Bjørn Røyrvik's page

Also a couple chapters into Tanith Lee's Silver metal lover. Girl meets robot. I read the sequel some years ago but I only remember the barest outlines of the story.

We're enjoying it well enough. More for the politics and world-building than the characters.

It's significantly better than Prometheus or Covenant, not that that's much of an achievement, but it feels like an OK installment in Alien universe.

"Lies sleeping" was entertaining. Plot and world advances.

Finished volume 1 of Tower Dungeon by Tsutomu Nihei. I get the feeling that his editors want him to get more and more mainstream, which is to his detriment as a storyteller. "Tower dungeon" is, so far at least, a mostly by-the-numbers Japanese fantasy story with generic D&D-ish characters and world-building. Characterization has never been his strong point and there doesn't seem to be much development in that department. The set-up is as traditional as you can get: a dragon kidnapped the princess; save her, brave adventurers. There is a mega-dungeon with actual numbered levels. I suppose we should be grateul that he hasn't gone as far as to have characters talk about classes and experience levels.

The saving grace so far is Nihei's ability to make truly creepy-looking monsters, and the glimpse we got of the royal family and high nobles, which hints at something seriously wrong in the world.

I will continue reading it in the hopes that Nihei will make things weirder and creepier.

Good start to the season. The opening isn't quite the banger that the first one was, but still good.

I'm no fan of dogs but I don't like seeing animals hurt. Except things like ticks or mosquitos, because f#!% those thing.

"Tongues of the Moon" was OK, but not Farmer's best.

I realized a few days ago that there was a new Hellblazer story that came out in 2024, so I bought it and read it. It had all the elements of a John Constantine story you'd want, but I thought it mishandled certain supporting characters, explicitly going against previous portrayals. Still, I enjoyed it.

Currently about half way through Ben Aarnoovitch's Lies Sleeping, yet another installment in the Rivers of London series. So far so good.

"Final Stage" was good. I enjoyed some stories more than others but all were entertaining and interesting explorations of their themes. It is a bit dated, of course, and inevitably many of the plots have been done by others in the years since these were written so there isn't much new here now, but the book is worth picking up if you find it at a used bookstore and haven't read the stories already.

Currently reading Philip José Farmer's Tongues of the Moon, set in an alt.u. version of our world where the where the world is split between the Soviets in the North hemisphere and the Axis in the south and what happens on the Moon after the Earth nukes itself to oblivion.
So far it's interesting enough, but the book is most notable for being written without chapters and apparantly without paragraphs (at least none in the first 1/3 of the book). I don't know if the latter is intentional on the author's part or a failure of editing.

I had a copy of that one when I was young. Loved it to pieces (not quite literally).

I tend to go for human.
Races are only fun for their culture and human cultures get most attention so I gravitate towards them.

Happy birthday, 3e.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the 3.x family of games.

Sounds like a decent way of doing things. One issue I had with Saventh-yhi is that it was pretty empty and needed a lot of GM work to fill in.
If I were you I'd steal stuff any number of older modules that explores abandoned cities. Classics like "The Lost City", "Ruins of Myth Drannor", "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" (which was basically the template for this AP)

Yes, it was identified. And they still didn't run until it killed 2 of them. One of them had grease prepared and didn't try to slow it down so they could run, he stood there and hit it with acid splash.

All of the players have been playing Pathfinder for at least 3 years.

Then this is on them.

Sapphire and Steel is a masterclass in how to write an engaging SF show with zero budget. It's a slow burn and there is basically no action, but it's worth a try. All episodes were on Youtube last I checked.

Still on a break. I haven't even thought about continuing the game. I was more burned out than I thought. At this rate I doubt we'll finish the game this year

"The Margarets" was good. The climax and ending stumbled a bit compared to the meat of the story but on the whole I liked it.

Currently reading Final Stage: The ultimate science fiction anthology. A rather grandiose name but it has good authors (Asimov, Pohl, Harrison, Ellison, Tiptree and more) who were comissioned to write stories on certain topics. I've read a couple of them before, I think. So far so good.

Where to start? Where to end?

I guess I can start with Tanith Lee's "Tales from the Flat Earth" and "The Secret Books of Paradys". I could fill this list with much of her writing but I will restrict my self to these two, as they show off her writing skill, her imagination and her darkness best of all her stuff I have read.
The first is her stories in set a mythical version of Earth, in the vein of 1001 Nights. The second is stories set in different versions of Paris on different Earths.

Charlie Stross "Laundry Files". Lovecraft meets Men in Black, with dark British humor suffusing the entirety.

Gaiman's "Sandman". Yes, he turned out to be a piece of s+$& but Sandman is still an amazing series. I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy it again as I did but divorced of the author's a$+~&@@ry it's a great piece of art.

Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. Especially the first collection "Tales of the Dying Earth". I could put a lot of Vance in here, but I will restrict myself to this series.

Lord Dunasny's Pegana stories.

I will leave it at that. I could add a lot more.

What shows are people watching this time around?

I'm sorta watching the Silent Witch, only because our protagonist makes cute faces.

CHEDCL-Haikara is frustratingly delayed in its releases but quite enjoyable. So far it's better than Happy Knights, even if the concept is far closer to the first series and less a unique spin on things.

Clevatess is a moderately enjoyable brutal fantasy series. I think I'm watching it mostly because the name is stuck in my head as 'cleave dat ass'.

Second season of Dandadan. More of the same. I like it.
The second season of A Couple of Cukoos, because I like my dumb high school harem comedies.

Another season of "Rascal does not dream of bunny girl senpai", aka Bakemonogatari-lite. Haven't quite gotten around to watching it but I will. I believe there is a movie I have to watch first.

"Kindred Spirits" was OK. I think I enjoyed it more while I was reading it than I do after.

Currently reading Sheri Tepper's The Margarets. One part Star Trek with more grit, one part 70s social-critical SF in the vein of Soylent Green, one part fairy tale. So far it's quite good.

Work today, trying to survive the heat wave that has plagued us the last couple of weeks. Norway wasn't made for temperatures much above 20 C.

Bree-yark!

Speaking Norwegian (Swedish and Danish are for all intents and purposes the same as Norwegian) will not allow you to understand OE. At best it gives a slight advantage for certain words but you have to learn it as a foreign language. As for Icelandic, I cannot say properly but based on what little I know of Old Norse I suspect it helps a bit more than modern Norwegian but not enough to understand properly without actually learning OE.

Saw it last week and for the most part I agree with Aberzombie.

Watched it yesterday. We enjoyed it for the most part but a few things didn't work for me. One, the mix of the two storylines felt rather contrived and jarring. Two, I was very frustrated at how dumb and useless the vampires were (though I guess that explains why they aren't a common worldwide problem).

Other than that Jordan did an outstanding job.

"Heavenly Tyrant" was good and sets up for a third book, which I am looking forward to.

Currently reading Sara J. Maas A Court of Thorn and Roses. I bought it pretty much only to support a newly opened book store in town. It's OK. Very easy to read but so far nothing particularly memorable.
After this I will read Kindred Spirits, first of the Meetings sextet.

1. Yes, I do interpret it as you can only have one controlled creature at a time. This is fine, it's an artifact, it doesn't have to be optimized, especially considering its history as a desperate measure of containment.

2. I would not allow you to let the fiends come out uncontrolled and Bind them retroactively. I would rule it as you need to use the Word of Binding as you let the fiend out and if you don't it's free to do what it wants.

I can't see anywhere in the description of the item that it was used to create a city so I don't know that I would allow it to loose all fiends and rebind them. I would however allow the bottle to loose fiends without the Word of Binding and you can Seal it later but that would permanently reduce the number of capture fiends. IOW, if you use the WoBinding the fiends are Summoned so if killed they return to the bottle to be resummoned. If let loose unBound they are free and die when they are killed. Banishment only works if the fiend is Bound.

"Firstborn" was decent. Enough that I will pick up the others in the series if I happen to come across them. Perhaps not good enough for me to seek them out. Outside of the core storyline I never read much Dragonlance so I'm

On to Xiran Jay Zhao's Heavnly Tyrant, a sequel to "Iron Widow". I enjoyed the first book and I'm enjoying the second.

Just read The Furthest Station, another Rivers of London book. This one was short and mostly phoned it in.

On to Firstborn by Tonya Cook and Paul Thompson, the first of the Elven Nations trilogy from Dragonlance.
I picked it up at a use bookstore or flea market a couple years ago and it sat forgotten on my shelf until recently.

New Cute High Earth Defense Club series starts today.
Set in the Taisho era. Not sure how it will hold up to the original or even to Happy Knights but I am SO ready for our super gay magical girls boys I'll watch it even if it's a slight disappointment.

"Quest for the White Witch" was good, as I both remembered and expected. Vazkor has shown character growth over the books and is if not exactly a good person, significantly better than he was.

On to The Hanging Tree, another of Ben AAronovitch's Rivers of London books

I'm AFB so I can't check on their statblocks. I would assume that the base 20 landspeed is because they are wearing heavy armor.

Which book and which page is this encoutner on?

I was not particularly impressed by the first one but I'm probably going to watch this one if only to see the troll-kaiju fight they hinted at.

The Invitation is a 2022 American horror thriller film directed by Jessica M. Thompson and written by Blair Butler. It stars Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty. Inspired by the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, it follows a woman who, after her mother's death, meets long-lost family members and discovers the dark secrets they carry.

If you hadn't said it was inspired by Dracula I would have guessed it was stealing the plot of Tanith Lee's Blood Opera trilogy.

Adapt something from the game "Kobolds ate my baby".

Work tomorrow. Probably see my folks on Sunday. They are heading off to the wedding of one of my cousins soon. I was sadly unable to attend.

I like the Snyderverse, warts and all, but that sounds like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The stories of WDWGFH2 were mostly good. Some of them I had read before, most were quite dated in their concepts and executions. The one I want to like the most is H Beam Piper's "Omnilingual", which focuses on xenoarchaeology and xenoarchaeolinguistics but it suffers from the aliens being way too human. The actual winner is a toss-up between Niven's "Neutron Star" and Asimov's "Pate de fois gras", with honorable mention to Walter Tevis' "The Big Bounce".

On to Tanith Lee's Quest for the White Witch, third of the Birthgrave books.

Currently reading Where do we go from here? book 2, a collection of SF stories edited by Asimov. I've read some of them before. The theme of the collections are ideas that make you think about science and exploration. He follows up every story with a brief comment on what is realistic or not in the story and a few questions to test people's knowledge of science and/or powers of imagination based on science.

Here you go

They should be pretty close to RAW-abiding, if that's important. It's been years since I looked at them so I've forgotten a lot of details about them, but please ask if you have questions.

Somewhere. They were all level 20, though.

Amusingly named Gef, I noticed.

The eponymous hero of "Vazkor, son of Vazkor" is a piece of s&$$. This is only in part due to his upbringing. He is quite unpleasant, yet Lee managed to make me invested in his journey and root for his success. The book echoes the story of his mother from "The Birthgrave" and it was fun to see how her life in the had set Vazkor on his path. You probably could enjoy VsoV on its own merit but it definitely works best if your read TB first.

I remember statting up some of the Soul Calibur characters as opponents for my players. They were tricky opponents.

And all Danes and Swedes are insulted at 'Scandinavian' being equated with 'Norwegian'. And all Norwegians are insulted for the same reason. And Finns are insulted at being considered part of Scandinavia in the first place.

"Cinnabar One" was basically two plots, melded rather clumsily together for one to solve the other while leaving the first one, the better one, unsolved. Perhaps there will be a second book detailing the more interesting bit. I'm not sure I'd bother getting number two if there is one, and then it would only be to support living Norwegian SF writers.

Back to Tanith Lee with Vazkor, son of Vazkor (also known a "Shadowfire"), sequel to The Birthgrave.

A decent Thor movie would be a nice change, certainly.

I never expected this and I doubt it will amount to much. I'd like it to be good but I'm not holding my breath.

Work today, up to see the folks tomorrow with hopefully some gaming in the afternoon.

I'm glad to see other fans of John Cale.

That is one of the reasons Lee is one of my favorite writers.

Mostly a quiet weekend for me. Visited my parents on Sunday and had Monday off because of Pentecost* so we took my MIL and our nephew to a local open farm where the kid got to run around and look at a lot of animals. No riding the horses on weekdays, sadly, so he will have to visit another time.

* Most Norwegians have no idea what Pentecost is but we take our holidays seriously. Religious holidays are far more religiously observed than the religion they belong to.