A couple days ago I drew a Gloranthan duck. So, err, here it is!
![](https://ludovic.chabant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/31553566b93e11e9b69df23c91aea81f.jpg)
A couple days ago I drew a Gloranthan duck. So, err, here it is!
A couple weeks ago, the APTA awarded the 2019 Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement Award to Vancouver’s Translink. Woohooo!
This was picked up, slightly incorrectly, as news that we have the best transit system in North America by a couple of local news outlets. While it’s mostly correct, I guess, it’s more accurately an award for Translink having, between 2016 and 2018, the best combination of ridership growth, operational efficiency, customer service, financial management, marketing, sustainability. In particular, ridership increased a lot during that period (although population also grew a lot so it’s unclear if the APTA was normalizing this figure before comparing with other cities or not). Of course, the news was not met very favourably by Vancouverites. To me this mostly shows that:
That said, having lived in a half dozen cities in France and Canada, I can tell you that:
So overall, frankly, I don’t care who’s best or not, I just care about having decent public transit where I live. Nothing’s ever perfect but at least I’m seeing continued investment and improvements, and I hope that continues. Maybe we should celebrate that every now and then.
I’m considering getting some gaming mat. Anybody got recommendations between Quiver mats, Tabletop Companion, and Big Viking mats?
Gen Con 2019 is over and the Ennie Award winners have been announced!
My first thought while going through the list is that the venerable Masks of Nyarlathotep has still got it. The new edition grabbed the Best Adventure award, probably thanks to Chaosium not only further expanding the text but also adding high quality art and fixing some of the most egregious problems with the gender and ethnicity of NPCs. Plus, the HPLHS got 2 Masks-related awards, one for their prop set (which, sadly, I got only after my group ended the campaign…) and one for their radio show, which is a lot of fun to listen to.
Call of Cthulhu in general was well represented with a bunch of other awards for the new Terror Australis edition, the excellent Starter Set, and the new Cthulhu Invictus guide.
Some “Call of Cthulhu-adjacent” things also won a few spots, with The Fall of DELTA GREEN nicely grabbing the Best Setting award, and other awards going to the Miskatonic University Restricted Collection board game, Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5E, Seth Skorkowsky’s YouTube channel (I only started recently but I like it so far), and the ever entertaining and informative Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast.
Finally, Chaosium grabbed a few other non-Cthulhu-related wins with the gorgeous RuneQuest slipcase winning Best Interior Art and, again, overall Best Publisher award (this time gold!).
So yeah, Chaosium and Call of Cthulhu did quite well this year… Eric Tenkar was asking over in his tavern why that is, but if you look at the past two years of Ennie awards, they had also been doing quite well back then too. That said, I think there’s a few factors at play:
There were a few surprises for me:
The point of the Ennies is also partly about discovering some new cool stuff:
That’s it! Now if only I could some day make it to Gen Con…
I love that when we go to the nearby parc for a quick picnic, our cat Lestat comes with us!
Here’s some interesting interview over at Buzzfeed with the Twitter dev who implemented the retweet, and who regrets it. Manton Reece mentioned that Micro.blog doesn’t have this feature, for the same reasons detailed in the article. Good to know.
Catching up with some reading during the vacation
Just woke up, don’t mind me
I’m super honoured to have recently been featured on the “Uses This” website! I don’t know how I ever ended up in such a cool place, given how most of the other people there are so talented, famous, or both, but hey, I’m there, so if you’re interested in my home and work setup, here you go!
Ah the good old days! Rolemaster is what got me into “crunchy” TTRPG systems back in high school! It’s fun to dig back into it…