The lack of blogging is because of having plenty of other stuff to do, and yet - as usual - the other stuff doesn't seem right to include here. Mostly because it's probably really dull to you lot.

As you may have noticed in a previous post, the Wii is good fun. The Zelda game in particular is effectively more of the same, but since the previous same was such a good blend of action and puzzle solving I'm not complaining. The plots seem to be becoming more and more desperate though; I'm expecting it to adopt a Final Fantasy style of genetically-engineered-amnesiac style plot line any time now.

I'm also mostly immersed in the Lord of the Rings Online game, which is a good game with a refreshingly mature player-base. In places. Although stuff like this still happens:
Stranger (Private message): hi mate where is avorthal?
Me: Depending on which part of the quest you're on, I think you're supposed to be looking for his bag in Dol Ringwest.
*pause*
Him: 6
Him: im on the level 6 part
*pause while I get through a complicated fight sequence, and work out how much help I can be bothered to give someone who clearly wants it all on a plate*
Me: Yes, that's probably the one.
*long pause*
Him: so is it an npc or what?

At this stage I'm past helping him. Although the description of that quest left a little to be desired, the idea that you might look for someone and find only evidence that they're no longer there shouldn't be alien to a player of such games. Particularly not when I've already told him explicitly what he's meant to look for. Later on he asked for the answer to a different quest, but I said nothing more to him.

LotRO has a big saving grace though, the main thing that got me out of WoW (besides the fact that I could no longer see the point in playing): the old guild, from Star Wars Galaxies, is there almost in its entirety, and with a host of new faces. You can pretty much guarantee that there'll be amusing or interesting banter on the guild chat channel if you log on at any reasonable time of day.

After a lengthy drought, I've been writing again. Nothing new, just touching up a document that I set aside ages ago, so that I'm happy enough to give it to a suitably critical friend for some comment. Perhaps after that I'll have another run through considering what they've said, then finally get together the nerve to find publishers to spam or something.

Plans to change my phpBB forums to SMF are on hold. As much as I would love a forum that used plugins to add/change functionality (rather than core code hacks), SMF just doesn't inspire me enough to make me want to do the work to rewrite all of my phpBB modifications and templates.

Film4 has some good films on, from time to time. In fact, so do some of the other channels. I still won't watch much else (although there's normally some Friends or Scrubs on if I want to kill half an hour), but the films are taking up more and more time. I can't decide whether it's a good thing.
(Although television often doesn't get my full attention: I turned Downfall over the other night because I was trying to skim-read something at the same time, and I couldn't keep up with the subtitles at the same time).

The roleplaying [game] front is getting interesting. At our regular club meet we have a vicious-looking political game starting that should prove ... interesting. We have a selection of players; I'll refer to them by letters (and don't expect it to be consistent with next time, because I'll forget). A, running the game, explains the setting - like ancient China only with lots of magic and weird other races- and says that we can have whatever kind of game we like within it: if we want to have a group of the tribal cat-people running around the plains, that's fine. He warns, however, that shortly into the game, the Emperor will die, and there'll be a war of succession; it would be interesting to have the party back a candidate, he says.
All the players think this is a great idea; so far so good. I loudly nominate player B to be in line for the throne. Of the other players, some already have leadership roles coming up in future games, some have proven that they shouldn't yet be given such responsibility, and some would just make the game go crazy: B is young and seems a quick study.
A asks where in the line of succession B should be. Apparently it could be anywhere from 4th to 32nd. B says 32nd sounds good: I loudly suggest 4th. The ref listens to me...
Having already decided to be of the highest caste of humans - the same as B, of course - the somewhat daft player C is offered the role of B's wife. There is much laughter, and instant disagreement from both sides. Playing a female character is nothing new to C (although C's typical effort at playing a woman is a "'strong female character' who emphasizes 'strong' at the expense of 'female' and 'character'"; thanks to Shamus for that quote). This suggestion, though, brings riotous rejection amid nervous laughter: apparently being married to another player-character is a step too far. I'd like to think that B was rejecting more the idea of being married to C; bearing in mind the number of occasions on which C has got his character (and occasionally those around him/her) killed for doing something particularly stupid, I don't blame him.
At this stage I'm having a look through the non-human races, gradually realising that none of them will work. An impartial and cunning ambassador from the undead race? Nah, turns out I have to start as the lowest grade of undead, and they're ugly. A religious warrior of the strange ugly race? No, I was only interested in them when the ref said about their road to enlightenment, but being a member of a huge warrior race then being a pacifist is a bit of a waste.
Eventually I realise that in order to be a character of worthwhile charisma or intelligence - the kind I was hoping to play in this game - I should be from one of the higher castes of humans. Picking the top one, I'm suddenly the same race as two of the other party members, and in need of a good role to distinguish me from them and give me a place in the party. A thought occurs to me...
"Is that position as B's wife still open?"

I need to reread Macbeth.

For my next project, I'm working on running Tékumel. It's a wonderful setting, highly detailed and well realised, as you'd expect for a world that's been worked on for more or less as long as Tolkien's Middle Earth. I blame A, of course: he was the one who ran it while back, and he's been pestering me to run it ever since, because he hasn't had the chance to play it for many years.
To be brief: In the future, humanity colonises the stars (figure of speech...) because they've made Earth more or less uninhabitable in a nuclear war that conveniently wiped out all the cultures the author didn't want to use as influences. Tékumel is slightly larger than Earth and a little short of natural resources, but terraforming fixes some of the issues and extensive trade with other worlds makes up their shortfalls. They develop an extensive civilisation descended from various Polynesian and maybe Central American cultures. Humanity is evolving, realising its potential both for high technology and innate magic, until disaster strikes; Tékumel and its star system are somehow split off from the rest of the universe: there are no stars in the sky, and there will be no more imports of metals and other materials that are locally scarce. Tens of thousands of years later high civilisation exists in five empires, with magic, religions based on former mortals whose marvellous magic and technology has established them as gods, and clans that underpin every aspect of daily life.

The problem is that the more I read up on the world in order to prepare my own game, the more I want A to run his again, so that I can have my old character back...

There might now be another pause while I get on with those things, unless someone says something that prompts another post.