100 Page views

OK this is definitely tongue-in-cheek, because it's not much of an achievement, but I've seen other bloggers celebrate milestones in how many people their blogs have reached, so it seemed polite to do the same.  Of course one hundred page views is setting the bar pretty low, but it's a start.

There are obvious strategies to increase page views by engagement with other bloggers: following other bloggers and pointing out that they could come and read your new blog, for example.  Although that assumes that engagement and page views, comments etc are the purpose of the blog.  Suddenly we find ourselves in murky waters: why do you want to write a blog?  Do you crave interaction? Validation?  Attention?  Why not just start a Facebook page with photographs of kittens asking for cheeseburgers?

I want a place to record the events of my life (at least, some of them, the toys and games) in a way that will be easy for me to read them in the future.  I already keep a record of my games, and take photographs, but they aren't combined into an illustrated description with tags for searching.  That's what the blog gives me.  And because it's public, other people get the chance to read my diary and comment on it, but that's definitely secondary.  Thanks to all 3 of my regular readers for taking a look.

Back when I was a computer programmer, a wise colleague told me that the point of putting comments in the code was so that it could be understood by strangers who don't understand how it works, which includes yourself a couple of years from now.  Here's something I can read that will remind me what happened and what went well or badly in a couple of years from now, when I will have forgotten.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Bad Spelling chapter 3 - Grab the nuke

23/11/1983 Sov 3rd army forces BAOR fighting retreat into Ruhr cities. Bad Spelling is isolated behind the front line.

Maj Lawrence needs the team to pick up the item that he was being interrogated about. It's in a supply depot, he doesn't know which building precisely, or it may still be loaded on a lorry.  Not a stealth job, just get in and grab it.  (I couldn't have made it up.  The team rolled a follow-up mission at an intact building to Retrieve something).

The enemy has two sentries with Skorpion SMGs on duty (rather an odd choice by the dice), ready to call out a guard detail of an officer (pistol), a sniper (rifle), two guards with AK-74 and one with an AK-74 plus grenade launcher.

Motivation: 2 (chosen on the basis of campaign history) these are secondary units in an accidental meeting, not here for a fight

OHSW rules

For OHSW I re-wrote the sentry rules from 5MIN.  Each turn that the sentries have seen the enemy, after checking army morale, the WP draws a resolution card and adds the value to a cumulative total.  When the total is at least 15 the rest of the patrol arrives at a random board edge.

Searching the buildings for the objective is just like searching for the holy cross on p33 of OHSW, but succeeds on any face card draw (because it's not small or easy to conceal).

The team probably needs to steal a truck to transport it away.

I'd like to implement a proper solo system for this campaign, to make decisions for the opposition (which I only need because I'm using OHSW on table).

Each enemy figure has a "role" like sentry / patrol, shooter, brawler, officer etc. and a set of waypoint markers to follow.

Then a prioritised list of situations + actions drives how the enemy uses its activations, e.g. Shooter/Artillery with opponent within 6" should move away from the opponent. Conflict of Heroes has this approach, using a deck of cards that with a prioritised list of conditions & actions, drawing a fresh card so that the priorities are not the same every turn.

I could also use the troop classes in Hordes of the Things to suggest some behaviour types: Special Forces (Heroes), Tanks (Knights), APC (Riders), Brawlers (Blades), Shooters & Artillery.  I'll use this game to generate some possible action-rules.

Anyone of a nervous disposition when it comes to unpainted models or scenery should probably skip the rest of this report.  I'm working on some pieces in this area, but the aesthetics of the table top are liable to get worse before they get better.  Mea maxima culpa.

The supply depot

The supply depot is next to a main road (top of the photo).  The guard house is next to the main gate, with various storage sheds to the right and a line of shipping containers to the left.  A few vehicles are scattered around the central paved area.  A back gate at the bottom right of the picture gives access to a footpath. The Brits arrive on the road in the top-right corner.

The WP draw a joker for initiative - end of turn 1.

The Brits get initiative again, but this time they draw a Joker for actions in the phase - end of another turn and nothing has happened yet.

still guarding the front gate

The WP acts at last.  One sentry sets off to patrol the perimeter anti-clockwise, while the other one would like to go overwatch, but that's not available in these rules, so he just waits. Given no other use for actions, the patrolling sentry moves 3 times.

The Brits advance along the perimeter fence, remaining hidden for as long as possible.

By the time the Brits jump out and start shooting up the gate guard, his companion is patrolling on the far side of the compound.

"Eddie" & Fraser step out across the road and open fire.  Both miss.

The gate guard hits Eddie, while his mate starts running back across the compound. The Clock card is 10, so it will probably only need one more card for the rest of the WP force to be called in.

Fraser hits the gate guard.  Mitch runs up to finish him off.

front gate clear

Dangerous & the Major move up.  The patrolling sentry runs across the yard and fires a 2-shot burst at Mitch.  The first one misses, but the second gets him. The Clock advances to 12.

Fraser & Dangerous both miss & the patrol guy misses Dangerous.  The Clock card is a Joker, so the turn ends with the clock stuck on 12.  Both Eddie & Mitch are out of this fight and won't be getting up by themselves.

The patrol sentry moves in closer and shoots at Dangerous - another man down!

Fraser fires back but misses. Major Lawrence rushes in and tackles the guard, taking him out.  The Brits can now spend the rest of the turn searching freely...

The Major checks two trucks (no luck) and has moved on to the 3rd when Fraser calls out a find in one of the shipping containers.  Maj Lawrence gets in the truck & drives it to the container.  Fraser loads the case onto the truck.

Lawrence drives out of the gate, waiting next to the downed Davies.  Fraser gets out to cover him and drags Eddie on board.  Fraser drags Mitch into the lorry (another 4 AP) & also Davies.  With all the casualties on board, Lawrence drives away - their fate can be resolved when we get them back to Bad Spelling.  Dangerous recovers in the back of the lorry.

Scenario design: during Turn 3 the clock was advancing at the end of each phase.  That's excessive with a target of only 15.  However, when I noticed and reverted to my proposed rule (advance the clock at the end of a Turn), the game was over before another turn ended.  The other guards never arrived.

Also, it would make sense to have 2 men carry the device, but how should the Actions work in OHSW?  Should Each man spend 1 action to pick up an end of the case, and then they jointly spend 1 Action to move (like a crewed weapon)?

The Brits had plenty of spare actions available for the Major to jump out of the truck and help Fraser to load the device on board, so it didn't affect the outcome.

General rule system: I allowed Fraser to carry the device and his downed mates with no noticeable movement penalty (although a 3" move would have made no difference), and did not require an Action to pick them up or put them down.  Given the number of actions available to the Brits in Turn 4, this made no difference, but it should probably take an action to pick things up (dropping them is free).

The ability to load Down or Out men onto transport is something I just improvised, but it makes sense if one side is able to leave the field without needing to eliminate all of the other side.

Overall balance was adequate, giving a tense scenario and 3 men down in the final turn.  Lawrence forgot to be inspiring, e.g. to re-draw the downed men going out of action.

There were no obvious moments when I had to think about action-rules to decide what the WP would do, but I guess these applied:

• Sentry sees enemy: converts to Brawler or Shooter (depending on weapon carried)
• Shooter with target in range and Line of Sight: shoot
• Shooter with no enemy in range: close range to nearest enemy
• Brawler: close range to nearest enemy
• Sentry: move toward next patrol waypoint

After the fight: 

• The Brits have achieved their objective.
• Edwards is lightly wounded (and will be out for 6 days
• Mitchell is also lightly wounded and will be out for 10 days
• The fate of the 2 sentries is not known.
• No prisoners were taken.
• Harris is already wounded and out of action until 6/12/83

Reinforcements: Two figures with L1A1 SLR, one with pistol - privates Newton & O'Loughlin arrive, perhaps stragglers from some unit nearer the front.

Specialist gear: temporary replacement weapon - O'Loughlin has a Minimi for the next mission

Skill gain: Fraser gains Scout(1)

Campaign events: 

• Paddy O'Loughlin has an accident within minutes of arriving on the base & is out of action for 3 days (until 26/11/83). Maybe Lotte will visit him in sick bay?
• Intense fighting - we are straight back in action.  No impact on morale (already rolled).
• The minimi is broken; the burst that hit Green also put a round into the firing mechanism.

Player action: meet a new character (rolled a political figure) - the local mayor, Dieter Pletternberg

Group morale: 3 - rolled 3 good and 2 bad dice, scoring 1 increase

People the team knows:

• Lotte Meierling, a refugee from Hannover
• Dieter Pletternberg, mayor of Bad Spelling

 

Second quarter reading

Another quarter ends, and it turns out I've managed to read a book or two.  In some ways, this is quite a surprise, because I've been busy in other ways this quarter.  I managed to meet my target for cycling distance over the quarter and I've been on holiday.

Connie Willis - To Say Nothing of the Dog

Warning: this book contains time travel.  I mention this because it is enough to guarantee that my wife won't look at it (although she did watch "It's About Time" with me and appeared to enjoy it).  Two time-travelling characters from the future accidentally alter the course of history by causing the wrong couples to fall in love, and must then arrange for them to reorganise themselves in their historical pairings.  It's rather like a week at a country house with Jeeves & Wooster except that if they fail, instead of Bertie having to marry Madeleine Bassett, the future will be altered and Bertie may no longer exist.

The book makes several references to Three Men in a Boat (including the title, of course), as well as Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, which should attract knowing smiles from readers who recognise them.  I can't say how much of the enjoyment is lost if you haven't read those two books, but if you haven't I advise to drop whatever you're reading currently and read both of those two immediately.  The tone and language in the historical sections were well done, and it made for a fine holiday read.

I mention the language because this book contains the word "doffed", which sets my teeth on edge (since I am by nature an Edwardian out of time).  The verbs to don and to doff are contractions of to do on or to do off, dating from the 14th century.  These days we might take off an overcoat and put on a dressing gown, but back then they would do off the coat and do on the gown.  This was shortened to doff the coat and don the gown.  All fine, but if someone did off a coat before doing on a gown there would be no contraction to "doffed" or "donning".  I was taught this at school (in a different century).  These days "doffed" appears in Merriam-Webster but Tolkien used the older style in The Return of the King when Aragorn “did off the star of Elendil”.  This style may be obsolescent now, but would have been standard usage in 1888. See also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/do_off and https://arnoldzwicky.org/2013/07/17/surprising-etymologies/

I don't think of myself as pedantic, but the more you learn the more it hurts to hear someone else get it wrong. And since that's my only complaint about the book, this can be considered a strong recommendation.

Bill Bryson - Shakespeare

It is unusual for non-fiction to be laugh-out-loud funny, but Bryson managed several solid laughs in this volume.  Perhaps he has an easy target, since so little is certain about Shakespeare and therefore so many wild theories have been produced with no supporting evidence.  We know almost nothing about Shakespeare's life (not even how he spelled his name), and the little that is properly documented, such as his will, raises more questions than it answers (such as why the only thing he left to his wife was their second-best bed).  Even our record of the plays is incomplete and contradictory between the different printed versions from an age when the typesetter might change a few words because he thought they looked wrong.  

Beside Shakespeare himself the book provides background on the theatre in his time and the political and religious turmoil through which he lived. Bryson also describes the suggestions that someone else wrote the plays and ridicules the lack of evidence for them.

At the end of the book we may not have learned much about Shakespeare, but we may understand that there is not much more to learn with any certainty.  Someone almost certainly called Shakespeare and from Stratford wrote a body of plays which is still admired today. The text was edited for each performance, for example to reduce Hamlet to the length of a feature film, and the version we have now may not be one that was ever staged; it may be like the special edition DVD with all the deleted scenes and bonus features.  But does that matter?

Bryson's other book "Mother Tongue" has a fascinating chapter on Shakespeare's legacy for the English language.  Here it is reduced to two pages, but still conveys the message of how many commonplace words and phrases in modern English were first seen in writing when Shakespeare used them.  Now I need to find an equivalent review of Milton's legacy, which looks to be almost as substantial.

Ali Hazelwood - Love on the Brain

I enjoyed The Love Hypothesis, the story of a female graduate student's awkward relationship with the most unfriendly man in the world, which turns out to be caused by mutual misunderstandings that resolve into romance.  So I read this next volume, which turns out not to be a sequel but a completely separate story about a female PHD researcher's awkward relationship with the most unfriendly man in the world, which turns out to be caused by mutual misunderstandings that resolve into romance.  There are differences between the two books, and on balance I prefer the other plot elements in this one than the first, so I recommend it as the one to read if you don't feel the need to read both.

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

And so we come to something of substance, weighing in at almost a thousand pages in paperback and using so many new words that it includes dictionary entries to let you read it.  Imagine a world where monasteries are isolated communities that preserve knowledge and advance study but with no religious connection, somewhere between a monastery and a university.  This is the story of a group of junior students, aged around 18. Like The Lord of the Rings, it begins with the little adventures of little people, being late for a lecture, getting into scrapes, dodging the authorities, and grows into a world-spanning adventure and beyond.

Along the way it has philosophical dialogues reminiscent of Plato, futuristic technology, very old technology, quantum mechanics and space travel.  It's difficult to say more without giving away the story line.  So much of what is happening does not become apparent until at least half-way through the book and some of the big themes are even later.

Unlike Stephenson's other big novels it barely mentions cryptography, and has no reference to Qwghlm, which is a plus for me.  Sadly there was a little bit of donning and doffing, but it is excusable in the context.  Like the almost-Latin or almost-Greek terminology for what happens inside the precinct of the monastery.

There is definitely some science fiction in there, but it's quite difficult to spot which items are speculative, unproven or just plain fantasy in such a rich mixture of real science, logic and philosophy.  The wikipedia article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem] explains, but is full of spoilers, so don't read it until after the book itself.