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Hello Folks,
I'm looking for NPC crew for an EOS event on the 10th-12th of July at Pikespool camp site near bromsgrove, just south of Birmingham. It is a high fantasy fest system set in a post apocolyptic world with an amazing rule set and in depth plot. The roles are ones that are mostly full time NPC roles so you get a chance to really get your teeth into the role and also into the system and weekends plot (I tend to isolate my NPC's form the plot to allow them to effectivley play it, which blends them into the player landscaep).
If you are interested, or know someone who is then please get in touch as soon as you can to
stuart.maher@tor-vak.co.uk. Or just reply here.
Stu
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
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This is a concept I've struggled to understand until today. It has been much talked about around the Maher household, but not really uinderstood.
So EOS has come and gone. It was incredibly hard work. And a number of Lessons learnt. No matter how much we think we can, we can't look after Charlie and run a game. Lisa's Mum being ill meant we had to, but we can;t do it again. We have to be very very careful how we put stuff out into the playerbase to make sure we don;t create the false attack on the compound rumours like we did. We need to make sure evrything is sorted out further in advance so we have more time for campaign writing and tie ins. Somuch of what we want to do relies on personal and group tie ins to the cmapiagn world of which Imanadged to write one! We also need more time in advance on site. Much much more.
I know we f^cked this event up in so many places, I am just glad the settign and background added with the player groups that came along meant a good game was had meaning we get another crack at the pie. Next time we won't fail.
I'll make more sense with more sleep
P.S. F*^king scoutsites that double book you with not one but two scout groups.
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, October 5th, 2007
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For the LRP crowd really
Due to a number of last minute drop outs (For good reasons) I am short a few NPC's for EOS on the 12-14th of October (yes next weekend). So if you've got nothin on that weeken and fancy coming along we'd love to hear from you. Have a look at www.eoslrp.com to read about the system. The roles will be strong structured roles and you will get fed!
Stu
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 17th, 2007
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Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
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cr@p, the new build we were looking at is gone.
Their buying policy meant we needed to have sold our house before they'd accept an offer and whilst we put ours up for sale, someone has come in and bought them both.
New plan is to wait till we have sold our house and moved in temporarily at Lisa's parents and start looking again. Whilst I was initially against the new build due to it's Kitchen size, I had really come around to the idea of it. Ah well, back to the drawing board!!!
Oh, no one has bought ours yet obviously, but we've had a few viewings.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 3rd, 2007
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There was a Gathering.. it was good...
lots of PVP, lots of action! But alas the mainline events are over for a season, time for bandit country to take over!
1 more malestrom to go, this weekend coming up. At the site I still consider the spiritual home of Fest LRP, drum hill!
After that I would expect to descend into a parental induced LRP wasteland until the Easter Maelstrom. However there is one last foray for the year.. want to know more?
In october (13th) I will be part of a team running the first EOS event (www.eoslrp.com). The system rules and world is the brain child of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) durith which he has written over the last few years (ok.. a lot of years) and this year he's decided to put his money where his mouth is and run it as a system. Where do I come in, well, he has foolishly given me the campaign and plot to write and run.
So, still want to know more... Good. The system is going to be a high fantasy (swords and magic) system based on a closed world with well defined history and culture. The game is deisgned to be player led with differing racial and cultural groups. The campaign setting will be detailed and reactive to player actions withan extensively detailed history for players to explore and uncover. The plot will be absed around how players interect witht he campaign enviroment and not be based on the repeating/random encounters of monsters idea. There will be a downtime system, though the make up of it will be decided by the success of the event. Idealy we would like regular events with players numbered in the hundreds, but can gear it for a smaller playerbase if need be. The rules are robust and integrate witht he campaign and includes an excellent magic system (summoning ftw!!!)
So whats the rough story? The event is set in a ravaged world where almost a 100 years ago a massive magical storm ravadged the land forcing the people to flee to a series of high mountain ranges where they have eeked out a basic existence. The pass into the mountains was guarded by a fortress known as Archway Keep, which a hundred years ago was the last your for fathers saw of civilisation before it was cut off by lava flows and magical storms. IN that time your people have lived a hard life in the high passes. New races have appeared in these high countries some friendly, some not so friendly. Then word came from other settlements. A group of trackers had found a clear route down to the keep at archway and the magical storms had reeceded. Now groups of people travell to the ancient keep to see if the land beyond is safe to walk. It was said that when the refugees fled past archway, some decided the ancient walls would better protect them than the mountains and stayed in the fortress.. did they survive? The last any knew was screams that were heard as the keep went out of sight.
The game opens as refugees have the chance to return to their ancestral lands to discover what has become of it. Did others survive? is the land still safe? can they rebuild the civilisation their elders tald them stories of? Or will the newer races come to dominate where old empires once ruled.
This game will be incredibly enjoyable, I promise you!
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
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So after over 5 years (by far the longest I have lived in one house) We have decided the time has come to sell up and move on. Not moving too far, up the road to wellingborough where I am still able to commute to work in Milton Keynes, houses are on the average £50K cheaper and Lisa's parents are close by for cheap child care!
Those that knew me when I bought this house and the 6-12 months immediatley after will realise this is a big big decision and one that makes me more than a little sad. When I bought the house it was a run down disasterous wreck that had been reposessed. The entire things was gutted and stripped back to nothing and then lovingly re fitted redecorated and in some ares rebuilt. Whilst I had some tradesmen in, most ofthe work was done by myself and an army of friends - float_vagabond, kol, Si Marks, Migget, Greenie, Andy, Karina, Pete, Little Dave, Competent Dave, my cousin Micheal and probably others I'm forgetting to mention.Add to that I met my wife living there, I married my wife living there and we had our first child living there (Whilst I say living there, we were not there for any of those occourances which would have been messy and crowded) so all in all this is a very very special house to me.
But at the ned of the day it's bricks and mortar (and timber frame, plasterboard, gaffa tape and cable ties) and we'll have other homes with other special memories (although none as "special" as Si marks blowing the main fuse board by cutting through the wrong cable). The area I live in , Dunstable, is somewhere I will have fond memories of, but is not somewhere I feel in any way tied to, other than I have played for the local rugby club for the last 2 years (and as most of our away games are north of dunstable i will probably continue to play for them).
So, the house is now on the market and we have a new build home we like the look of in Wellingborough. Exciting times ahead for the family Maher
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-16695482.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
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After two weekends of the worst weather I have seen in a long time for a summer LRP weekend I realsied something very sad about a lot of the volenteers who help run events. I do ramble in this post and appear to get Narcissistic at points, but bear with me there are important points at the end.
Now i'm one of the LT's Senior Refs. I do this for the usual bleeding heart reasons of love of the hobby. Lets face it thats why were all here. However the key question is not why do I do it, but how do I bear doing it. That sounds a bit odd, so bear with me for a second. As a ref I do a job that some people would say is a hobby in it's self (looking at you minus kol). But it is also a job that gets you out and involved int he game as it happens. It's a job that also if done well will carry a certain amount of respect from the players that you ref for and ultimatley it brings gratitude as I reguarley get thanked both generally and for dealing with specific situations. So the answer of How can I bear to do that job is that it's a fun job that i see as a hobby in itself that gets me a certain amount of respect and gratitude. Yay for me. However there are a lot of jobs that exist at every large LRP event (not just LT) that don't fit those characteristics. Take for example (yes it's a loaded example as my Wife works there) people who work on the monster kit teams. There job at the LT (and i'm assuming is similar at other large systems that have similar functions) involves going through countless large boxes of kit to find relevnat items and handing themover to ref's/monsters, logging who has them and when they come back, auditting and sorting the stock so it can be found quickly and then applying make up which is mostly monotumous as you have to put the same thing on 50 people. Thier job is not fun or a hobby in itslef (well, unless these things excite you). Their job is also a mostly hidden one. Players see them briefly as ref shepperd them through to monster encounters. And the playesr the encounters are aimed at may never see nor even be aware of what they are doing. So how do they bear their jobs, especially when the tent they work in all the time is ankle deep in mud turned into slurry. In reality, they don't bear the job very well and the roles tend to have high turnovers of staff.
So, my point is, don;t ignore the man behind the curtain. They are generally the ones doing the worst jobs and the thankless ones. If a good encounter htis your camp and you thank the monsters and thank the ref and thank your plot writer, don't forget next time you are near the monster tent to poke your head in and thank the other link in the chain. Same goes with other unseen departments. If you see a guy wandering around with a coil of cable over his shoulder and a wad of cable ties in his back pocket, then thank him for help creating the event setting. or if after a stunning ritual you can make out the shadowy form of a man behind a sound and light desk hidden by a translucent screen, poke your head in and thnk him. These are the people who deserve your thanks, not the ones like me. I'm doing something I activley enjoy. They are doing somthing boring and monotonous so your event is made better.
cross posted to some other feeds.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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So Yesterday we christened Charlie and had a BBQ/garden party for it (and my Birthday.. but lets face it charlie is a bigger draw!).
It went well, and considering the weather leading up to it and the weather today the face we had a clear warm day was a miricale, especially as there was no way i could have fit the 40-50 people that were there in the house! At which point the now finished landscaped garden came into play.
patio from far side of pond
View past bridge up stream
View past pond and up stream
Pond
View from deck across patio to shed and flower bed
View from deck up garden
From first plan to finishing this project has taken a frankly embaressing 2 and a half years. After the deck went in quickly it slowed downand over the next 2 years the pond was excavated, the frame for it built and the shed put up. Then a few months ago when I decided to have the party and discussed how to do the patio with Bruce I got into gear, recruited some help and finally finshed it.
Now for the next project!
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, June 14th, 2007
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It has been brought to my attention that on a previous post I listed my address as 9 Beech Green
It is 19 Beech Green
Stupid "1" key
That is all
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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I've been in the software industry for 10 years now, and before that was involved in computers and technology through my (long) univerity and teenage life, back as far as the Acorn Electron.
I have seen technology and methodology for a lot of stuff in my field leap ahead at breakneck speeds and whilst it is immpossible to keep up with it all, you try and keep an eye on things. This means that you are rarley knocked out of your seat when you see soe new piece of software. However a friend has sent me a link from a lecture on some new microsoft imaging technology that is visually and technically stunning but also I reckon has the potential to be massive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0
And the software works at near that speed on a modern computer as an activeX component in a Browser, Not the most speed efficient implementation you can get.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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As I alluded to the other day.
On the 17th of June we will be having a BBQ in the afternoon to celebrate both the fact that on the monday I make it to 35 and that in the morning of the 17th Our daughter Charlie will get Christened. There is also a certain amount of gratuitous use of the over large patio we are laying (i'd say laid except the craply timed weather means a few will need relayiong as they are currently resting on sandy mush!).
The Christening will take place at St Peters Priory Church in Dunstable (The one we got married in) at 12:15 (ok, not quite the morning) with the BBQ afterwards (if you can't make it to the christeniung but want to come to the BBQ anytime from 2pm onwards will be safe.
Our address is
9 Beech Green
Dunstable
LU6 1EB
I would love to see as many of you there as possible
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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so over the last weekend myself and a friend of lisa's laid 25 square metres of patio, built a fence and all but made 11 square metres of pond.
The patio is a light colour, so all I need is a big red H and I could catch a helicopter!!
On project garden we are so nearly there!
Anyway, keep 17th of June in your diaries. There will be a BBQ to celebrate my Birthday, christen the new garden and more importantly, providing I can book the church, Christening Charlie!
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, January 29th, 2007
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Almost all my life i've had cats. Cats of most shapes and sizes. All cats are unique, most are somewhat eccentric. One stood head and shoulders above the rest when it came to being unique and Eccentric
He was Vandle
Vandle
01/07/2004 (approx) - 28/01/2007
Rest in Peace
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
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Hi All,
Well, I'm back from my 2 week paternity leave which means that yes, the rumours you heard were true, I have broken darwins bounds and reproduced!
It's been a tiring two weeks but we're doing fab!
here is a little pic of Charlie Naimh (a girl and the second name is pronounced neev).
( Charlie Niamh Maher )
And as she was born on the 9th of Jan.. No one won the sweepstake! However as dorianegray was closest, all collected money will go to her charity
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Comments: Read 23 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
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Well, Christmas came and went, New Years came and went and we still seem to have about as much chance of starting Labour as Neli Kinnock did in the 80's!
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Comments: Read 11 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
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Friday, December 15th, 2006
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Well, it's trundling ever closer!
For those who entered the sweepstake, here is the final table
| Date Range | Backer | Charity |
| Before 14th December | anerdherder | UK Galactoseaemia Support Group |
| 14th - 18 December | viclet | Marie Curie |
| 19th - 22nd December | briccy | PDSA |
| 23rd December | siryel | World Wildlife Fund |
| 24th December | voodoolou | Macmillan Nurses |
| 25th December | Stuart Maher | Child's Trust Fund |
| 26th December | Lisa Maher | Child's Trust Fund |
| 27th december | evildeadgav | Amnesty International |
| 28th December | hengist_lt | Childline |
| 29th December | nyarbaggythep | Save The Children |
| 30th december | auriol | Shelter |
| 31st December | fundessie | SSPCA |
| 1st January | kathbad | Amnesty International |
| 2nd January | larpexiles | Canine Defense League |
| 3rd January | littlemiscowboy | Fairfield Baby Lifeline Society (www.fbls.org.uk) |
| 4th January | | |
| 5th -7th January | dorianegray | Irish Epiliepsy Association |
| 8th-11th January | | | | After 11th January | | |
There is 2 spaces left. the 4th of Jan and the ludicrously late post 14th of jan (i'll be gone mental by then!!)
Other than that i'm rying to concentrate on work, trying not to elctracute myself wiring in the new office and trying to generally finish it before Lisa goes nuts (All the study "stuff" is piled up in the dining room where the chritmas tree should be as we evicted it from the old study to make it the nursery).
Other than that, play www.tribalwars.net it rocks!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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