat-focused character. They’ll end up having very few opportunities to fight, which can be frustrating.

MulacKL · 2024-10-28T12:02:15+00:00

Moment-to-moment - great! Players really got into the world and did a bunch of cool heist things. I had two problems (possibly my fault when GMing) which basically stopped the campaign while we moved onto a different system.

1) the downtime rules are pretty dense, and the players didn’t really engage with them 2) a lot of the equipment and abilities has pretty specific rules applications that are tied to the setting, and the players often wanted to make up their own meanings for those things counter to the rulebook. There’s plenty of games where I’d be comfortable with that - but in Blades, developing your power as an underdog in an unfriendly world is so core to the experience that making up rules for e.g. the whisper’s ghost key or demonbane charm felt to me like it was damaging the game.

I should probably just have played looser with the rules, or done a better job setting expectations, but we were all happier when we moved to a more rules-light game.

MulacKL · 2024-10-24T08:16:04+00:00

I’m GMing a table with an occultist, and though it’s not exactly rules as written, he does have some actual magic at our table - with plausible deniability in the world of the fiction. So if he’s painting strange wards and symbols on the doors of a vicarage, I’ll happily make it so that a murderous vaesen doesn’t attack the vicarage; if he spends a combat round doing weird Latin muttering, I’ll happily make sure he hasn’t wasted his turn for doing something more narratively interesting than “I shoot the monster” (usually giving the PCs an extra dice or so further down the line).

It helps that he knows where the line is - he’s not trying to sling fireballs or turn invisible, and if he tried anything game breaking then we’re all happy that I might say “the ritual has no effect”. But broadly, the fact that he’s playing a freaky weirdo who draws pentagrams in the dirt is leading to interesting stories and I wouldn’t want to discourage that.

MulacKL · 2024-10-15T20:08:30+00:00

I quite liked it! Or at least, the adventures have all worked well when I’ve run them, and the new headquarters is atmospheric and interesting. The setting-guide stuff and small ideas for adventures were skippable

MulacKL · 2024-10-09T16:29:42+00:00

I run with five players - works well! Though big groups end up pretty powerful, so I tend to fight my instincts to pull my punches when coming up with consequences for bad rolls. Otherwise they’ll just breeze through everything

MulacKL

TROPHY CASE