boreders

Author: Paul B

  • The Voyage of the Space Beagle

    I enjoy a nice bit of classic sci-fi. I have been reading The Voyage of the Space Beagle, a fine tale of space exploration by A E Van Vogt. If you enjoy Star Trek, in any incarnation, I recommend you seek out this slim volume. In structure, the overall tale takes in more than one…

  • Climbing at Awesome Walls, Stockport

    I spent part of yesterday evening hanging off a wall. My fingers ached, and my palms felt rough and sweaty. My thighs and calves complained in equal measure. By the end of an hour, my toes burned – and when I took my shoes off I found that I had split my left little toenail…

  • Too Little or Too Much?

    I had a chat with some of my roleplaying group the other day about storytelling games. We just finished a very tight and entertaining game of Fiasco – using Graham Walmsley‘s “Unaussprechlichen Kulten” playset – and had started to chat. The discussion concerned why certain storytelling games worked and others didn’t – or at least,…

  • Diet, Willpower and Achievement

    This weekend my weight dipped down to 11 stone 13 lbs. Admittedly I weighed myself in the morning, after exercising and before breakfast. I almost definitely weighed more by the end of the morning. However, I have always weighed myself at this sort of point in the week/day, so I do aim for consistency. Having…

  • A New Leaf Turned

    I impressed myself this year. I read 28 books. Yes, some were a little short, but some were quite long. I also abortively started some, like Will Self’s short stories, and only got halfway… that more than a 100 pages uncatalogued against my target. Time spent, time lost. With two days of 2011 to go…

  • Is She A Witch?

    ‘Witch’ provides an improvised entertainment for a small group of people without any need for a gamemaster or referee. In practice, it might be useful for someone to be familiar with the content of this ‘Ashcan’-edition booklet, but by no means imperative as the content could be scanned through and imparted quite rapidly at the…

  • Maelstrom Beggars Companion Appears

    A year ago, I set about writing a Beggars Companion supplement for Maelstrom. Having struggled to write PARANOIA: The Underplex, a process that seemed to span a whole year and still turned out a product that felt a little wayward, I wanted to set myself a clear goal. At a minimum of 1,500 words a…

  • The Carnival of Monsters – Part 1

    Watched this on DVD for the first time. I’m simply too young to have been watching any Pertwee, so every Third Doctor episode and story comes to me fresh. For a first episode, it throws up far more questions than it answers. In that respect, the story does well to draw the viewer in and…

  • Diary of the Doctor

    I have discovered the Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games, a relatively regular and current amateur online magazine, free to download, providing characters, environments, adventures, and features for all incarnations of the Doctor Who RPG – include the FASA and Timelord versions. While I haven’t had the chance to read through the thirteen issues…