Planet Irish Gaming

I realise that television is rarely a fount of originality. I'm not saying the new shows coming out in the US in the autumn will be bad - I'll be quite interested to see how they go, and at least one of them is around one of my favourite characters. But they are derivative in the extreme.

Revolution is set in a world 15 years after all the electricity goes out, and features a pretty girl with a crossbow, along with some other medieval weaponry, guns, and the breakup of the US into micro-states. You're thinking of The Hunger Games, and you're not wrong. It looks interesting, and they've done some nice-looking things with the visuals in the same line as The World Without Us, but man, that is a pretty blatant rip-off of Suzanne Collins.

Elementary is a rip-off of Sherlock. It features a female Watson, and it's set in the USA. The lead even acts like Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes. Is Sherlock Holmes sf? It seems to have been adopted, anyway.

Beauty and the Beast seems to be yet another retelling of the Barbot de Villeneuve story, with a good strong Twilight element in there. Incidentally starring Kristin Kreuk, last seen as Lana Lang in Smallville, and looking exactly as she did there.

And speaking of Smallville, the last offender in the derivative parade is Arrow - all about Green Arrow, the side character from Smallville and DC Comics before that. Played by a different actor, more's the pity, and almost certainly in a different continuity.

Why couldn't they do Blue Beetle? Too obscure? There was a version of him in Smallville!

The io9 article I pulled these from lists a few more, some of which are possibly more original. But the number of even those described as "It's like show X with element Y changed, by the guy who did show Z" is impressive.

Obviously, none of these shows are taking chances. They're taking something that clearly worked well, and copying the elements they think appealed. The idea that originality might have its own appeal seems to be lost.

Maybe I'm just getting grumpy, but games and books seem to have some more originality.

+1 Mailbag: Have you ever seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick? Well, it doesn't matter, 'cause that's not what we're talking about. Liam, humbug and ice-cream have a chat about blurbs for convention games.

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The college term is over, and I have enough spare brain to write some blog entries again. The only game I've been playing for the past couple of months has been Wurm Online, mostly because it works very well as a background game. I click a few times to set some activity going, I do something else for a few minutes, and then I click things again. If I'm on my deed, it's a very rare thing to need to react to anything.

Indeed, in this case, where I remain on or near my deed most of the time, all the action in Wurm happens in my head, and often in the future as well. It's a game that rewards long-term thinking, and I've been working gradually toward a few goals.

First, I've been terraforming my deed. Mostly this consists of flattening it, and laying in some paths. I've also started to work down the hill to the west a bit, in terraces (well, so far, terrace). There's a deed south and west of me that will likely disband soon, and when it does, I'll expand my deed down the hill to the coast, and those terraces will then become part of the deed rather than the perimeter. At the same time, geometry of other deeds permitting, I might extend it back a bit, to lay claim to an area of woodland that lies to the east, and which would do very nicely for ongoing wood production.

I've also gained a few animals, though the generosity of neighbours. I have three horses, and four cattle. Domestic animals can be bred, and I've started that with the cattle. Two of the horses are too young still, so that will need to wait. In the meantime, all the beasts get groomed daily, and I make sure that the pens they're in have sufficient food. I'm developing the food production skills at the same slow and steady pace, and considering which crafts I'll take up in the long run.

I do like the terraforming, but taking it up as a long term skill requires a good bit of marketing in the game, and a lot of being away from my own deed. The option, of course, is to spend time developing good, solid deeds, with farmland, trees, and so on, and then sell them, and that's a tempting way to go.

The more conventional crafts of smithing and boatbuilding are also possibilities, and carpentry as well. I'm inclined in those areas to choose one that can have its products sold via merchants, rather than things where I need to negotiate the sale myself in person. Having carpentry and masonry at high levels would also be useful for when the fabled second-story houses come in. And it does occur to me that if a second story can be coded, there's no reason a third or more could not also be managed; someone with high carpentry or masonry might become a specialised builder of towers. I did mention the long-term thing.

I also want to do some exploration, after I make or buy myself some better armour. As it is, my only real option with most aggressive creatures is to flee as quickly as possible. I'm aware of some interesting looking areas up toward the mountains, though, where it looks as though there were once deeds, and no longer are. Those areas often contain treasure - that is, stuff left behind by previous players - or areas in which nice new deeds could easily be placed. Indeed, I'd like to travel to the Independence server as well, because I hear tales of large areas of unoccupied land, treasure left, right and centre, and more abandoned deeds than you can shake a stick at. A huge cotton-growing operation on an alt, say, could be very profitable.

It's a big game, and there's more to it all the time - reeds to make papyrus to write stuff down on have only recently been added, for example, and given the amount of material already in the game, I don't think I can go fast enough to try everything.

Per: There are loads of gaming related events coming up, conventions and otherwise. Listen in and don't miss out. Episode provided me with the reason to book q-con early and I had a breakfast roll for dinner. How was your day?

• Hobocon
• GPO
• White Christmas
• Q-Con
• BroCon
• Last Summer Weekend
• Arkham Spring Slaughter
• SkibbCon
• Dark Heresy Larp
• Midway

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Mailbag: While not a comprehensive look at every generic game ever, we waffle away for our usual while on the subject. Last episode with Shane of the couple we recorded when he came back for a visit from the mainland.

• GURPS
• d20 System
• Fate
• Universalis
• Strands of Fate
• Savage Worlds

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+1 Con: Everyone who didn't go to Conpulsion should listen to this and decide to attend next year.

• Conpulsion
• Edinburgh Castle
• Fort Eben-Emael
• The Laundry
• Dead of Night
• pass IT on
• The One Ring
• GURPS Discworld
• Feng Shui
• Rouge Trader
• Wrath of the Volcano God

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+1 Exp: A review of Innsmouth Escape. Liam provides it with a number. I'm trying to remember if I won my first game of this game - something that I've found to lead to liking a game more - 'cause I think it's kind of good. Shane swans back to provide a mainland point of view.

• Innsmouth Escape
• Zombies
• Dark Corners of the Earth

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Dave Renyolds writes to tell me:

New Gaming Shop in Dun Laoghaire - Opening Early June
http://www.facebook.com/dunlaoghairehobbyshop

Con: Report on Vaticon from last week. Feeling poorly, no links or stuff.