The Revolution Will be Televised

You might remember that my 2012 was pretty much defined by one book: Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition. I put a hell of a lot of words into that book, and ended up developer for the resurrected Werewolf line.

It’s now available from DriveThruRPG in PDF and Print on Demand versions. The Kickstarter-exclusive deluxe versions will take a little longer to come through since they’re a traditional print run, but the book’s available now!

I don’t post all of my White Wolf/Onyx Path releases here, but this one’s the big one.

Mirrored from Zero Point Information.

Lamb meatballs, rich with spices and mint, in a sauce inspired by the classic cocktail. Goes very well with couscous.

Serves 4 (20 meatballs)
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes

Ingredients

Sauce

• 1 white onion, finely diced
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp cumin
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• 300ml white rum
• 300ml lamb or beef stock
• 1 large handful mint, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp Cornflour & 3tbsp water to thicken

Meatballs

• 500g lean lamb mince
• 2tsp ground cumin
• 2tsp paprika
• 2tbsp ground almonds
• 1 egg
• 1 large handful mint, finely chopped
• 100ml stock

Method

1. Start with the sauce. Glug a little oil into a large saucepan, and add the onion and garlic. Fry off for a minute, then add the ground spices and continue to fry for about 5 mins or until the onion is soft and about to turn brown.
2. Add the rum, stock, and mint. Stir well, bring to the boil, and simmer.
3. Mix the meatball ingredients except the stock in a large bowl. Season well. Use your hands, damnit. If you’re anything like me you’ll have a couple of boxes of lab gloves kicking around, use them.
4. Form the meatballs by taking about a tablespoon of the mixture and rolling it into a ball shape in your hands. Set each one aside once made.
5. Lightly dust the meatballs with flour. Sling a glug of olive oil into a frying pan and put it on a high heat. Fry off the meatballs in batches. You just want to get the top and bottom going brown, don’t try to cook them all the way through. Once they’re browned, add to the sauce.
6. Add the remaining stock to the frying pan, still on the heat. Whisk vigorously to get any brown bits off the pan, then add to the sauce. Shake to mix.
7. Cover the sauce. Cook on a low heat for 5 minutes.
8. Plate the meatballs. Mix the cornflour and water in a small bowl or mug, then pour in to the sauce. Heat for a minute or so to thicken, then pour the sauce over the meatballs.
9. Serve.

I’ve got some spare books going as a result of Conpulsion: three copies of Æternal Legends and one of BLACK SEVEN. I don’t want to just sell them, because DriveThruRPG, Indie Press Revolution, and Lulu already do that for me.

Instead, I’m going to give them away. Inspired by all around fantastic human being Joe Mcdaldno, you can get one by doing good deeds.

It’s fairly simple: You do good deeds, you let me know what you’ve done by sending me an email, and on the 17th of May I’ll pick people who have emailed at random to receive a free book. I’ll cover shipping. If you don’t get a printed book, you’ll get to choose between a free electronic copy of either Æternal Legends or the ANIMUS complete pack (BLACK SEVEN and ANIMUS). Everyone who tells me about a good deed gets something in return, I promise.

Details: you need to do a couple of “normal” good deeds, or one “significant” deed. Both those terms are in quotes because even one normal deed can make a real change to someone’s life. Examples of both categories are below, but don’t let these limit you: you get to judge what counts as a good deed and as long as it’s not an obvious attempt to game the rules, I’ll happily accept it.

“Normal” deeds include:

• Donating to charity (I’m personally a fan of Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Marie Curie Cancer Care). $10/€8/£5 or equivalent in your local currency¹ is enough to qualify.
• Spend an hour volunteering at a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, charity, or local non-profit organization.
• Bake a loaf or bread or batch of muffins and give them to someone you know who would appreciate them.
• Take a bag of clothes to a homeless shelter.
• Drop off a big bag of books at a charity shop.

“Significant” things you can do:

• Set aside a full day to help someone you know to move house.
• Commit to a weekly volunteer position and complete the first few weeks.
• Donate blood or platelets. I’m aware that the restrictions on blood donation are needlessly discriminatory, but people need blood and just about nowhere has enough.
• Help a friend who is looking for work with both writing a CV/resumé and the longer process of finding a job.

Email me and tell me what you’ve done. I’ll hook you up with free stuff on May 17th, which also happens to be my birthday.

Assuming this idea has legs, it’s just the start of a longer-term plan to give people my games in exchange for good deeds.

Mirrored from Zero Point Information.

So National Collective is down. It's hardly unthinkable that the site has been hit by some sort of legal action, probably from Vitol (see below) after revealing the shady dealings of one of the main people funding the Tory-backed campaign against Scottish independence. The (probably) offending article is reproduced in full below.

Today ‘Better Together’ disclosed £1.1 million of donations to its campaign. Almost half of that sum came from one man: Ian Taylor, a long-term Conservative Party donor and Chief Executive of oil-traders Vitol plc.

Today’s Sunday Herald described Taylor as “a Scots oil trader with a major stake in the Harris Tweed industry”. They also gave Taylor’s views – who is reportedly worth £155 million – print space to justify his funding decision.

This raises several concerns. Taylor, according to The Sunday Herald, is not registered to vote in Scotland. This breaks Electoral Commission guidelines for general elections, which Yes Scotland has promised to follow. Secondly, Ian Taylor has given £550,000 to the Conservative Party since 2006. This is a further case of Tory donors – and their political interests – bankrolling the ‘no’ campaign.

These general complaints, however, are minor in comparison to more serious incidents – unmentioned in the media today – linked to Ian Taylor’s business background.

While Chief Executive of Vitol plc, his company has been involved in shady-deals in Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Iran. Furthermore, Vitol avoided tax to the tune of millions of pounds through an offshore trading scheme. Douglas Alexander, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, described Vitol’s relationship with Westminster as “curious”, and said there were questions to answer.

As Chief Executive of Vitol since 1995, Ian Taylor has serious questions to answer in all of these cases. Better Together have serious questions to answer as to what they knew about Ian Taylor before they accepted half-a-million pounds from him. Alistair Darling – who recently met with Taylor prior to the funding deal – must also confirm what his position is on the following cases.

1) Vitol Admitted Paying $1 million to a Serbian Paramilitary Leader

In 1996 Vitol paid $1 million to the Serbian paramilitary leader Arkan to settle a score over a secret oil deal to supply Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia with fuel. Ian Taylor’s director, Bob Finch, used Arkan as a ‘fixer’ after the oil deal in the former Yugoslavia collapsed. Arkan was assassinated in 2000.

Arkan was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity. According to The Obverver – which names Ian Taylor in its investigation into Arkan – “his brutality was well documented” when the meeting with Vitol’s representative took place. Arkan’s paramilitaries – ‘the tigers’ – were notorious for massacring 250 patients and staff in a hospital.

Ian Taylor was Chief Executive of Vitol when Bob Finch, as Vitol Director, went to Belgrade. Arkan was then indicted with 24 crimes against humanity.

What did Ian Taylor know about his company’s dealing in Serbia and their payment to Arkan? What is the position of Better Together in relation to this?

2) Vitol plc: Guilty of Bribing Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Regime For Oil Contracts

While Ian Taylor was Chief Executive, Vitol paid $13 million in kickbacks to Iraqi officials under Saddam Hussein to win oil supply contracts. The company pled guilty in a U.S. court to grand larceny in November 2007 and paid $17.5 million in restitution as a result. This undercut the UN oil-for-food program – 1996-2003 – that sought to trade Iraqi energy resources for humanitarian supplies.

Was Ian Taylor aware of his company’s actions at the time? To what extent did his company profit from these deals in Iraq and to what extent did he profit personally from the company’s success? Is Better Together content to accept Mr Taylor as a major funder in these circumstances?

3) Ian Taylor’s Company Avoided Tax ‘for more than a decade’

Vitol plc employed the controversial tax avoidance scheme known as ‘Employee Benefit Trusts’. (EBTs) Such schemes allowed employees to avoid paying income tax and companies to avoid national insurance contributions. Vitol used the scheme ‘for more than a decade’.

Tax evasion and avoidance costs the UK Exchequer tens of billions of pounds a year. EBTs were banned in 2011. Vitol then entered negotiations with HMRC over claims that it still owed millions of pounds in unpaid taxes.

What did Ian Taylor know about the company’s tax avoidance scheme? Even if it met legal requirements, does he consider tax avoidance to be morally just? Is Better Together aware of these claims against the company of its major donor?

4) Ian Taylor has been accused of improper political donations to the Conservative Party.

According to today’s Sunday Herald, Ian Taylor has donated £550,000 to the Conservative Party since 2006. He was one of the 70 millionaires who paid the £50,000 privilege to join David Cameron’s Leaders Group. Leaders Group membership led, in many cases, to a private dinner with the Prime Minister, which Taylor attended in Downing Street on November 2nd 2011. This was part of the “cash for access scandal”.

Taylor’s political donations have also been criticised by Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander. In 2011 questions were raised concerning Taylor’s relationship with Alan Duncan, the International Development Minister. Taylor and Duncan had worked together at Shell. Duncan lobbied for an ‘oil cell’ within the Foreign Office to control fuel supplies within Libya. For this the government received substantial support through Vitol plc. Civil service official were concerned that the behaviour was “encroaching too far on commercial purposes”. According to The Daily Mail, Ian Taylor “profited from the war in Libya” and his company received a $1 billion contract to supply oil to the Libyan rebels. This was described at the time as a “huge conflict of interest”.

Douglas Alexander, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary said, “Given Alan Duncan’s reported links with Vitol this curious briefing from within government actually raises more questions than it answers,”

Did Ian Taylor gain influence within government for his £550,000? Why was Douglas Alexander concerned about Vitol’s relationship with the UK Government? Is Mr Alexander happy for Better Together to be receiving financial support from the same source?

5) Iran and current business practices

Vitol recently conceded, in September 2012, that it had broken sanctions on trading Iranian oil. According to Reuters, the company purchased 2 million barrels of fuel oil. This undercut Western efforts to isolate the Iranian regime, and brought further attention to Mr Taylor’s close relationship with the UK government.

Is Vitol an ethical company and should Better Together accept support and funding from this source?

Better Together have serious questions to answer

• This information raises serious questions – both for Ian Taylor and the ‘Better Together’ campaign.
• There cannot be a fair referendum if money is solicited from outwith Scotland or from rich Tory donors who do not vote in Scotland.
• There cannot be an open referendum if funding comes from unethical sources. Our politics is once again tarnish by ‘dirty money’ and vested corporate interests.
• This information also raises serious questions for the Scottish and UK media, who have not raised any of these question in relation to today’s donation announcement.
• There cannot be a fair or open referendum if the Scottish people are left in the dark. We need to have the facts. We need to know the truth.

I hope this makes the case for funding alternative media in Scotland even clearer on our path to building a more equal, prosperous and peaceful Scotland.

Michael Gray

@GrayInGlasgow

National Collective

Apotheosis Drive X is:

• The first mecha RPG powered by Fate Core.

• A high drama, high action game with a philosophical and humanist bent.

• Using a system of “generations” to represent vast technological advances that come quicker and quicker each time.

• Focused on epic mecha battles. This is not Fate: The Tactical Wargame.

And y’know what? That’s not all! If the game funds, each extra $2,500 unlocks an additional setting and system hack for the ADX New Titan Report Anthology.

• See Geoffrey McVey do fightin’ Hindu magical mecha!

• Awe as Bruce Baugh writes mecha-piloting cephalopods fighting Wells’ Martians at the bottom of the sea!

• Thrill to Topher Gerkey’s shoujo-style adventure, with young girls unlocking the power of the Princess Drives!

• Watch as some giggling cretin smashes together Cthulhu, Mechagodzilla, Iron Man, and the Transformers and tries to make sense of the wreckage!

Apotheosis Drive X: You want this.

Mirrored from Zero Point Information.

1. Score all over the joint with a sharp knife, then rub the joint with plenty of Worcestershire sauce
2. Peel and quarter the onion, put it in a slow cooker, and rest the joint on top, skin-side to the side. Press the sugar into a crust over the upmost-facing side of the joint, then throw over the vinegar and the measured worcestershire sauce.
3. Put the slow cooker on low and ignore it for eight hours. Do not peek.
4. I said no peeking!
5. Extract the joint from the slow cooker. It’ll probably come in a few bits. Shred with a couple of forks, discarding any skin.
6. Discard the onion and skim the fat from the remaining liquid (or, y'know, use a gravy strainer). Stick it in a pan and bring it to a rapid simmer.
7. Whisk through the tomato purée, hot sauce, and smoked paprika. Mix the cornflour and cold water, then whisk it into the pan.
8. Simmer until it’s the consistency you want, then season well with salt and pepper.

The February Game Design Contest on Something Awful is all about designing a game that fits on two pages of single-spaced 12pt Times New Roman. That’s the sort of thing I can get into.

Now, I don’t really do things by halves, so instead of doing an outline, then part one, then part two, then a playtest and all of that guff, I just sat down and wrote a two page game. It’s about ghosts. It’s got the essence of what I want to do with Through, but with a bit more of a focus on ghosts interacting with humans, rather than the ghosts of society.

I’ve put the raw text online as a Google doc, to demonstrate that yes, it does fit into the size limit. Please check it out; I’ve left comments open on the doc. I’m tempted to format it for an official release type thing, but I’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to give based on just those two pages.

Mirrored from Zero Point Information.

I help people with their computers. Also, people give me money to lie to them.

Except that’s not a job description, that’s a job title. Everyone wanking off about how short they can get their job description and how that means they’ve got a “real” job¹ is a fucking idiot. It’s supposed to be an exercise in clarity, not smugness.

I help people with their computers. I find out how much money we have for new computers and decide which ones are good enough to buy. Sometimes I talk to the people we buy computers from to see if I can get a better one for the money. I try to fix computers when they break, but if it’s a problem with the box and not the things that run on the box, I give it to someone else here who can fix the box. If someone wants their computer to do more than it does when they get it, they ask me and I put together what they need to do their job better. I also fix big computers that lots of people use. They have their own room because they are very hot and loud. Since all of the computers talk to one another, I can fix all of these computers from my office.

Then I go home and do my other job. People tell me what they want me to write about, I write it, and they give me money for doing so. What I write about is not real, but a kind of game. For one game, I tell people what I want them to write about, they write it, and I tell them how to make it better. When they have done that, I check that what they have written works as a full book and that the small facts are right, write about what pictures could go in the book, and work with another person to make sure that all of the writing is good writing. Finally, I give all of the book to another person who puts the words and pictures together into a real book.

(Created using the Up-goer Five Text Editor, using only an arbitrary selection of the ten hundred most used words in the English language, which is good enough to prove a point.)

BLACK SEVEN, my stealth-action RPG, is now available in print through DriveThruRPG and partners.

If you’re in Edinburgh, Black Lion Games should be getting some copies very soon. If you have already bought BLACK SEVEN and receive emails from DTRPG, you should see a discount code for the print version of the game as a “thank you” for supporting it while it was electronic-only.

Mirrored from Zero Point Information.

Over on the W20 blog, I’m waxing loquacious about one of my favourite parts of the W20 kickstarter: that we’re doing a W20 Cookbook!

Mirrored from Zero Point Information.