Once again the local populace decided to celebrate my presence – and it’s not even my birthday yet!  My birthday constitutes week-long celebrations with dancing in the street, festival stalls, games for children and all sorts of events.  This time however, it’s just a simple interview in the local paper:

Recently we had a couple of Aussies come to stay over.  One was my brother D, and another was his workmate T.  His girlfriend, who I shall call E, came a bit later.

During the visit they went all over Japan.  While they were at my house though, I forced them to play Carcassonne: The City, time and time again:

We also taught them all about the famous Japanese cuisine - specifically TAKOYAKI!

This is what it looks like up close:

If you’re like me you have a Japanese PSP-3000, and no matter how hard you try, the ChickHEN exploit just will not run.  I searched forums, tried all sorts of theme-resets, language changes, voodoo and so on, but to no avail.  It just would not run.  All that happens is the PSP would crash.  Then just today I was in a bookstore and I noticed this!

Luckily I had 725 Yen on me so I picked it up.  It turns out that somebody over here has already written and published a book about running ChickHEN and other homebrew on the PSP-3000.  They don’t mess about!

After fiddling my way through it I had a couple of goes with my PSP.  At first it didn’t work, but I didn’t give up.  I tried again to no avail.  Finally I combed the book once more for any insight and found something!  It was so simple, how could I have missed it?  So I tried, and then suddenly it worked!

Here’s how I did it:

Step One is to copy the ChickHEN files (found elsewhere, or on the CD with that book) onto your PSP.  You’ve probably already done that correctly.

Step Two – make sure your system language is English

STEP THREE – (This is what I missed so many times) set your charset to US(437).  The setting is in the system tab somewhere.  If you want ChickHEN as much as I did, you’ll find it.

Step four – make sure you don’t have a game in the UMD slot

Step five – browse to the picture on your PSP.

After that, it just worked for me.  I’ve been running Bookr and other programs quite happily for hours now, just watching my little PSP battery drain in joy.

I hope it works for you!

Those kids are at it again, this time they recap the amazing events of a previous session.  LISTEN and be amazed at what you hear.  WATCH and be devastated when it all comes to an abrupt and unexpected end…

I’ve been struck down by a disease so virulent and deadly that even by reading this post you have a chance of being infected.  You have been warned.

Apart from that I’ll have another episode of Big Blue up shortly, hopefully including my new intro!  Here are a few notes about the making of Big Blue to tide you over.  Two of the kids regularly attend Saturday / Friday classes where the game might get played every other week.  I’ve found it to be incredibly effective at motivating them to express ideas that they might otherwise not get to practice, and to use English in all sorts of crazy new ways.

This session that I taped was originally intended to go for a couple of hours, but unfortunately we started late, so the first season is a short one.  The rules are incredibly simplified 4e rules, although every so often I’ll step them up a little when I think the group is ready.  Strangely though, the kids all feel that no matter what pokemon mechanics will apply to the game and every monster in it.

I hope you enjoy it, and if you do feel free to let me know by commenting.  That way I’ll know whether to keep going with it or to abandon it like a Jehovah’s Witness at the door.

What happens when a group of Japanese students have a school camp and play a simplified role-playing game?  Watch and find out.  This episode starts with an explanation of the rules for the kids, and a little sorting through the miniatures that will be used.

December 28th 2008 is going to be my RPG day held here in Nishinomiya at my school – Bears.  I will be running a D&D 4th edition game for people to try, although if somebody else wants to run a different game too, we can certainly make time.  As a note, I have some dice, but if you BYO that would help immensly.

Apart from that there are two quick things to cover – Creating characters for the game; and how to get here!  First, here are some quick guidelines for the characters:

View Bear’s Front

Finally if you get into trouble you can contact me on 070 5654 6971.

Present shopping!


It’s always hardest to shop for people who rarely leave your side for more than 30 minutes.  I have to plan a commando run all the way to Sannomiya, and even then she knows exactly why I’m going.  It’s easy to know what to get her though.  Her hints are about as subtle as tabasco.

I’ll post more when I make the run!

We’ve finally reached the end of the first chapter of our 4th edition campaign.  The second chapter will be starting, and will have its own thread as soon as possible.  The first chapter was called “The muddy fields of Trouse,” while the second chapter is called “A warm welcome.”  I intend this chapter to be a bit shorter than the last.

I had hoped to start this chapter with a live session, but I realise that organizing one of those these days is about as easy as teaching a dog to fly.  Nonetheless, a Maptool session should be played as soon as possible.

In the meantime, here is a brief summary of events so far:

Learning that the town of Trouse had been ravaged by bandits, the the heroes decided to help out.  Well, another way to put it would be, they were fed a lot of free booze, and then decided that that they should help out.  The baron was very helpful, offering them provisions and his best wishes.

In the morning they woke with head-splitting hangovers to find that Geovanna had already set out on her own.  Not to be outdone, the rag-tag band set out on their journey.  On the way they met a ranger called Grumph who helped them find the location of the bandits camp.  As a token of their thanks, the heroes gave Grumph some wine.  They never saw him alive again.

They marched through the forest on the way to an abandoned monastary, now thought to be the camp of the bandits.  After camping one night in the forest, they descended into the… wine cellar… of the monastary.  Really, what kind of a monastary would it be without a wine cellar?  They encountered the bandits and defeated them, although the leader, one Toudfoot, got away with a few of his men.  They also found a strange marking in and abandoned underground chapel, and picked up an unfinished novel.

They set off back to town, Hannibal leading the way several hours before the rest.  All in all about 4 days had passed since they first set out.

When they arrived in town… Well, that’s the second chapter for you.

On the weekend I finally had the chance to get my Maptool implementation of Space Hulk playtested.  Needless to say, there were lots of bugs, and I have a lot to do before I have a truly workable, intuitive game.

If you’re interested in trying it – here’s the campaign file:

http://www.4shared.com/file/71854783/206d7a5/SH-M2_backup.html

It’s mission 2 from the 1st edition mission book.  All the rules and mission description (which you’ll need) can readily be downloaded at www.boardgamegeek.com or other sources.  In making this I had help with the blip deck macro from PyroMancer2k and the pictures themselves are mostly from an upload by somebody called jamz (both from the RPTools forums).

As for the game itself – even given two weeks notice, neither player had read the rules before the game, so there was a little bit of explanation before the actual game occured.  The rolls were all taken care of by macros though.

At first it looked as though the stealers were going down without even killing one Marine!  The marine goal was to kill 30 stealers, and the stealers goal was to kill all the marines.  The marine’s kill-count reached almost 15 before the Sergeants’ gun jammed.  Then things went all egg-shaped for the marine player.

He managed a daring recovery, and two marines holed themselves up in the top room, both on overwatch keeping the tunnels covered.  The stealer was patient and put about 15 stealers on the board (not including blips) before charging.  The stormbolters rang long and loud until the inevitable jam happened.  With only 6 more genestealers to take down the game could have gone either way.

Stealers filled the passage leading upto the room on the marine’s turn.  If he could get enough good shots off, he could win the game…

He rolled ‘1′ for Command Points.

His first two shots were good though.

Then the second marine unjammed his gun and fired.

And missed.

And missed.

And screamed in pain as his body was torn apart doing the Emperor’s will.