It certainly blew mine, sort of. Given that my mind has been blown by many concepts over the years, the relative impact is probably not as great on me as it might be on others. It's one of the reasons I love reading science fiction.
One could even suggest that I'm addicted to the sensation of having my mind blown.
Anyway, this video caught my eye, and I even referred to it in a recent conversation over zoom.
This is likely to be the last post of the year, so I will wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.
Here's a blast from the past. One of my friends posted a review of OHMU War Machine, snippet below, go read the rest on Board Game Geek.
I only very recently (2020) learned of the existence of OHMU and was lucky enough to acquire a lone remaining copy from one of the authors. I always enjoy taking a look at older games like this, too see how games and their base assumptions changed over time.
When I posted my new acquisition online it got a number of responses from people who had heard of the game but never seen or read it and were curious about it, so I figured I might as well do a first impressions/review on it here.
So, spurred on by the feedback on BGG, and friends egging me on, I've gone and co-opted another fellow gamer, and I'm now working through a new draft of the Bad Dog rules.
What's also interesting for me, is seeing how much of the background fluff I wrote nearly 30 years ago for OHMU, has seeped into the the ideas behind my Gate Walker universe trilogy.
Anyway, more news as and when.
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They're here for the long haul.
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Another month has flown by. When I've not been painting miniatures to escape the world around me, I've been noodling about rules for playing a tabletop miniatures game set in my Gate Walker universe.
It's a way for me going back to my non-fiction writing roots.
Having failed to market the previous rule set I wrote*, it's important to minimize the risk of my mecha combat rules getting lost in the churn. So, I've been asking myself, what do I want to achieve with these rules?
An important question, because I'm aware that there are several new sets of mecha rules out, or are about to be released to market. I want to focus on command and control, including the use of UAVs/drones.
Currently the UAVs are for laying out the deployment points on the game table.
But, I just had this idea about how to use them in the game as artillery spotters for fire-support. Besides that, I want the game to feel like a battle taking place in the future, where everything is interconnected.
What I'm hoping to do is make my game different from other sets of rules, with it's own unique selling points to encourage players to buy these and instead of BattleTech or Heavy Gear.
A tall order. But a worthwhile goal to have. That's all for now, catch you all next month.
NB: *OHMU War Machine: Oversized Heavy Mechanised Units.
Life is still serving us lemons, and I'm overwhelmed with trying to turn them all into lemonade. but I found this article through my feeds on Defence News.
I also have a friend who is working on 5G connectivity for the Army, link in the picture below.
So, as you can imagine from reading my books, these are both very interesting projects as they show I wasn't too far off extrapolating the tech needed for my near future Mil-SF stories.
Currently I'm wrestling with a short story, project title: Omake – Japanese for Extra –The story of what happens to the lost robot explorer team seen briefly in my second novel.
I had planned to include this as an epilogue in Strike Dog, but readers thought it left too many questions hanging like a loose thread, and so I cut it out. Since then I've gone and expanded what was a couple of short paragraphs into several thousand words of odd snippets.
My plan is to turn these into a bunch of short stories about an android and robot dog.
But first I have to knock all the fragments I've written into a coherent narrative, rather than the number of short 'cool' scenes I have compiled. So, I intend to use the Omake name for a collection of these shorts, as and when I can get my ass into gear.
And, I haven't thought of a good title for the first of the tales of the android and his robodog, and what happened to them, their discoveries, and the consequences for them and mankind.
Keep well, stay safe, and catch you all on the bounce.
I could ask myself where did September go, but what's the point? No posts here, but I did put one on my Facebook page.
I usually post here and there, but what can I say?
In a world where brain eating amoebas were found in water supplies in the United States, as just one example, it seems the best thing to do is batten down the hatches and ride out the oncoming storm.
So I just didn't bother.
However, I thought for those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, I'd post a link to my author page, which can be accessed by clicking the picture above.
In other news, I've been working on my models, which you can see on my other blog.
Meanwhile, I'm using the model making time to meditate on issues that perplex me, as one does; or at least I do.
I'm boggled when friends say they think I'm trying to change their minds with my pieces because I thought I made it clear that they were my attempt to argue through and understand the baying mobs on social media.
As I said to friends, fact don't change opinions, and if I wanted to try and change a persons opinion I wouldn't start with facts. For a start one has to know if the other person wants to change their opinions or needs to for practical reasons.
Even when those criteria are met, it's hard to change people's opinions/beliefs. It just is. Otherwise how does one understand therapeutic outcomes being so low, or relapses after a successful course of treatment?
Emotions are the key to our beliefs.
These start when one is born, and the environment you're brought up in feeds your experiential growth. Leaven with classical and operant conditioning, and by around the age of four or so you have the foundations laid for who you grow to become.
As time goes by, more core beliefs are laid down, and we build our assumptions on them.
By your teenage years your thoughts are driven by hormones, genetics, and experience. This is why it's difficult to change beliefs and or habits. Not impossible, just hard.
Harder than you think unless one has an epiphany from a traumatic event.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. I must get my act together and write more, but one step at a time, because change is hard.
