In the last few months, I have got excited about roleplaying for the first time in a decade.

It’s thanks to Fiasco. Fiasco is the most fun, creative, simple roleplaying game I have ever encountered. In fact it seem weird even to call it ‘roleplaying’, considering how different it is from the complex combat heavy rules of Dungeons and Dragons and the like. I’ve even take to describing Fiasco as a ‘storytelling game’, to avoid scaring away potential players. My experience is that people can play through a game and have a great time, without ever associating what they are doing with the word ‘roleplaying’.

Fiasco takes place in a single setting. There is no Game Master. There is no plot prepared in advance. Everything is collectively improvised. The only seed is the ‘playset’, a bare-bones list of possible places, objects, motivations and relationships. These are designed to nudge you towards a black-comedy caper style of play. Fiasco describes itself as a game of ‘people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control’, and names Coen Brothers movies as a major influence.

You start just with a list of 36 possible relationships between characters, and similar lists of places, objects and motivations. Through a semi-random process of selecting them, you collectively sketch out your characters.

The main game is a series of improvised ‘scenes’. Each player in turn is the protagonist of a scene. She sets up a situation and acts it out. Other players perform their own characters as required, or switch and take on minor roles. At some point the other players decide whether it will turn out well or badly for the protagonist (symbolised by handing them a white or black die), and the improv moves seamlessly towards its end.

A game of Fiasco feels something like the roleplaying equivalent of a jam session. You aren’t trying to beat the world, or overcome the obstacles placed by a game-master. You aren’t even trying to get the best outcome for your character. You are trying to have fun.

We found ourselves stripping down even the minimal game mechanics which existed. Provided everybody is on the same wavelength, the stories create themselves, and the rules become just a background rumble.

Fiasco claims to be for 3-5 players. My experience is that 3 works better than 5. That’s mainly because Fiasco lacks a mechanism for time-keeping, and would definitely benefit from having one. It’s very easy to get caught up in a scene and lose track of time, with the effect that any players not involved in a scene get bored. With 3 players, it’s likely that every player will be involved in a scene. With 5, there are likely to be a couple of bystanders.

Even with 3 players, Fiasco tends to go on much longer than its theoretical 2-3 hours’ playtime. I’ve found myself often cutting games short, to avoid people drifting off into exhaustion. Being a single-session game is a curse as well as a blessing — I can’t imagine stopping a game of Fiasco in mid-flow, only to take up the chaos the next week.

The UK government body responsible for regulating estate agents is...

Powys County Council

For real. And here's a Guardian article.

I'm not entirely sure how that works. The central government body responsible for it was abolished, so it got handed off to a county council. They got enough cash to hire three people. The UK spends about £140 billion on real estate each year -- not to mention house prices being basically the only allowable topic of dinner-party conversation. And it's watched over by those three people in Powys county council.

There's a $1.5bn plan to bring wind energy from Wyoming to California, via pumping air into a specially-built salt cave, and letting it out as needed.

It's a wonderful, baroquely over-the-top scheme. And, as BDLGblog says, it all feels like something out of a steampunk Aeneid:


The restless regions of the storms she sought,
Where, in a spacious cave of living stone,
The tyrant Aeolus, from his airy throne,
With pow'r imperial curbs the struggling winds,
And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds.
This way and that th' impatient captives tend,
And, pressing for release, the mountains rend.
High in his hall th' undaunted monarch stands,
And shakes his scepter, and their rage commands;
Which did he not, their unresisted sway
Would sweep the world before them in their way;

Bonkers Victorian inventions, including:

• A steel collar, to protect against garrotting
• A mechanical leech, in case there's a shortage of real leeches
• A corset with built-in inflatable boobs

I love it when political manouvering becomes full-on Machiavellian. This (if true) is a beautifully contorted dodge from Kremlin strategist Vladislav Surkov, protecting his own position:

At one point he began to fear that success would be his undoing: there was speculation that he had presidential ambitions, a dangerous rumour, especially in political circles, and he immediately leaked the fact of his Chechen father, which he had previously kept secret, in order to rule himself out of higher office, or so it’s said. It was his way of saying ‘I know my place.’

The internet is poisoned. In my lunch break I started reading a blog on (er, mostly) Chinese politics, and within 5 minutes was confronted with slash involving David Miliband and a stegosaurus.

[no link, because it wasn't very good porn. I hope in the fullness of time somebody will do better, and occupy that particular niche in triumph]

People, I lack music.

My office in Berlin was in a bar, above rehearsal rooms, with an electro-heavy playlist constantly on the stereo. There was enough music around that I didn't need to find my own. So, aside from the odd medicinal piece for a particular mood, I just soaked up whatever was in the air already.

My current office is more mundane: choose headphones, or choose silence. I can't just sink into the emotional rhythm of other people's music, so I need to create my own or let the entire day be identical.
Still, I'm not really asking for music recommendations. I really want to find music journalists. Or music blogers, music essayists, whatever. I may draw the line at twitter. Suggestions?
Ones I already like:

• Simon Reynolds (despite his habit of concealing his articles across a dozen half-forgotten blogs)


• Velvet Coalmine


• 
  K-punk,
  Splintering Bone Ashes, and the rest of the hauntology crowd. Though they're more philosophy than music, and in any case seem mostly to have given up the ghost.
  


• Sasha Frere-Jones (though I wish he were a bit less tastefully even-handed)
  


• um...there most be some more? Right?
  

Practical advice time, folks: how do I find interesting films showing in London cinemas?

I'm particularly interested in older and moderately obscure films -- the kind that will turn up over the course of a year, but that I'll miss unless I inhale a listings magazine every week.

Does there exist a website that can take a wish-list of films, and email me whenever one of them is on in London? That seems like such an obvious and potentially-profitable concept that somebody must already have built it, but I can't find it.

Relatedly, does anybody want to come see some films with me?

It seems about time for me to throw some kind of a party. Late-night consultation with my housemate Cristina narrows us down to the middle of October, i.e.:

- Friday 7/10
- Saturday 8/10
- Friday 14/10
- Saturday 15/10

Now would be a great time to tell me about clashes, holidays, bad omens and the like. Which dates could you manage, were you so inclined?

[this is in London, Wood Green, around here]

I'm moving back to London in 2 weeks.

I'll be arriving on the July 4th. My birthday is on July 8th.

Combined, that's sufficient excuse for a gathering of londoners I love.

Conveniently, mirabehn and mirrorshard are already organizing a readthrough in Finsbury Park on Sunday 10th. I'm going to hijack it.

So: let's meet in Finsbury Park from noon that day. There will be food, and drink, and Shakespeare, and at least a 30% chance of sun. Those of you who don't know the readthrough crowd can be overwhelmed by how lovely they are. Those of you who do -- well, surely you'll want to come anyway? Anybody with a hotline to God, please hint that sun would be really convenient :)

Details of location, plans in case of rain, etc, to follow once we've figured them out :)