Introducing Va'ita

Update: New setting information in RPG section.

A little while ago, I wrote about making up a language, and my thoughts about creating a new fantasy world around it. Well, I've now written up some of my first ideas for the world, titled Va'ita (which is simply the word for 'world' in my language, now titled Urufa, after one of the world's largest realms). Needless to say, the web page is a Work in Progress, and still quite bare.

Va'ita mixes magic, a couple of (semi-)original species, steampunk influences, zeppelins, and rock music (what else?) into a world that should, hopefully, be a little more original and personal than the traditional D&D style settings (one of which I already have), and suited to many different styles of stories, from traditional epic adventure to... well, whatever you can imagine.

The D&D setting Wyrmvoid was my previous effort of this kind, and has not been, thus far, used for a single game. Actually, it's been quite a while since I've last run a fantasy game. Perhaps the time is ripe. I hope I still know how.

Ben vs TeX Font Installation

Since I recently re-installed Debian on my machine, I've naturally got tons of software to install and configure. One crucial piece of software was, of course, TeX.

Now, seeing as I've got some funny hobbies, I needed to install an astrological symbol font. This has caused problems in the past. I located the correct file tree, created several required directories, copied a bunch of files, ran a couple of commands, and... voila! It worked. Just like that. No extra hassle.

I guess practise installing it on a couple of different systems earlier has been of some benefit. And I was smart enough to google up some decent instructions first.

(For the record, the correct local tree for installing packages in TeX Live on Debian Squeeze appears to be '/usr/local/share/texmf'.)

Home Sweet Un*x

So I'd been using Debian's unstable GNU/Linux distro for about a year now, when, a few weeks ago, a system update royally messed it up. The system wouldn't even boot. Probably it would've been fixable, but I thought, why bother, it's about time to re-install the system anyway and get rid of a year's worth of unnecessary clutter.

Somehow it took me several weeks to actually get round to it (during which time I was stuck with Mac OS X, without access to any of my files). But here I am again. I decided to stick with Debian (it still seems to be the best distro around), but I installed a (mere) testing distribution this time. I've recently had too much trouble with the unstable one for the slightly more bleeding edge software to be tempting enough.

Not that the testing distro's totally without problems (hey, it's still called 'testing', ain't it). I soon discovered I had to switch to an older kernel because of a strange visual glitch in X. But I'm back in GNU/Linux, I've got all my files handy again (most notably my music collection) and all systems are go, it would seem.

Dreams from the Fresh Kills, Pt 3

Update: Third session of Dreams from the Fresh Kills online.

Well, this is a surprise. Another session of my current RPG played, and barely more than half a month since the last!

In this session the characters found an old fashioned opium den hidden aboard the famous Staten Island ferry. I'm not sure where that idea popped into my head from, but I loved it instantly when it did. Things are certainly getting strange, and the clues the players are finding only raise more questions. Which is, of course, as it should be.

This isn't the sort of game that can go on forever, though. We've played three sessions now, I think we must reach some kind of climax in just a handful more more sessions, or we'll just be dragging it on needlessly. Perhaps I should already be thinking about what to run next...