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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Comments
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I thought the characters were reasonably distinct. I had a good handle on what they wanted and why they did what they did. I can't remember names, but that's me. It took me a while to work out Irina was Abby's hallucination. I guess it was at the s…
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Regardless of the "Russian-ness" of Novayarkha, I thought it was a pretty plausible depiction of a community under great stress and hardship. People had to do what they were told or else everyone would soon perish. The control was warrante…
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There was enough there to set up the situation Bonesteel wanted. I thought it was plausible enough, some features pushed the story a bit, but it wasn't a huge part of the book. It wasn't really about the worldbuilding, but the characters.
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Yes, they were clearly a couple who deeply cared for each other. It perhaps started a bit too fast to be believable, but once established I think it rang true. I liked that the friendship side of the relationship was more important than any romantic…
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"Why they bothered" is a key theme of the novel, I think. What is the point of living? And both sub-settings (Novayarkha and Hypatia) are post-apocalyptic. The Hypatia's answer to the meaning of life is to carry out the great work that's …
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I liked that we had two different perspectives on the meeting of the groups. It made the miscommunications and misunderstandings easier for the reader. Anya came across as a bit naive. I'd have thought that someone in her experience, with her job, …
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It was quite fun and mostly rattled along. I liked that the viewpoint characters were mature adults rather than the over-emotional teenagers that are in a lot of fiction. The plotting with the Exiles was a bit ham-fisted. We knew from the beginning…
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(Quote) I think there's something about changing attitudes towards friendship and masculinity. I think the book was from a time when people could be friends, without any expectation of romantic or sexual feelings. Also, men were less expected to be …
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(Quote) I've recently been watching The Avengers, the 1960s "espionage" caper TV series. Some of those plots seem to be updated equivalents of the plot in this book. Small scale, strange weirdness that may have huge implications.
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(Quote) Interesting. Could you say more about this? What did you find different? Was the older interaction better or worse than you'd expect in modern times (whether in life or in a fictional portrayal)?
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(Quote) Isn't that similar to other situations with fixed times ("the ritual will be completed at midnight!"), or travel with timetables ("there are only two trains per day to the next city")? If time and location are important …
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(Quote) "Sensible" is probably the wrong word. "Believable" or "justifiable" might be better. I'm trying to express the notion that the character, actually living in the world, knows much more than the player does about…
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(Quote) I can't see anyone attempting military invasion of the UK. I can see the possibility of subversion, economic aggression, and a take-over of the apparatus of power.
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Good gaming relies on the players making interesting decisions. For RPGs, I'd go further and say that good RPG gaming relies on the players making interesting decisions that are based in the character. With travel, its difficult to make the decisio…
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Reliable, long-distance communication is still difficult. Social media means that all sorts of incomplete and conflicting reports come out of an ongoing event. Hostile actors can make it worse by injecting false stories and spreading misinformation.…
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(Quote) Thanks for explanation. I agree with most of your analysis of Carruthers's change in the book. But I don't see much in the book that supports your final assertion, that he is forever an outsider. The frame story for the novel has an editor c…
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Games like The One Ring and Ryuutama make travel a significant part of the game, but mainly as a resource-depletion activity. Difficult travel can leave people tired or injured, putting them at a disadvantage at the destination. Travel may also thro…
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The terrain is a major factor in the book, and the story mostly comes out of the terrain and its military implications. What I thought was missing was the element of danger in it. As I said elsewhere, there's very little jeopardy coming from the ter…
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I don't mind that there's no fighting, but the book lacked immediate tension and stakes for most of it. Even the tensest scene, Carruthers eavesdropping on the conference, didn't have much risk of discovery or close scrapes. Similarly, the duel of w…
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In terms of protagonists, the outstanding thing for this book is that they were to some extent "everyman" characters. No great talents or training, and the privilege they had was purely to allow them to muck around in boats for a few weeks…
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I don't think there's as much interest in an invasion by another nation: it's a less credible threat, and that kind of European imperial ambition was of its time. Threats in the current zeitgeist are more like the typical Bond villains: attacks on …
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I liked the initial contrast between Carruthers and Davies, the upper-class entitled twit against the entitled adventurer. Carruthers's transformation was a little too large to be believable, but it set up a decent set of actions in the second half …
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I didn't mind the descriptions of sailing, as they fed directly into the decisions the characters were making, and how they interacted with the people and setting around them. It's not like the long meandering digressions of Moby Dick. As for the p…
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It was an attempt to be a thriller, but it wasn't very thrilling. There was some activity, but no immediate stakes for any of it. And it's not even to say it's a book of its time; stories by Conan Doyle and Haggard are more thrilling than this one. …
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Well into it. Should be able to join in.
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(Quote) Sounds a bit like the Battlestar Galactica game. That one has the twist that some of the characters are randomly assigned to be enemy agents. Some are assigned part-way through the game!
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(Quote) Which is why I interpret the ending as the dying hallucinations of the passengers aboard the train, as they're consumed by various plants in the quarantine zone.
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(Quote) Or not enough? I don't think this book was as good as the film.
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(Quote) Please remind us of them.
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(Quote) I don't think that ruleset went into injuries in any more detail than normal: we were focused on firefighting and rescue. A lot of these games use the idea from Fight Fire of treating the threats as monsters and the rescue incident mechanic…