boreders

Sometimes you have to wonder how the heck life gets quite as strange as it does. On Saturday, we had a tapas party with friends. Everyone brings round something appropriately nibbly (and some beer), and by early evening we have a table growning with goodies. Simple. Very little organisation or cooking involved, but enough to feed people and have spares for a week or three.

Anyway, with a couple of dozen people in and outside the house, conversation was the evening’s primary pursuit. We’d eaten and drank, the warm, relatively sunny, day fading into an equally pleasant evening. As we stood in the garden chatting, somewhere in the distance we heard sirens. Several of them. Living on the outskirts of Manchester in 2008, this isn’t so out of the usual. However, as we continued chatting there was a sound like something hitting a fence, or possibly someone being hit with a fence, rather closer to home. Curiousity rose somewhat, especially as the sirens continued to persist and get just a little louder and clearer. Falling back into conversation, a russle at the back of the garden drew attention to someone making an entrance. Staggering from the rear, amidst the trees and bushes, came a guy in dark trousers and a green top, with blood streaming down the side of his face. He muttered something along the lines of ‘Sorry… I’ve been in a fight.’, before heading off along the garden path, round the side of the house, and off up the street.

The evening rapidly descended into some bizarre co-mingling of ‘The Bill’ and ‘Scooby Doo’, as various members of the party went off to find the guy or see what that crash was, while others recounted the tale of ‘the man in the garden’. Police with dogs and police in helicopters followed, the latter particularly noisy, with searching beams flashing in the night sky. We were told later that the police caught the guy. He’d hit another driver, at considerable speed, and one or more of the cars had gone off the road – tearing up fences. ‘The man in the garden’ had exited his vehicle, leaving the other driver for dead, to make his escape across the back gardens – and the police had tried to follow him that way, explaining some more fence banging rather reminiscent of ‘Hot Fuzz’.

So… from simple tapas and friends, the evening turned into something very different. By the end of the evening, enough had happened to ensure the whole event would be discussed for weeks and months to come. Good food, however tasty, might not have made the event so memorable!

Relevant viewing:

When I was 12 years old, I had already played ‘Warlock of Firetop Mountain‘ and the other first half dozen Fighting Fantasy books. A year later I would be clutching the purplish box of ‘Middle Earth Role Playing‘ having thoroughly enjoyed several months of D&Ding at school. In that moment, in 1984, I discovered something a bit different… I discovered ‘Maelstrom‘.

I’m not entirely sure whether I would have seen ‘Excalibur‘ at this point or similar fantasy movies that stepped on the boundaries of magic without losing sight of the real world, but that was ‘Maelstrom‘ in a way. The game provided mechanics and a setting that took medieval England and swirled in a touch of magic. Not much… just enough to suit the perceptions of the time that magic existed and was to be feared. The Maelstrom swirled outside of reality, and from there those in the know could harness enough power to bend the world to do their bidding.

The game was simple enough, percentiles mainly with point-allocated character creation. The bulk of the book explained character professions, mechanics of combat, advanced developments, and a solo adventure to guide you through the basics. The book also included a 19-page herbal, which some say went on to influence other games that followed. I certainly referred to it many times over the years when running other fantasy games. All this in a 300-or-so page paperback volume that you could virtually slide into your pocket. Perfect fodder for a quick game with your friends on a rainy afternoon.

Now, 24 years later, ‘Maelstrom‘ has returned. Published by Arion Games under license from Puffin Books, the whole thing can now be yours as a PDF from DriveThruRPG. As if that wasn’t enough, Arion Games also intends to publish adventures and support material, including the entirely free adventure ‘Strange Days in Nayland‘.

Well worth a look… and with the return of ‘Dragon Warriors‘ it almost seems like my childhood has returned once more.

Relevant reading:

Congratulations to Kellogg’s Cornflakes on their 111th birthday.

I love days like this, because they give me the opportunity to learn something new. I mean, I didn’t know that while John Kellogg created the cornflake, it was his brother, William, who added sugar to them and marketed them as a breakfast food. John and William fell out over it in the traditional American way – i.e. they got lawyers involved – and, thankfully, William won.

John intended his cornflakes to provide a healthy and rounded addition to the nutritional intake of those resident at his sanitarium. Today, we should probably think about breakfast in the same way – as the healthy foodstuff intended to inject bit of goodness into a day that could so easily go down hill.

Mind you, some of use like to mix our cereals – and I don’t think that would have gone down well with the good Doctor.