Busy November

As you saw I was totally inactive at last month. Lot of things happened with me and my family.

Lets start with the most important: my wife is pregnant. Again. The doctors predicted the "Third One" to the end of May. Our small flat will be really crowded. Not just only with baby cry, but with 3 children.

I finished my short short story for the contest, but I was not entirelly happy with it. I think I had a very good core idea, but the 22,000 characters were too less. Unfortunatelly I left the spice from it because of the thickening the story. I had too much expectation about it, but it was good for start. Maybe next time.

I don't statisfied with my other running projects as well. I won't finish the translation of Sacred 2 this year. My boardgame designing project also stranded. Borned new ideas, but nothing serious.

Last week I bought a boardgame, which was on my wishlist for a while: Tales of the Arabian Nights.

My colleauges invited me to a Basketball Business League, so I has been playing to basketball championship this year. Due to the late night match schedules it doesn't cause any problem to my family. (My daughter has 2-2 ballet-dancing and swimming course a week, which is also modified our family calendar.)

I hope December will be much untroubled and not so busy.

Firefly

I have mixed feelings today, the day of the 10th aniversary of the first airing date of the cult-series, Firefly. We can be thankful for the FOX to ordering and sharing with us this great adventure. I liked almost every moment of the Firefly. But shame on you FOX for mixing the order of the show and after the dropping rates cancelling our entertainment!

I wasn't a big series-follower that time when I saw this one first. I was just a casual tv-viewer, who somedays watch a show or two. But the Firefly (and the Prison Break) was a real breakthrough... I became an addict for series. Most for the science fiction shows of course.

It wasn't an easy case, because I infected my wife as well. First she was unwilling to watch with me the first minutes but after she joined to me, and wanted to start over again. And after an episode she wanted to see another episode. It was crazy! We watched the whole season in a week. But after the last episode and the Serenity movie we both felt a big emptyness and a slight disappointment. We didn't want tbis end...

We wanted get back Mal, Jayne, Inara, Kaylee, River and the others back. The Firefly was a real milestone in our (my wife and me) relationship. We felt love into the sci-fi and/or sci-fantasy series, and our big journey continued with the Stargate, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica and other shows as well. But this is another story to tell...

Take my love, take my land

Take me where I cannot stand

I don't care, I'm still free

You can't take the sky from me

Take me out to the black

Tell 'em I ain't comin' back

Burn the land and boil the sea

You can't take the sky from me

There's no place I can be

Since I found serenity

But you can't take the sky from me

Genre Favorites Blogfest

I deceided to participate my blogger-friend, the author of some great great books, Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh's actual blogfest, the Genre Favorites Blogfest. I'll try to use out the advantage of the local timezone and finish my post before the others. I've admit I was lazy to wrote it before, so I'm writting it now live, without any pre-schedule.

Favourite genre of MOVIE:

I knew as I looked to the first category it means very big problem to me, because I love more than 1 genre, but I have to choose 1 of them. At the first round I reduced my favourites to three: fantasy, sci-fi and based on comics. Maybe this third category doesn't exist so I deducted that one from the list. I'm still before the big decision because definatelly hard to vote one of my favourite. Maybe I'll break the rules when I say draw between fantasy and science fiction. Below you can see my reasons.

Fantasy: If you look into the past and try to find good - I mean really good - fantasy films you can find only one film (or filmseries) The Lord of the rings. But if you look in to the things deeper you can found other good films from the past. I have to mention only the classic, the one-and-only real Star Wars trilogy. It's a classic fantasy with knights, magic, valor and princess... but in space environment!

Sci-fi: I've admit I love the space and I love the science, but not every movie takes place in space means it's science-fiction (see Star Wars). I love the sci-fi movies when I have to thing about consequences of decisions, or think about the realisticness of the future. Sometimes I fell like we're already live in the future with great gadgets, but it's also cause a horrible feelings to. 

Favourite genre of MUSIC:

It was the easiest choice...

Rave: I still love rave music, and I can't explain why. Maybe about the rawness and the high BPM. These style really fast... Unfortuntely it's completely die to the 21st century, and the UK happy hardcore or much slower electronic musics are pure mockeries. I embeded one of my favourites:

Favourite genre of BOOKS:

I didn't allow myself the luxury to pick more than one favorite genre, so I choiced:
Fantasy: This genre give me the most pleasure and entertainment. I can completely switch-off my mind and I can imagine anything. While the sci-fi give some borders to a story, in the case of fantasy there are NO barriers. Luckily in genre of fantasy I can find the pulp-fiction and high-concept fantasy as well. I know I have to recite the name of great authors like Steven Erikson and George R. R. Martin, but as I sad I like the lighter books from authors like R. A. Salvatore or Elaine Cunningham. And I would be unfair if I have don't mention the writer of the mind-blowing Dark Tower series, Stephen King.

Guilty pleasure genre of movie:

It was also a hard decision... to choose a music genre (trance), or a book genre (sci-fi, detective stories or steampunk), but I choiced the previously mentioned
Comicbooks adaptions from movie category: At the past 3-5 years the comicbooks adaptations were the greatest hits to me. Due to the development of movie creating technologies these kind of films improved a lot, and we can believe these things can be real. We can see our childhood heroes on the big screens of movie theathers, and we don't think they're lames as we think the early Batman movies/series. Now we can believe Tony Start is a real person, Peter Parker able to walk on walls and the Avengers able to defend our planet at the end.
But I must admit the older comicbooks heroes have an ancient, nostalgic charm. We could love the old Batman and Superman with their underpants on their paints. And I still love the noir-feeling Sin City as the alternative history from the cold-war period of the Watchmen.

It was my post about my favorite genres. Maybe I should had found some other pictures and youtube videos to decorate the post, but I have to 5 hours left to early get up. So, maybe next time... ;)

Oh, I almost forgot. If you interested more about this blogfest and the other participants choices, then please visit will visit Alex J. Cavanaugh's blogpost!

Projects

I have admit I quite lazy about doing things. Mostly I like spent my sparetime with passive thing with watching series/film or reading books. But I'm running some projects pararell in my active sparetime, and I'd like to tell some words about them in my blog. I put it them different categories.

Boardgame

Because my whole family is a gameboad geek nest, it's almost obvious I'll try to do something like that. In my previous post I wrote about the bedtime tales spiced with a small portion roll/role-playing. I came to the conclusion I'd like to improve it further, with creating a map, with random events and 'children-friendly monsters'. It's a little bit funny, because many bad, horrible thing happens in the tales. There you can find hereos and the enemies of the heroes (villains, monsters, other bad things). There are many confrontations which have to solve with force or use of the cunningness of the mind. I'd like to implements these items and factors to my boardgame. I'm in the very beginning of it, but I have many good ideas and concepts.

Translation

At the past I translated many computer games from English to Hungarian. Translating things to my native language is not so hard thing, it only depends on the understanding of the original texts, and write them on Hungarian. Usually I have freedom enough to from the things as I'd like. There were some non-official translation (I did them voluntary without any payment from anyone) where I didn't translate everything words by words, and I Hungarising the texts not translating.

My last official translation was the Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, which is an Diablo-clone. The creators of the game were German, which means the original texts were German too. First the developers translated the texts to English then sent them to the translators of many countries to modify the texts to their language such as French, Italian or Hungarian. It was interesting because we got the original German texts are well, and we saw there are many difference compared to the English. So we had some hard, cumbersome time with the translation of the game, but the final product was really great. At the end my colleauge and me translated nearly 1 million English words to Hungarian.

Unfortunatelly the Hungarian distributor didn't agreed the term of distributing of the expansion of the game, so you can't buy Sacred 2 Ice & Blood and Gold from the local shops. We didn't get any support from the developers of th troubled company. We had offered them to translated the texts of the expansion for free, if we got translation tools but they refused.

But a German team wanted to pimp the game for the fans. They added to the game new monsters, quests and texts which means they've got a translation tool. Fortunatelly I got it from them, so I can export and import the texts I like. Now I'm at the 2/3 of the texts of the expansion. I hope I'll finish it this year.

(Here you can find my 'translategraphy')

Novell

I deceided to participate a novell-writing contest. I have to write a short novell with 5000-20000 words in fantasy or sci-fi genre, but in western style (like Firefly). In the story itself must be a sheriff, a priest and a dynamite. I almost finished with it, but there lot things to do with it. BUT, I knowing myself well enough to rewrite the story every time, when I look into it.

Bedtime tales... in my own way

I usually tell bedtime tales to my children. I used to read something from a book, or projecting something from my childhood collection, I had many classic tales from famous writters as Grimm, Andersen or from the Hungarian folklore. We - my wife and me - projected them the slide show with my nearly 20-years-old Russian projektor. But found something new...

I have started to tell them the classi bedtime stories in my own way, which means I spiced the tales with rolling dice. When I'm telling them the story of Little Red Ridding Hood, there is the possibility the little girl found another animal in the woods. And after a successful diceroll she miss the encounter, or it turns out the another animal is just a rabbit (not from the movie Monthy Python and the Holy Grail.) :)

The kids enjoy very much these kind of tales. They like rolling the colorful dice. I have many tiny 6-sided dice in many colors, as I have d4, d10, d12, d20 and d100 as well. So I have many opportunity to change the way of the tales. I think - in that way - the line is very thin between the roll-playing game and role-playing game. After I have finished a tale I mix the dice, and suggest to my daughter and son to collect together the same colors as Cinderella did in the tale. 

Unfortunately my wife doesn't like these kind of games, and kids are too young for a complex game yet, but maybe about 2-3 years later they will play with me. Maybe not Dungeons & Dragons or M.A.G.U.S, but something similar rpg.

A little bit strange, but my wife loves my stories which I tell the children. I'm trying to not put freaky or too bad things to the tales. But I think many tales of Grimm and the Hungarian folklore are simple horror stories. They can frighten the children.

What do you think about the horror content of the classic bedtime tales? What do you think about my 'new-style-bedtime-storytelling'?

Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame

I love fantasy genre, I love humour, I like Terry Pratchett books as well, which take place in the strange Discworld. These elements led me to buy Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame by Martin Wallace.

Background story

Lord Vetinari left the city, so the lords of Ankh-Morpork want to get the rule over the capital of Discworld. Our aim to lead one of them to reach his aim, against the others. Is it looks quite simple? Well, it isn't. Ankh-Morpork is the city of chaos, where everyday strange things happens.

Components

The components are quite good, and we have a feeling we got quallity product from our money. The cardboard map is awesome! The artwork on the cards are funny amazing, the wooden pieces (minions and buildings) are good. I have a little problem with the wooden coins and the inner storey, but it doesn't matter.

About the game

It's a 1 hour, 2-4 player game with many confrontation, backstabing and - as I mentioned before - with many chaotic element. I don't want to write much about the setup of board and this game, just only every player gets 5 card and $10. After we have choosen a personality card secretly, we can start the game.

The goal depends on the personality card we choose: we have to control x area, we have to x minions on the  board, we have to x troublemarker on the board, we have to collect x amount of money or we have to let play until the last card of drawing deck.

During our turn we play out cards, then drawing back 5 hand of cards. The played cards determine our actions: we can place a minion, we can build a building (this add some kind of bonus to your turns), we can remove a trouble marker, we can kill a minion, we can get money from the bank, we can interrupt an action, we can play another card or we can play an event card. Playing out random event cards means you start something chaos over city of Ankh-Morpork, and with these cards you can ruin the strategy of others... or yours. This add a funny part to the whole game, but sometimes it can be annoying as well.

Conclusion

I think it is a good, funny game with quallity components. If you like backstabing the others, and if you haven't got any problem with a little luck base then maybe it is your game. The interesting world of Terry Pratchett's Discworld adds lot to this game. If you didn't read any books from him, it's no problem and if you read... then you can met many familiar character from the books. You can quickly learn to love it, if you don't take it too seriously!

(source of the pictures: bgg)

Legend of Grimrock

When I first met with the Eye of the Beholder, I didn't know about anything Waterdeep, the Forgotten Realms, Faerűn or the strange creatures of this fantasy world. In spite of these I loved the theme of the game, and the enviroment with dark, dirty and stinking maze of underground tunels.

Unfortunatelly my English was very poor that time (I had learned Russian language at primary school years), so I barely understand the story and way to play the game. But it doesn't matter, because the Eye of the Beholder looks very cool with fighting against monsters, using sorcery, magic and the holy powers of clerics. But, somehow I never finished this game or its sequels. The quests and puzzles weren't easy to solve, and I had to draw a map about the dungeon.

But some years later I managed to finish the Lands of Lore (1 and 2) games, which were very similar to EoB because these are using the same engine. I still remember the gameplay, when I eagerly turning the pages of the English-Hungary dictionary. These games helped a lot to improve my vocabulary with many-many (useless) world.

Last week I run into a very pleasant suprise, the trailer of Legend of Grimrock. As I see this game will be deliver us the feeling of old-school PC role playing games. Unfortunatelly the new role playing games, such as Mass Effect, are very simple, built to console-base, and they aren't so complex than the old ones. This is the reason why I so happy about releasing Legend of Grimrock.

I just only hope it won't be a disapointment, but due to the decent price of game it will worth a try to buy. Is there any hope the golden are of RPGs are return? The releasing of Legend of Grimrock and the news about Baldur's Gate Enchanted Edition towards this way. And if these games came to iPad....

My reading habits and opportunties

I love books and I love to reading books. But... But I also love many other things to do. So this is just one of the cause why I read less than 15 years ago.

It's started when I was 5 years old. I read the tales from the books to the other children at the kindergarten. I was very proud I can read before my primary school years. I have many story-book with numerous tales from Hungarian and foreign authors (Andersen, Grimm, La Fontaine, etc.)

In my primary years time I read many books and cartoons. The books from my parents collection, mostly are historycal fictions and non-fictions, books from Karl May, Jules Verne and what could I find the selves. But I never weary of tales...

I was nine when I read one of the most famoust Hungarian historical book of the brave deffenders of Castle of Eger. The Hungarian title of it 'Egri csillagok", but it get German (Sterne von Eger) and English (Eclipse of the Crescent Moon) traslation also. I found an English wikipedia link about this book. I loved it!

I spend the summers with reading my childhood. I couldn't do too much things at my village, and it was the main reason of I read 15-20 books every summer. But I played football with my friends when we have oportunity under the blue sky.

As I remember I got my first fantasy book at age 14. It was the Dragonlance trilogy by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman. These 3 books were amazing to me! I couldn't put them down, because of the strange races, mystical magic, sorcery, the fights and the great adventure.

And maybe that time discovered the "fighting-fantasy" books also. I was the hero of the story in dangerouos dungeons, fight against orks, goblins and other mosters rolling the dice. Many of my friends draw maps to these dungeons, because some of them are so hard to easy to lost the right way. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone made really great job this interactive stories. I have to admit sometimes I cheat a little bit...

After this golden era the computers spoiled my reading life, and stole many of my precious time from the books. But I was happy because I find many great computer games, like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, X-wing series and car racings. These games helped a lot to learn English (which is far from the perfect due to my laziness), and know better the beauty of fantasy worlds.

I read less, but due to my friends I found the books of John Caldwell (István Nemes) about the half-ork priest-warrior, Skandar Graun. These stories were quity funny and easy to read category.

I met the books of foreign authors too. R. A. Salvatore pulpfictions, the books about world of Forgotten Realms, and after I met the works the real, hi-fantasy authors...

George R. R. Martin opened a whole new chapter in my life with the A Song of Ice and Fire series at the beginning of 2001. I couldn't imagine before the real meaning of fantasy books. His thick tome of The game of thrones was a very big suprise to me. As I read GRRM's books I wanted read more from him, and this leads to read my first book in English. It was the A Feast for Crows, which wasn't as easy reading as I had expected.

It was the time when I widening my interest towards other great authors, like Steven Erikson, Robin Hobb, Stephen King and others.

Unfortunatelly my freetime drastically reduced. The work, the family (with two children), my translation activition, playing boardgames, watching movies and series... So, not easy to organize my life, but - I hope - with the growing up the young ones my sparetime will increase.