The sort of self-exile which would keep one from updating their journal for some days.

Now that one could blame the exile entirely upon their aunt’s habits of serving scones topped with Prisoner’s Honey. Or of encouraging rival spies to fight a duel with the carving knives they lifted from the silver cabinet. I do wish she hadn’t embarassed that poor actress so, the scandal will likely ruin her career and I was looking forward to seeing her re-enacting the scene of Leda and the Swan on stage.

But all that happened at the party aside, one must on reflection see this as the result of a series of behaviors that they had been ignoring for far too long.

Or, to put it another way, if one is to dine and take to the dance floor regularly at the Brass Embassy then one should also take the time to at least put in the occasional appearance and pay a little lip service to the Church. Preferably before the scandal has reached the point that a gossip-monger at the service pointing one out and whispering a bit too loudly to be proper in a place of worship doesn’t itself lead to one having to flee.

All that aside, I must say, the Tomb Colony was a remarkably restful place. For being the walking dead they do play quite a good game of chess, the architecture was impressive in how old some of the pieces were (far pre-dating the fallof London!), and someone must have arranged to have been buried along with their wine cellar as the vintage I tasted there was surely not bottled in the dark of the Neath but had once been kissed by the sun.

For all that though, I am grateful that the scandal died down as quickly as it did. I have business to attend to here in Fallen London.  A cheesemaker to find, a spirifier to learn the secrets of, some urchins I have befriend looking to me to help them with their vengeace, as well as needing a truly stiff drink to toss back once I finish that all because the more I probe into the secrets around London and my lost memories… The I find that Laudunum on it’s own doesn’t take enough of the edge off.

- Matthew Hartmont

( the start of a journal about my character in http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/  )

( if you play and want another friend in game, look for me at @Hythian on twitter )

I am uncertain how long I have been down here. I have faint memories of the surface, but the more I grasp at them the less clear they become.

For certain, it has only been two seven-days since I awoke in New Newgate Prison. For what crime I was imprisoned, I do not know, but I awoke with a lump upon my skull and wearing the mask and irons and rags of one who has been stripped of their identity and cast in there to rot.

For my own safety, and that of others, I won’t mention who it was that assisted in my escape suffice to say that it was not something I am certain I could have managed on my own in the addled state that I was in.

Those first few days after stealing back my freedom again were a blur of activity and wonder and horror. Whatever I might have known about this damned city before my time in prison had been forgotten and I was learning the quarters of the city and who not to trust all over again.

There are some who seem to recognize me for who I am, who I was, messages I have had passed to me about people from the surface looking for me. The hungry glance in a devil’s eye sizing me up with a familiarity that is a bit disturbing. The urchins in particular have seemed fond of me and have at times lent a hand to me and I’ve done my part to trade fairly with them in return.

But still… There are things that nag at me, dreams I have in the night that I can make little sense of. Whether they are hints of things I knew in the past, clues to what happened to me that my brain is slowly piecing togethor, or simply the results of breathing the airs and humors of this damnably dark place I know not.

All I have to go on is a rhyme that I find myself humming at times, memories of a jewel bigger than my own fist, and my natural proclivities towards wine, women and song it seems. I just hope that I remember what it was that got me thrown in prison before I repeat the mistake.

- Matthew Hartmont

( the start of a journal about my character in http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/ )

Do you choose from one of five listed actions, or number 6 and be creative! If number 6 you have to flip back and forth through the book to find entry #42 (because they helpfully don’t tell you what page that is on) and that entry tells you… that you are out of luck because you are playing a solo choose-your-own-adventure module and to go back the beginning and suck it down and choose one of the other five choices.

Yeah… Great way to introduce players to the creativity and freedom of a RPG game.

As it is, the new D&D Starter Set is poorly laid out. The choices of where to put information and rules are confusing, the lack of page number references in the players book in particular are frustrating as you flip around to find the next entry. In terms of introducing players to the game it is an embarassingly poor tool compared to the old old Basic Set red box from the 1st edition era (which way back when I used to introduce quite a few friends to the hobby, and to freak out the librarian at my grade school).

In fact, the poor layout seems to be a theme for the Essentials releases as the Heroes of the Fallen Lands book is so awful that it gives me a head ache just trying to use it. It is a 360′ish page trade paperback soft-cover rule book, so right up front I have to say that you aren’t going to be able to flip to a specific page and lay the book down in front of you and actually make use of it. It simply won’t stay open or on the correct page.

On top of that, if it is a tool for introducing new players to the game it is a poor substitution for the 4E PHB. The way the book is organized, the lack of differentiation between the fonts used for headers making it look cluttered and hard to spot things on a page, the way the new class features are listed in the book in a order that requires you to flip around wildly while making a character, and to an extent the order the chapters are written in all contribute to being a less clear, more confusing, book for new players to struggle to use to make their first characters than the 4E PHB is.

Which is all the more frustrating because the DDI Character Creator tool hasn’t been updated with this info yet (and no date for that update has been given since the info won’t even show up in the DDI Compendium for another week).

The poor layout, poor typography, and poor DDI support aside the actual content feels both slightly over-powering and somewhat incomplete compared to the PHB classes. For example, the Mage build for Wizards seems to be quite superior at first glance to any of the implement wizard builds when you start looking at the specialty powers you get and the additional at-will, though at the same time the book only has 3 schools of magic to be specialized in (though a 4th “The Pyromancer” is up on DDI right now) and relatively little support in terms of feats (the rules for Mages imply you can have more then one school, but I can’t find any way for that to actually happen as I expected it’d be a feat). There are however feats for wizard implements (orb, staff, etc.) but the only mention of what implements even are in the entire book are one small entry in the keywords section and mentions in the gear / magical item section.

All in all, the book is just confusing and I imagine will perplex new players more than help them get interested in the game. For existing players it serves as a source of new ideas for character builds, but again the layout of the book is so poor that I can’t see wanting to actually use any of the info until it shows up in the DDI tools and I can just print of what I need from there.

The Rules Compendium volume is a mixed bag. On one hand, it is a well organized listing of the rules from the various books released so far. Just the rules though, how things work and not listings of every ability, spell, etc. On the other hand, I expect it’ll fall out of date within a six months due to errate being released or new keyword or ability or effect type comes out that won’t be covered in this book. It also means you are basically buying a copy of rules you already have again, just collected neatly now into one small easy to carry trade paperback.

The other problem I have with it is that there is some stuff that just isn’t rules but is fluff that is included in it. The default set of 4E gods aren’t rules, they are names with some vague traits attached. Descrptions of the three official 4E campaign settings also aren’t rules, neither are the vague guidelines re-printed from the DMG on suggestions of how to run a campaign and maybe the stye of one to run.

All in all, I don’t think the Rules Compendium is a bad book but just isn’t a great one and given the format (trade paperback) it’ll be a little more ackward to update when errata comes out then I find the full size hardbounds are (where I usually have the errata tucked inside the back cover and sticky notes on the pages that have been errata’d to remind me about it).

The Dungeon Tiles Master Set: Dungeon though I am finding rather nice. It came in a sturdy box which is big enough to hold all of it’s tiles and at least two or three of the older released tile sets. I haven’t gone through it yet to identify how many of the tiles are re-prints of older out-of-print sets and how many are new ones but all in all the quality of the tiles are good, the box is sturdy and can actually be used as a large tile itself given the grind terrain printed on it. For it’s cost, I imagine I am going to get far more use out of it than anything else I purchased in this order.

Ouchies.

Anyways, made steak for dinner and served it up along with some dinner rolls I’d been waiting half the day to rise and some cucumber, tomatoes and green peppers from the garden. Kind of impressed by the garden this year actually, last year I think I got one stunted green pepper and a couple of tomatoes from it. This year I have more tomatoes and cucumbers then I think I am going to manage to eat before they go bad, though still not much for the peppers.

Think I am going to have to move the pepper plants or maybe try something different with them next year, they either don’t like the amount of sunlight they are getting or the soil is complete crap where they are or something is wrong since they really should be doing better than they are.

Been getting back into cooking more, making steak a couple of times a week now. Playing around with some tricks on treating the steak ahead of time with spices and salt to flavor it and cooking it with hot oil (as in, oil that is very hot not as in spicy hot oil) which works out pretty well and is pretty fast at only a couple of minutes per side.

Got the slow cooker sitting out on the counter right now, planning to make chili in it later in the week if I can just settle on a recipe to use. Tricky because I want to try doing it with ground turkey and the recipes I have for chili that I really really like all use beef. Sounds like a simple switch but they really are very different meats and I’ve had bad luck in the past with just simple substitutions.

Thinking I might try a white chili later too, have a recipe for a really good one that I had when I visited some friends year ago that I’ve been meaning to try cooking myself.

Other than that, been watching Castle on DVD. Got Season 2 the other day and the show continues to be fun. Amusing little bits too when Castle (played by Nathan Fillion) dresses up for halloween as a ‘space cowboy’ and gets crap for it being a costume that he wore five years ago and that he needs to move on (referencing Firefly / Serenity). Show continues to be fun to watch.

Just finished watching season 1 of White Collar on dvd the other day. Another fun show, though I wish I’d gotten to it sooner because season 2 has basically disappeared entirely off of On Demand on my cable box so if I’ll have to wait for it to show up in re-runs, show up On Demand again, or for the second season to come out on dvd.

Other than that, spent the day caulking around some crown moulding. Initially, I wasn’t sure if crown moulding was going to be worth the effort but after seeing it… I have to say it looks really good. Only up in the master bedroom right now but thinking I kind of want to put it up in more of the upstairs of the house now. It’d probably not look as good downstairs, might make the lower floor (split level so slower floor is actually half-way underground) feel more cramped then it is.

• Apparently unable to destroy or sell buildings, which means you can get screwed economically when a building you needed 1000 years ago no longer is worthwhile but you are stuck still paying for it. Even worse when you have Puppet’ed cities buildings tons of expensive to maintain but worthless buildings.
• Diplomacy is vague and confusing. It is hard to tell if you are getting along well with another Civ or not. It may be all down to the actual words that show up in diplomatic conversations and that may be the only way to see if they kind of like me or really like me. It is clear when they dislike you though, HOSTILE shows up next to their name in the diplomacy overview and you start getting messages from them insulting you.
• Maintenance costs are unclear. I know I am paying upkeep on my troops, but how much for each troop? How is it figured? What is the formula? Same thing with upkeep on tile improvements, I have a really hard time making sense of where all of those expenses coming from so I similarly have a hard time in reducing the expenses.
• AI still needs work during battles. Seen too many times now when the computer marches to battle with their ranged units in the front which just get cut down in seconds because they are worthless at melee combat. Or the computer will throw one troop at me at a time instead of moving in a group of troops supporting each other with flanking bonuses. Albiet, I haven’t tried anything above King difficulty yet so maybe at the highest difficulties the AI finally gets it togethor, but it is embarassingly bad at the lower ones.
• No clock in the UI. Seriously. Civ 4 had an option to show a clock and what time it is and that’s the only thing that kept me at times from staying up far far far far far too late playing. (I was already up far far too late, but the clock kept it from getting worse). There is a Mod that adds a clock to the UI (and I can always bring up the Steam overlay) but the mod disables earning of achievements and tracking of gameplay time in Steam and I don’t remember to check the overlay that often. I really hope that a clock gets added back in via a game patch soon.
• Happiness can be counter-intuitive. I fight a 1000 year war, I loose cities to the AI, and my people get happier because suddenly I have fewer cities and less population. But I win the war, I take the enemies capital and my people get angry with me because I won and now have an additional city and more people within the empire. Very odd and not really what you’d expected.

But that’s it. Those really are my only complaints about Civ 5.

Otherwise, the game is great. The streamlined tech tree means that you don’t feel like there are ever worthless dead-end techs that you have to suffer through. The hex grid makes for a much better world map and along with the one unit per tile change makes for much more tactical combat (which is really rather fun). Resources are actually much more important now then they were in Civ 4, you actually want to fight over them and accumulate as many as you can.

All in all, I think Civ 5 is a great game. Just a great game that needs a bit more polish to smooth off some of its burrs. Some things are rather opaque which should be clear, and some things just work in oddly counter-intuitive ways.

You definately need to play it far differently than you played Civ 4 or you will literally run yourself into the ground and defeat yourself without the AI having to lift a finger against you.

To start with, I don’t know if these problems are exclusive to the Kindle version I read but the book had editing issues. In several places there would be sentences that places there would be sentences that looked like they had been partially copied and repeated which confused the hell out of me while reading. In other places, on my Kindle version at least, there was be oddly pl aced spa ces that would break up words leaving me confused for a moment with what I was reading. And in at least one place they simply used the name of a character that didn’t exist in the book (when talking to William in the library, it suddenly has Walker taking a book out of Eddie’s hand instead of it being William doing that action).

As to the ending… Without spoiling the story this book introduced some great potential foes for Eddie and the Drood family and all to quickly came to a resolution of the threat they posed and moved on. Honestly, this book could and should have been two books. With the first of the two books ending at around Chapter 8 and the second book continuing onwards through the rest of the story-arc from there.

As it is, the story feels a little too rushed and when the conclusion comes as quickly as it does it seems almost too easy and feels a bit unsatisfying.

That said, I have oddly mixed feelings about the book. I still enjoyed it, faults and all, because I find the character of Eddie to be quite likable and the general idea behind the setting and stories remains fun. From Hell With Love also feels more like part of the series than the previous one, The Spy Who Haunted Me, did.

While I liked TSWHM is felt very out of place and much more stand-alone than the rest of the series has. Which wasn’t a bad thing, it was an interesting change in tone for the series but in the end almost feels like it was seperate from the other 3 that have come out so far.

I think some of this may be due to the fact that the series was originally concieved as a trilogy and instead now stands as being four books long with a fifth on the way. Still, if the series is going to be continued forward, that only makes it more disappointing that the villains in this book were dealt with in the manner that they were as they would have made for great recurring characters.

In the end, I don’t feel like I can recommend FHWL as easily as I did the first two in the series (The Man with the Golden Torc and Daemons Are Forever) but if you have been enjoying the series so far than you will want to read this one just so you can keep up with the direction the series is going in and so that you aren’t too surprised when For Heavens Eyes Only comes out.

I would also be interested in finding out from anyone who reads the print version if the editing errors in the Kindle version exist there as well. Curious if it was just bad proofreading or if the publisher simply made a very half-assed effort in getting the book to the Kindle format.