We tried something new in the Promethean Institute this session: a flashback session. It was always planned to do one, as we'd created the relationship map for the previous generation of characters during character creation. It's probably safe to say it went better than we could have expected.

The session was constructed like a con game with each of us playing our character from the previous generation. In my case it was Joshua's father, Benjamin Thorne. We had pre-generated characters (and Benjamin isn't as big a Genius as Joshua which I took great pleasure in...no idea why) with three broad aims and than three hours of discovery to see what happens. This works well with a group who takes the overall consensus and guiding principles and works towards an ending, whatever that may be.

The key reason it was brilliant is it used the 'Jabba Effect' to the maximum. The 'Jabba Effect' is simple: what you don't show is subject to change later. No reality has been established. In Star Wars, the fact they cut the scene of Jabba being a fat guy in a fur coat meant he could be an alien slug a couple of films later. Thankfully, one of the best things that happened in the original trilogy. Anything that hasn't been observed as fact is subject to being established. A few characters even had death immunity, because they had been observed in the future in a clear and concrete way. As an example, two of use had death immune characters and two didn't. It was also the case that Joshua's mother wasn't death immune but Benjamin was. Proved to be quite important.

This created some great stuff as Joshua was in the flashback, albeit aged five. It showed how bad his mother and father's relationship had got and he was also being resented by his father for potentially surpassing his genius. He even created the antidote to the Promethean Deactivation formula! He was also at ground zero of the Penville event. The explosion of the first Promethean, Tempest, that destroyed the secret lab and nearby small town. He escaped by using his teleport power for the first time, after being given the Promethean formula by his mother, with the hope he would be better man than his father and fulfill her shattered dreams. Is that awesome of what?

It's a process of narrative discovery that is fantastic. It has fed the contemporary story in excellent ways. It has ramped up the complexity of Jessie through explaining her complex web of connections that gives weight to her decisions regarding things like her father and her support of specific organisations. Characters who are the epitome of the 'Jabba Effect', such as the mysterious power behind Bio Dynamics ('The Man in the Government') turned out, due to this flashback, to be a super-soldier created by Joshua's father. Jessie, the love of Joshua's life, was also at the event, though I don't think they became aware of each other. Brilliant.

I also enjoyed playing Benjamin Thorne, who I was pitching as Walter Bishop in his more arrogant, egotistical and ego-driven interpretation. Ironically, exactly like he is in the eighties-ish flashbacks in Fringe (or the future when they put parts of his brain back together....don't ask). It was fun. It was also fun seeing the relationship between Tempest and Benjamin unravel.

The biggest 'Jabba Effect' event for me? Joshua's mother died at the Penville incident. I never knew that, as far as I was concerned she was alive, and just hadn't taken part yet. In other groups, this sort of 'establishing of events' that are different to the 'facts in the players head' would cause a riot. It's great our group works differently and I love it.

I liked the feel of the period in the game. We didn't apply exhaustive research of the period, but just sprinkled enough colour and film references to make it work. It did for me anyway, whether it was Paula Abdul being put on the jukebox in the diner, Tempests eighties denim and bright coloured clothes or the slight homoerotic entrance of the super soldier from his stasis chamber (lots of big tubes , dry ice and nakedness, no doubt chest and but shots). It was pretty cool. Even down to the massive mobile phone and the contrast between 'just into the future technology' of the current game and the retro feel of the flashback.

I still don't completely connect with the 'bucket system' approach Smallville uses. You basically build up a bucket of dice from your various traits and use that to achieve stuff. The issue remains building up the bucket. I still think it is a disconnect over the very specific meanings of all the traits. Genius and Clever are two different abilities, for instance. I'll also admit to falling into the trap of reacting to specific actions when in truth I'm trying to define the conflict from my perspective. What you can bring in without a plot point and what you can't still feels...odd.

I'm not convinced about the use of low traits either, as they're never used. They don't directly get you into trouble and neither do thy directly get you a reward. I suspect there is some sort of skill and actual play intent that is supposed to be used here to drag the low traits into play. Such as the GM or players actively challenging the character's weaker traits.

An excellent session that has created new context and depth in the proceeding sessions of the contemporary game. This is exactly what a great flashback should do. Brilliant.

The short answer? The Avengers film is very good. See it. It's an old school blockbuster and this is officially a very good thing. Don't tell the cinema there is something wrong with your showing it's meant to look like that. How's that for cryptic? The longer answer follows.

There is no real spoilers.

The script was always going to be a challenge. The character count is usually the first indicator of risk in any superhero release. It used to be a death sentence, now it's just risky. The script deserves some sort of award. Not a best original screenplay Oscar, just recognition for deftly doing what many felt was impossible. The film is traditional in the it has three distinct acts: assemble, argue and fall out which concludes with a key event leading into the the final battle. The complexity of the plot itself isn't much to speak off. The strength of it comes in the way it is constructed around beats between the titanic characters. It's quick and focused character development but there is more depth in some lines and short scenes than there is in the whole 120 minutes of some blockbusters. Joss Whedon's experience of writing 45-minute movies with ensemble casts was a strength here. It's architecture is a thing of beauty beyond the first 20 minutes or so.

Anyone seeing the film will be able to list lots of scenes. A few stick in my mind. The scene between Black Widow and Loki, which is incredibly well done, is probably the best, individual, character on character scene for me. The interplay between Pots and Stark...better than anything in either Iron Man film. The scene with Stark and Banner in the lab is also playful, warm and intriguing at the same time. Stark and Loki is also good, though a lot of that is in the trailer. A number of these scenes also showed the power of The Avengers in areas other than their ass kicking potential, which was very astute.

It's possibly Loki shouldn't talk so much. While it's brilliant these characters can operate in a world in which a great conversation can occur instead of a quick death while you're at a disadvantage, and it's in genre and Tom Hiddleston is very good at it, the phrase 'your soliloquise will be your undoing' seems to apply to poor Loki.

The script is also very funny in a deft, warm and witty way. It avoids the crass humour of other 'blockbusters'. Two moments in the film had the whole auditorium in hysterics. They both involve The Hulk. The third funniest moment of my showing also involved The Hulk, albeit the line was delivered by Captain America. The script reminds me of older films like Gremlins or Back to the Future. It is a blockbuster script in the sense of the older meaning of the word. This is a good thing.

The special effects deserve special mention because they look so organic and natural. Enough reviews compared it to Transformers to irritate me because it seems in vogue to call any film with a lot of 'special effects inspired destruction' as being similar to Transformers. It's not like Transformers at all, for a number of reasons. All the effects intense scenes have warmth and personality. It remains about the heroes and making them look great no matter what is on screen. They're not confusing either. It's always clear what is going on. You never get lost in a headache inducing barrage of meaningless noise, too close camera angles and flashy CGI.

If the effects should be compared to anything it's the original Star Wars, which obviously used models, but in The Avengers all the effects looked worn, used and real. The Quinjets looked and felt like real planes. Iron Man didn't fall into the disconnected CGI puppets problem of the Iron Man films. Even the giant, flying centipede looked like the armoured space monster it was supposed to be. Even The Hulk looks and feels real, aided by using Mark Ruffalo in the CGI version and imparting enough ape-like movements to give the creature a natural feel. Basically, very good.

Is there any faults? Yeah...a few.

The film isn't in full widescreen, it uses a narrower aspect ratio. This looks so odd and cramped I actually went out and queried if something was wrong with the showing. I got the impression I wasn't the first one to ask this since the film opened. You ignore it eventually, but it took about 25% of the film for me to filter it out. It's really cramped, like someone had decided to show an advert for Friends on the cinema screen. Very odd choice, not sure what was going on with that one. Rumour is it was because of all the different characters sizes, but I find this a bit odd as a hard and fast restriction. I really would have liked the widescreen vistas. This problem won't be felt as much on a TV.

The first section of the film, and I'm not sure how long it lasts, just didn't feel right. It's possible it was my showing as a horde of kids did decide to go to the toilet throughout this section. Yes, not long after is started. I was still getting used to the small ratio of the film. It just felt disjointed, too quick and all over the place. It felt weak. I was left wondering if the whole film was like this? Because, if it was, I wasn't going to like it too much! This does come to and end once all the characters are in one place, and if it is a problem one has to suffer to get all the characters together and the set-up and back story weaved into position I can live with it.

The battle between Iron Man and Thor could have been better. It's okay. If any of the superhero battles feel like they exhibit the 'Iron Man problem' it is this one. It's probably a mixture of its location, the fact it takes place at night, and some of the 'fight choreography' choices. I'm never a fan of the 'both heroes flying around in a grapple grinding against stuff' approach to fight choreography. I'd also say it feels a bit TV show. This scene bookends the weaker part of the film, and things improve substantially after this.

What was going on with Captain America's costume? I loved the costume in the Captain America film. It just worked. It felt like it was part of the sumptuous period piece that the movie was, it looked patriotic and workable. The one in The Avengers doesn't look stupid, neither is it a significant problem, but it doesn't look as good. I don't know, at times, it also makes you feel the actor is uncomfortable (though he is also hampered with a wig). That's possibly projection, as the costume does just inch over that line, ever so slightly, of being slightly silly. And no, I don't believe it's the transportation of the character into the modern era as I have zero problems with the characters moral position and what he represents. The rest of the film masks it, but it's not the best costume choice.

Hawkeye was probably the hero who got short changed, not much more I can say about that.

There is also a criticism that I don't put much stock in. The 'aliens are faceless goons' criticism. We should know more about them. They should have a culture and more depth. Rubbish. Loki was a villain and the aliens are exactly that in terms of the plot: his army of goons he made a dangerous bargain with. Every villain has them, I just can't help think people felt they needed more development just because they were aliens.

Ultimately (is that a pun?), the film is very good. I'm too lazy to list my top 5 superhero films but this would certainly be one of them. I was expecting it to blow all the other Marvel films out of the water, and for the most part it does, it's better than the Iron Man films, it's better than Thor...I'm just not sure, at the moment, if it's better than Captain America. I just enjoy the period piece approach to that film. Time may tell on that one I suspect, and the possibly answer is I enjoy them both as a part I and II affair. It's a film I will watch repeatedly on a big TV, with the sound ramped up many, many times. Whatever films they are doing next, with respect to the individual characters, they'll have to live up to the energy and performances in this ensemble piece. That, in itself, is impressive.

Will we ever see a sequel to The Avengers? They obviously hope so, but since they undoubtedly plan to have some solo films before that we're probably looking at four years from now at least. When it comes around, just give it a better score, go for the wider aspect ratio and possibly tweak Captain America's costume a bit. In a way, the second script might be harder, as without the 'group forming conflict' all the characters in the same film might be slightly more problematic.

Why have boring lists when you can create diagrams that make you think of a green house and tomatoes? That's how my brain seems to work at the moment anyway. This morning I decided to pull together all the threads and vague shards of gaming ideas, which resulted in the diagram below. Of course, the diagram just hides a list, but what would be the fun in that?

A caveat before we get started. These things are always highly speculative. They are not written up in any order, with the exception of Fading Suns being first. Any ideas represented beyond this point are subject to the 'whims of time' which sees ideas fade, other members of the group run similar things (which does mean I get to play them) and a host of other things I can't predict. So, onward.

Fading Suns is the idea the that currently gets first place. If these were TV shows the others would be speculative while Fading Suns would be in pre-production. The idea is simple: grand space opera. Like all good grand space opera it tends to be shaped by other genres: such as westerns (Firefly, Star Wars), classic pulp (Star Wars prequels, Flash Gordon, etc). In this case it's space opera mixed up with a dark fantasy view of medieval dramas. The characters may be dashing around in starships and carrying laser guns but the suns are fading and their dimming brings with it the encroachment of the Darkness Beyond the Stars. Action, adventure, the human condition, religion, faith and dynastic power in the dark void of space. What exactly is it going to be about? No idea, as it depends on character creation, but I'm quite excited about it. Token nominated system: Starblazer Adventures, though I need to give it a first pass with whatever Fate-Fu I have.

If there is a superhero game left on the list, this is it. The 'whims of time' saw the contemporary superhero game get wiped out by the awesome that is the Promethean Institute. It has influences from Battlechasers and the Exalted role-playing game. It can be neatly summarised as ‘the Avengers in a fantasy milieu’. The central protagonists are essentially superheroes in fantasy clothing with egos to match, striding across the landscape dealing with world shattering events. Their very presence and decision can alter the flow of history. The approach is one of a superhero comic, not a traditional fantasy adventure model. Token nominated system: Marvel Heroic Role-Playing. It probably relies on that system maturing to playability in my mind due to it, hopefully, managing power disparity and completely side-stepping the 'superhero character creation' barrier to entry.

The risk with this one is it has been done before, to some degree, as a Cottage Con game and in the Epic Tier of the 4E Game, but in my mind it's different enough from these games by more readily accepting the superhero aesthetic.

I can pin down where Winter's Tale came from. It was after watching The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe film. It then kicked in again when watching Stardust. Wicked also sneaks in as well. Now, of course, I'm getting the same kick out of the 'flashbacks' in Once Upon a Time. There is something great about the fairy tale set-up. It's fantasy but more romantic, colourful and scary at the same time. I'm not really sure what format this will take. I have no idea if it will have children coming over from the normal world. I'm pretty sure I want the characters to be quite varied. A talking wolf? A toy soldier? Why not. I do know the winter motif is important, again from the aforementioned Narnia film, and I can't get the idea of talking wolves out of my head as an enemy along with the phrase....the winter wolf is coming. Token nominated system: not sure, it would probably need to be something quite flexible, open and narrative. Probably something I've yet to find.

Deadlands is a 'Steam Punk' Western in sensibility. It'll be a mix of stuff such as Jules Verne, the Deadlands role-playing game and elements of the John Shannow novels by David Gemmell. The setting will be in the future after some catastrophic event sends humanity back to some semi-fantasized era akin to the 1860’s but with the ‘Steam Punk’ element. It’s likely the ‘Steam Punk’ will be less steam, more some new source of power born out of the disaster, but the imagery and the like would remain the same. The Deadlands name coming from the fact the post-apocalyptic society believes they are living in the end of days and represent the souls left behind. I’ve been looking at a lot of ‘Steam Punk era’ clothing that you can actually buy and it’s very evocative. A western-style game with lots of scope for dark forces, conspiracies, mad technology, stylish clothing and, no doubt, goggles. Token nominated system: Strands of Fate, it's generic, but FATE awesome, fits perfectly.

AEGIS. I've left this on to last purely because it has history....a long history. A version of this idea was the first game I tried after not gaming for about four years. It goes back that far. It also counts as one of my worst gaming experiences (which probably says more about my previous gaming experience at this point). I assumed the approach too gaming that had developed with my last group(s) would be compatible with anyone.....not a safe assumption. Still, it was one element in a sequence of decisions that kick-started the origin of the current gaming group.

Anyway, it still tasks me.

Basically, what's survived the decade of procrastination is the concept of a contemporary, wide-screen series in the style of JJ Abrams, Jerry Buckheimer and Michael Bay. The exact crucible used to be cinematic spies, at one point it merged with contemporary super heroes, now I just know the headline concept tasks me but the exact crucible is to be decided. At the moment I'm thinking some sort of crucible that becomes a melting pot for any 'pulp-ish', 'modern world as a fantastic panorama', Hollywood, JJ Abrams brainchild idea I can throw into the mix. I could see this being about cinematic action heroes or something branching into super powers (in a similar way to Hell Boy or Atomic Robo), but in that case I'd want the cinematic action heroes and those with powers to work together. Token nominated system: would depend on the nature of the protagonists, could be D8 and D10 Marvel Heroic Role-Playing characters or Strands of Fate cinematic heroes. Not really sure.

That's it. As I said at the beginning. Highly speculative. Whims of time rule is in place and it's very doubtful the shape will remain the same over time, albeit some concepts have stuck with me for a good long while. There is also other ideas on the edge of my consciousness (such as something involving werewolves) that may push some presented here out. These things are only ever a time slice of something that's always in motion.

The other gaming 'thing' floating around is how to overcome the attention deficit. That is, how to overcome the vacuum of gaming discussion that used to be on of the primary forms of sustenance that kept games going in previous gaming group. It doesn't happen now, for various reasons, creating periods of nothing, punctuated by sessions. It's can be quite a lonely experience.

The first problem Arkham City has is I really liked Arkham Asylum. I really liked Arkham Asylum. The second problem Arkham City has is I like games that have focus in most things. This includes their setting. Arkham Asylum did this really well, creating a contained slice of Gotham that was soaked in atmosphere. I never got bored with it. The fact it was contained within Arkham Asylum was a strength for me. I know other people complained about it being claustrophobic, but I thought they were slightly mad.

In short, the move to a more expansive area of Gotham isn't necessarily an improvement. It could be, but not necessarily so, and I'm inclined to be skeptical.

I’m 17% of the way through, since I was 8% and then I played for another four hours or so. I forgot to check when I shut the PS3 down. Arkham City is good because it concentrates on doing what Arkham Asylum did well...pull you into the world of Batman and make you feel like you're the central protagonist. The environments look great. Batman looks great. The various villains sound, act and look great. It's just exceedingly well done. Like in Arkham Asylum Batman becomes embroiled in a sequence of events and a trail that sees him having to make his way through a web of his rogues gallery.

I've been through a number of extended sequences so far: facing off against The Penguin in order to get help from Mr Freeze and the chasing down the League of Assassins to find Talia and Ra's Al Ghul. The Ra's Al Ghul sequence has been my favourite so far. I liked the setting for the whole sequence, the mixture of technology, mysticism and destiny all mixed in with a love story, etc. Still, the sequence involving The Penguin did involve applying the beat down to a giant shark. You've got to appreciate a game that can seamlessly put in pounding on a giant shark with your fists?

I think the game is harder. The format of the difficulty is the same: an ever increasing range of enemies with different types of equipment. You move beyond the standard thug quite quickly. This then comes with a bewildering range of combat options and devices. I have to admit, I find remembering the key combinations to activate special devices and combinations a bit....difficult. It's for this reason I've concentrated on simple, passive upgrades for the most part, often just ramping up my armour against firts and bullets. Using smoke, quick fire electrical bolts, beat downs, shock wave landings from a dive and whatever else just doesn't come naturally to me. They all demand new button combinations or contextual button combinations. A few involve pressing multiple buttons at a time, say SQUARE and CIRCLE, which is odd considering you only ever have one thumb in that area of the controller.

This problem hasn't stopped me moving forward...yet. It does mean some of the larger mobs are a bit of slog as I'm only using the basic abilities against them. It helps my armour upgrades make as tough as iron. It'll be interesting to see what strange and wonderful things are thrown at me when I'm further in.

The more expansive environment means there is more side quests. In fact, I don't think Asylum had side quests as such, just the collections (which I never bother with). City has side quests and some of them are a bit annoying. The ones that get done as a function of moving forward with the main story are fine, such as destroying the various canisters for Bane. Then you get the really annoying ones, such as the serial killer who has you picking up a phone and running across town to pick up another phone or he kills someone. They are just an annoying distraction for me and take the form of an incredibly irritating 'repeat until you have got across town fast enough' format. The last time one came up I just ignored the ringing phone, this didn't seem to cause any problem so I may just do that in the future.

I have two Catwoman missions available and I've played the first, very brief, one to the end and played around in the longer second one. I'm not usually a big fan of these sort of things, I tend to think developers should concentrated their efforts on making the main game as engrossing as possible. It's kind of neat though, largely due to the animations on Catwoman being very good. She fights very differently and some of her moves are fascinating to watch. She has a more graceful and athletic approach than Batman's brute force asthetic. It may be something that gets boring very quickly, but it is done very well.

At the moment I'm enjoying Arkham City but not as much as Arkham Asylum. I think the reason for this are the more complex button combinations, the odd irritating side quest and the fact I don't see the bigger environment as an advantage. It's probably also true that City suffers due to be second, which means it doesn't feel as new and original. It feels like more of the same and the more isn't necessarily awesome, just slightly more complex.

It's been a while since I provided an update on the Cineworld Ulimited Pass experience and I've seen three films since then: 21 Jump Street, The Hunger Games and Battleship. If you don't want to read any further the short answer is I enjoyed them all. Especially The Hunger Games, which is an adaptation that is better than the book in some ways.

Now the longer version.

Normally, I'd not see a film like 21 Jump Street, because I've been burned by TV remakes of old TV shows before. The strategy of making a comedy film out of what was intended as a 'serious' drama of the time just doesn't work for me. I'd rather they made a modern interpretation of it that matched modern sensibilities while delivering on the originals intent. Since I'd heard good things about the film, it was partly a high school drama, which I am a sucker for, and I was working away, I thought what the hell?

Glad I did. 21 Jump Street is funny. It manages to create an interesting take on the High School drama, offering up a number of twists on the format, while delivering a cop buddy film at the same time. No real idea what the original was like, but that's not necessary to enjoy the film, apart from one little plot reveal towards the end which is no doubt a lot funnier if you were a fan of the original show. It's a humorous take on an old TV show that actually works.

The Hunger Games, one of those films that has a lot to live up to, as the books have a lot of dedicated fans. I also enjoyed the books. The great thing is the film does meet expectations. I wasn't sure what to expect of the The Hunger Games, because I like the books, I also realise they have faults, especially as the series goes on. This is probably one reason I like the film so much, I wasn't looking for it to duplicate something I thought was perfect.

I actually think the film stands equal to the book, actually improving it in some ways. The people constantly complaining about what was missing seem to miss what deserved to be missing. Elements of the book are silly and these aren't present in the film. The fact the book isn't limited to the third person narrative is the main strength. The film can't monologue forever in the main protagonists head, which is a fantastically good thing. This gives the relationships in the book less of an obsessed about feel. While the actual Hunger Games are a bit weaker in the film, the events before and after are better. Finally, the film can show instead of describing, and some scenes are stellar because of this, such as Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal just before she enters the games...it's fantastic. One of the best heading to the 'death chamber' scenes I've seen.

It's also filmed differently to how I expected, though I don't really know what I expected. It's very intimate. Lots of quiet scenes with few characters. Lots of camera angles very close to the faces of the actors. A lot of the film is shot like a very intimate character drama, more akin to something like Closer, than an adaptation of a teen science fiction novel. It's very good.

We saw The Hunger Games on the IMAX screen, which was an experiment. The screen was very big, but not the skyscraper size I'd been lead to believe whenever these things are described. I was possibly expecting too much in terms of the size. The stadium seating was very tall. What was impressive was the quality of the picture and the sound. Very good. Very detailed. It was a sufficiently different experience that I'd consider seeing certain films on the IMAX screen in the future.

Finally, we come to Battleship. I didn't know it was being made until I saw a trailer a month or so before it being released. It never occurred to me it was licensed from the boardgame until I explicitly read it. It did seem to involve a US Battle Group facing off against aliens and this was enough to assign it to the watch list.

I know what all the other reviews will say. Preposterous. Ridiculous. Melodramatic nonsense. Full of plot holes. What I think all these reviews miss is that's exactly the point. It's like going to a comedy and giving it bad review because it's too funny. Films like Battleship are the modern equivalent of the heroic sagas of old, full of big decisions, melodrama and overblown action. This, in turn, demands a level of ridiculousness and because of that 'plot holes'. Basically, all the supposed faults are a strength for me.

I thought Battleship was brilliant. It looks gorgeous in almost every way. The scenery. The ships on the ocean. The alien technology. The actors. The actors all deliver competent performances within the simplistic, heroes journey tale. The heroes do preposterous things with style and flare. Not only that, it pitches itself perfectly by not taking itself entirely seriously without resorting to the 'extensive middle section full of puerile humour' that the Transformers films seem to insist is now part of the core experience.

So, that's three more positive experiences added onto the Cineworld Unlimited Pass taking the success rate to 75%. It looks like the next film will be The Cabin in the Woods and we are getting significantly close to Avengers Assemble, which I may well see on the IMAX screen.

We went to Alton Towers last weekend. Opening Weekend. Have to admit, I thought this would be a complete and utter disaster as I was expecting epic queues. All the hardcore turning up, especially since the weather was so good. Oddly, we went on Sunday, and everyone else must have decided it was going to be a disaster as they never turned up. The longest we queued was 20 minutes for Nemesis: Sub Terra, everything else was a walk on.

I really wanted to like Nemesis: Sub Terra, but it had all the signs of the type of attraction, not ride, which the British seem to do perennially badly. Sadly, all the signs proved correct.

The core idea behind Sub Terra is excellent. Create an attraction that tells the story of how the creature that is the Nemesis ride came into being. Ideally exposing the guests to an atmosphere soaked attraction of special effects and actors that truly allows them to experience the narrative and scare them in the process. The trouble is, great ideas such as this have to be delivered and you can’t do it in a half hearted fashion or on the cheap, which is exactly what’s happened with Sub Terra.

The experience is very short and lacking substance. It has three sections to it: the lift ‘down’ to the installation, the experience in the ‘egg chamber’ and the lift back up to the surface. That’s it. At no point are there actors involved in the experience, other than in the queuing system. The lift down is a basic, no thrills, simulation of a descending lift. The lift back up is a simulation of a lift ascending to the surface, this does experience some sort of fault or attack (of the creature), it is unclear which, that results in lots of noise, minor jerking around and the roof of the lift denting slightly. It’s that slight and unaccompanied by effects life fire, sparks or smoke I didn’t even notice until I began to step out. The ascension is supposed to be in a rush and panic but it’s mostly confusion as the experience doesn’t connect or reinforce the narrative effectively enough. They really could have done something great when they have the guests in the claustrophobic ascending lift. Pity.

The core of the experience is the egg chamber. It starts well. You are filed in and told to sit in the various seats surrounding the scientific apparatus and screens around the egg. The seats are obviously for a drop ride and are slightly wet. In your mind you’re thinking of being given a framing narrative with things going wrong involving fire, explosions, arcing electricity and panicked voices and images on the flat screens. You get none of this, very abbreviated intro, drop into the floor below, which seems to be a cave of some sort in which nothing much happens, and then back up to see the egg having already hatched. The egg chamber, which should have been the set piece event, actually exists in two static states with anything exciting happening away from the guests (while plunged in the non-event cave). In short, they've focused on the lame drop 'drop ride' rather than potential of what could happen within the 'egg chamber'.

In truth, it needed to be a ‘sound stage’ set piece in the egg chamber bookended by actor-based interactions and events on either side. Actors could have been used to take you into the descending lift and start to frame the story. There is a narrative to the attraction, with Phalanx finding the egg and conducting experiments, they just don’t tell it too well. The egg chamber should have been the set piece and effectively a live set the audience are part of as all the effects kick off. They should have introduced events with scientist actors on the screens, further framing the narrative and giving details about the egg, have things go wrong more visibly and then use effects like smoke, fire, electricity and sound to have the audience feel the awesome of it going wrong. They could have had people 'die', sound effects in the seats, etc. If this is done well, you don’t even need the weak drop ride as seeing it happen is awesome enough. The exit should have been longer with multiple event points and utilising actors to both frame events and push the guests forward. The ascending lift is a great idea, but again it needs to be bolder and better, it’s too low key.

Regrettably, this seems to have been beyond the imagination or, more than likely, the budget of the attraction’s developers.

Still, it seems to be liked by groups of early teen girls, as their ability to enter some sort of shared panic scenario doesn’t take much effort.

Alton Towers has a great history of introducing thrill rides, but a terrible history of creating attractions and experiences. They tried it with Hex and, to some degree Thirteen, and both of them have been substantial failures as attractions (though Thirteen is an average ride). It’s quite clear what Sub Terra has delusions of being. It wants to be Armageddon in Disney Studios at Disneyland Paris, Temple Del Fuego in Port Aventura, Alien Encounter in the Magic Kingdom (before they toned it down, at least) or the, much missed, Alien War that existed in London’s Tocadero Centre.

Specifically, it needed to be an Armageddon scale sound stage experience in the egg chamber, as this is enough of a spectacle it's worth doing multiple times. They could have also incorporated elements of Alien Encounter with actors dying in the dark to aliens and sound effects on stage and in the seats. Alien War provides a model for the entrance and exit stages, as that was a walk through attraction complete with sound, fire special effects and loud pulse rifles. Alien War also had an excellent exit sequence (countdown, lights and an alien pulling someone out of the escape ship just as you thought you’d reached safety).

One day a British theme park may pull off an experience-based attraction (in theory we did it with Alien War, it just might have been a US franchise transplant), but Sub Terra isn’t it, which makes the name of the attraction both unfortunate and ironic. I can see the queues for Sub Terra being very short in the future once people realise the anticipation is far superior to the experience and it has zero repeat value.

I got home after the game on Sunday and I was knackered and had a headache. The fourth session of the Promethean Institute didn't fully cause this, as I was a bit tired before it started, which might have contributed to me being a bit irritable, but it certainly contributed.

As usual, the breakdown of the actual play can be found on the GM's blog, specifically here.

The headache is induced by the intensity of events and constantly having to think on one's feet – including spontaneous speeches to 'the nation' in direct competition to nefarious plots and what was essentially a presidential address. Everything is constantly in motion and the shape of things changes down to the importance of what order scenes happen in. Still, this is good stuff, you certainly don't want a game you play on auto-pilot (which isn't normally a feature of our games I must admit).

The geopolitics went a bit mad in this episode as we played out the fall out from the renegades nuking Jerusalem. We had to hunt down the renegade base. Free the captured Professor Thorne (Joshua's father). Stop the renegades from getting access to the Promethean kill switch. Deal with the US releasing their mind controlling, time stopping, mastermind super soldiers. Discover there is an 'activating' agent as well and the only source of this agent is Jessie's blood!

I'll admit, it was good as it happened, it was even better on reflection.

I like how Jessie has been brought more into the centre of events, other than through being a strong relationship on my sheet. She'd had a secret which was informing her decisions and causing conflict with Joshua (due her sticking to certain decisions because of it) and I was hoping this wasn't that she had super powers. As I rather like the fact she's normal and more a Mary Jane or Gwen Stacey rather than a Jean Grey. Basically her blood allows the production of an agent that can activate the 'shut down' Prometheans. She's a walking catalyst for one of the most sort after 'agents' in the gaming world. This makes her critical to events moving forward but not super powered. It's a bit Impossible Mission-esque. Clever. Like it. It creates an interesting dynamic they share: they've both been experimenting on for different results, possibly both by Joshua's father. It's also going to be interesting to see what choices brought that about in the historic episode, assuming it covers that area.

The plot points didn't seem to flow as well this session as they did in session three and in a similar vein the Trouble Pool remained anaemic. It would seem this element of the game needs attending to constantly through actual play by all the players, rather than 'just playing' and hoping it sorts itself out. There is also a few wrinkles...such as the ability of the players to get key conflicts in early when the Trouble Pool is low. The player still has a plot point or two to use but the GM only has a Trouble Pool of 2D6.

I have a number of observations specific to Joshua, now we've reached the end of act one. I've been finding it hard to bring a lot of dice into the roll and the size of your dice pool is everything, as it's from the rolled pool that you can bring extra dice in for a larger total. This tends to be caused by having difficulty bringing assets into the conflict (Values and Relationships come more naturally). The result is a perennial total of 10 – 20. The second issue is around my character being least pre-disposed to get involved in the superhero fights.

When in doubt, put it to your fellow players!

After a brief discussion it seems I was probably interpreting the rules too strictly, especially around what an SFX does and what you can get away with through just general use (the asset adding dice to the pool). I still think, in some of the examples given, I'd be breaking the rules (some of the examples for Super Senses stretched what I think the rules allow in a highly elastic manner without tweaking my SFX). Either way, I figure as long as the social contract at the table is fine, I'm fine also.

The outcome of the discussions means things should work like this. Joshua, in his bid to 'create a better tomorrow' (Glory) and defend the Institute (relationship with the Institute), engages in a scene worthy of the new Doctor Who or Sherlock TV shows in which the camera shows, in 30 seconds, what happens in a split second through powers, technology and pure genius. His super sight takes in a deluge of information regarding slight muscle tension, eye movements and heat distribution through his assailants’ body’s (Super Senses), his phenomenal brain processes this information to compute the maths of bullet speeds, reactions speeds, muscle mass, nature of enemy attacks angles (Genius), as well as AVRIL overlaying a combat schematic and the history of the assailant's tactics (AVRIL Resource) and then teleport to dodge and attack (Teleport). Queue a roll with a width of six dice, plot points allowing.

Basically, I have options.

I also need to remember the negative sides of my Distinctions. I only have one, but it has the benefit of being something that should occur as a natural occurrence of playing the character if I don't forget it exists. Basically, he is so clever he can get frustrated with people who don't understand him. Their brains operate at a slower speed and a less enlightened level, obviously. This gives me a way to keep the currency flowing a bit without spamming it ridiculously (though if the scenes come up delivered to me that are suitable then the anti-spamming rule drops!).

All this is good. It's also allowed me to come up with some great ideas on how to spend my growth pool, the key thing being some excellent Distinctions. Really excited about getting some of those, both in terms of their fit, plot point generating potential and simulating the awesome of teleport combat (it is such a perfect match I was quite surprised).

One of the reasons I did the MBA, though by no means the only one, was to establish a more effective use of my spare time. I recognised that I was wasting it. Evenings and weekends would go by and I'd be left wondering what I'd actually achieved? I don't mean in some sort of aggressive, career orientated 'make me a millionaire' sort of way, just in the sense of not spending all my time doing nothing much or loitering around the internet. I'm a simple person, I'd view being absorbed in and playing to completion a game on the PS3 an achievement. After all, imaginative and interesting inputs creates similar outputs.

The MBA demanded time management, effort, consistency and commitment. It gave me something productive, challenging and, for the most part, interesting and exciting, to do with my spare time. Obviously, now that's over. I've had a two month or so 'kick back' and now I'm feeling my like my spare time is becoming dead time again.

Not good. I find it intensely frustrating even though it's within my power to alter it.

The MBA has allowed me to realise one issue I have psychologically, and being aware of it is half the challenge: In my spare time I'm better at rising to a challenge that I haven't set. In fact, I'd go as far to say, this is the crux of the problem. After all, while one can see the MBA as one big personal challenge I set myself, which is true, it could also be seen as a gigantic way of kick-starting a process in which I'd be constantly set external challenges I had to rise to (or risk losing a significant investment). I often have things I could be doing, but it's up to my personal motivation to do them. Strangely, this is a problem unique to my own personal spare time, it doesn't tend to manifest at work, probably because I view that as one big external challenge of ideas, change, execution, etc.

So, that's problem number one to tackle.

The second problem is identifying the right activities that will work for me once I've got passed the initial hurdle just mentioned. I'm afraid some activities don't cut it.

So, that's problem number two to tackle.

Surprisingly, the MBA has helped me articulate much better the type of activities that absorb me completely once I've actually started doing them. It's basically the common principles of things that have interested me throughout my life. Not surprisingly, it's also why the MBA worked really well for me and I'm so passionate about having undergone the process. Anything that puts language and explicit understanding to things I've understood implicitly previously I tend to get excited by.

Basically, everything I tend to get passionate about has a number of things in common: narrative, design, creativity and people. I'm trying not to go into these in detail as that would divert the post away from its main focus or create one of epic length. A summary. Narrative is why I read, play role-playing games, watch TV shows, enjoy business change, etc. Design is about design thinking, holistically solving a problem, framing something, shaping how people think and approach problems or providing a solution that works, again this links into the MBA, work and even role-playing games, specifically the idea that the best gaming experiences have always been about achieving something new (breaking a new game, new approaches at the table, etc). I like being creative, pulling things together in new ways, linking concept and ideas, in a way this has a high correlation with the design thinking. Last there is often a people or relationship element, it's what I like in my narrative, how people relate to each other, ideas and concepts is large part of business change and I like the social construct of gaming and the types of games I like have a strong relationship element (as a function of story or system). Obviously, when they are all present they are bigger than the sum of their parts.

So, recognising these two key elements, what's the plan?

The first action is to re-institute a method I used for the MBA: time blocking. Very simple, you reserve time for specific things and as best as possible you stick to it. This demands a bit of a selfish attitude, but the ironic thing is it's much easier for me to do since we don't have kids. What other people do is colour code the blocked time. This gets around the problem of trying to multi-task or, in my case, selecting nothing out of the basket to do. The original idea behind Mega Gaming Sunday, which worked quite well, was based around this principle. Google Calendar will be used for this, like last time, since it replicates across my Google devices (phone and tablet).

While lots of us get high on being very busy, with a high level of multi-tasking, it invariably results in 'busy work' of less quality. Research consistently proves dedicating time on one thing is better. The MBA has also made me value this and the fact it has engendered a belief I can begin to solve and do anything with dedicated thought, research and connections. So, the time blocking begins again both during the evening and the weekends. This is especially good while working away, as it's all too easy for the evenings to amount to nothing, yet pass exceedingly quickly, in that environment.

Now the activities to go into the blocks? Well, in no particular order.

Playing games. I need to get back into the groove. I've started role-playing again which is good. It's going better than I ever could have expected. On the other front I have Arkham City sat on a shelf and I don't play it and muck around on the Internet instead. That stops. Mega Gaming Sunday is re-instituted as a time block on Sunday between 13:00 and 19:00 (albeit it may be slightly shortened when not at the Promethean Institute sessions).

Running games. While this is only so much preparation that can be done in advance for role-playing these games, but some work can still be done. I'm a big fan of the person running the game delivering a vision and idea of the game, for me that does mean some framing and setting comes with it. Even if it's largely concepts. Basically, a framework that provides structure to the vacuum the players will play a large part in filling. Fading Suns pushes that envelope a bit, without breaking it, others will be different. Obviously, when the GM'ing slot comes around, it moves to execution. You can throw new ways of preparing for games and tools for running into this bracket as well.

Orbility and career. I have a new company running not so much as a sidelines, it just isn't my primary income, yet. How it becomes that, assuming that is its future for me, is a difficult task involving a level of risk (to be decided). At the same time, there is a lot I could be doing here at the moment, while income is 'secure' (yeah, notice the quotes). Thankfully, it involves a lot of narrative, design thinking and framing. Basically, a bit of work needs to go into establishing a framework for our services, what they can practically be and how we can deliver them. At the moment, it's heavily slanted to the digital side..there is a valuable holistic message, but I don't believe it springs from the screen. This involves some design, diagrams, website alterations and then once it's clear and exciting to me...hitting everyone with it 'big style'. There is also a basket of general career activities, not directly related to Orbility, but for which there is a lot of crossover.

Writing. Obviously, this tends to span the others. I like writing. I would, wouldn't I? Narrative, design, communicating clearly (ideally), etc. Each undertaking is also serves as it's own little micro-problem and opportunity to frame ideas. This comes in the form of blogs (Fandomlife.net, ElucidateIT.net and Orbility.com) and status updates, with Facebook getting a lot more attention these days. One of those blogs may momentarily depreciate. I can safely say, status updates have, on a very small level, began to replace some blog entries (while before they never really clashed). There is something in the back of my mind that says I should make something more of this side of things. Something a bit more ambitious. I used to get paid well for this, once upon a short time. One for the future.

Reading. In the widest possible terms. Yes, fiction, but I'm also including non-fiction in this (and possibly stuff that involves gunning for certifications). Yeah, that is technically studying, but I don't think it deserves it's own section yet. I'm trying to read more because it's the consumption of ideas, whatever they may be. The consumption of ideas creates new and interesting outputs. I'm also trying to find the best way to store such ideas, rather than them being fleeting. Garbage in and garbage out may have been coined for computers but it applies to the human brain. Less inputs, the more you enter a walking coma! Luckily, I find such stimulation easy to find, as my Facebook updates probably attest. Not sure what that says.

That's it. I've prattled on for long enough. There is also an element of tools to all this, such as using the smart phone (and would now like a better one) and tablet to maximise time. It's all about the moments, as well as the larger tracts of time.

Of course, as some people who know me well realise, this blog post is even part of the change. I tend to be someone who thinks through writing, and what I write has a higher chance of becoming reality. As I understand it, this isn't half as mad as it sounds.

The plot of John Carter is quite simple. John Carter, a man of broken spirit due to his wife dying during the America Civil War, gets transported to Mars. On Mars there is a war going on between two city-states, one of which features a beautiful princess. The bad guys are being manipulated by a bunch of beings that can travel between worlds using a secret network that also provides them with an energy source. These beings seem to take delight in bringing the downfall of civilisations. Mars is certainly in decline. A marriage of the princess and the leader of their enemy is proposed to end the war, but it is obviously a double-cross.

Does this sound so byzantine it renders the film virtually incomprehensible? No.

I was waiting for the film to get mind-bogglingly complicated as if it had been written by someone high on crack, but it never happened. It's certainly no Clash of the Titans on the scale of terrible edits. In fact, it's pretty standard, pulp fantasy faire. Which, if there is a criticism around the plot, that is probably it. The rest is orientated around how John Carter becomes involved, makes a decision to make a difference and how this influences the people he has met (mostly the aliens knowns as Tharks) who are also having issues of declining greatness.

The film took a risk by going with no star actors. This works in some cases and not in others. The supporting cast are a stellar assortment of great actors who have done great things on TV. They work well. Lynn Collins, as the Princess Dejah Thoris, is alluring, feisty, a brilliant scientist and she holds your attention in a Princess Leia style way. The various actors playing Tharks put in good performances. The weakness is Taylor Kitsch, he's not bad, he's just okay. He's certainly no Harrison Ford. While I'm not advocating he should have hammed it up, his performance is probably too understated. It's not terrible acting, it just needs a slight adjustment in tone.

The film is pure pulp, which is both great and probably its biggest downfall. A potential audience can't easily put it in a pigeon hole. Star Wars is clearly starships and laser guns. Indiana Jones is clearly has the historical grounding. John Carter has none of these. It's all new and it delivers an interesting amalgamation of swashbuckling and space opera with characters using guns, fighting with swords as well as throwing in airships and aliens. It's pulp with nothing filed off. The character even has a sort of alien lizard pet that runs super fast. Surprisingly, this works. If you're the sort of person who can't get passed the fact a core of your cast are four foot tall with hairy feet then you're going to have a problem with John Carter. The other problem is many a film has mined this source material. The biggest culprit being the Star Wars prequels which, ever more obvious on seeing John Carter, had this sort of pulp material as their underpinning.

The film looks amazing. I know it looks amazing because I've seen the trailer. The costumes. The sets. The airships. The alien landscape. It looked big, bright and bold. The trouble is, I experienced the dulled version because I watched the film in 3D. Do not see the film in 3D. The sets seem to shrink. The detail in the film seems to get peeled away, especially for anything the camera isn't immediately focused on. You have a sense things are just ever so slightly out of focus, but just to a degree you almost can't detect. The lovely, sumptuous trailer was destroyed. For all I know the 2D version might have been like this as well, and the trailer was unique, but at the moment I'll put it down to the 3D. You put up with this for zero benefit. Avatar continues to be the only film that sells the 3D format. John Carter is one of a long lines of films that makes you want to consign 3D to the scrap heap.

One of the key criticisms of the film was it used a lot of 'made up language' that meant that large tracts of the film made no sense. I can see where the criticism came from, but I don't agree with it. I don't agree with it because I had no trouble following it and I'd got up at 0430 that day. Yes, we have 'aliens' with strange names and who use a few terms from their language. Yes, we have people with titles that aren't English. Yes, we have a couple of city names to remember. It's really stretching it that it's incomprehensible, it's not even close.

I possibly take a different view to this than most people. Take the TV show The Wire. It was lauded because it didn't explain itself. One element it never explained, and left the audience to decode, was the police slang and the language and terms used by the characters embroiled in the street drug dealing culture. Anyone who didn't like it because they didn't understand the language was essentially ridiculed for being unwilling to but a small amount of effort in. It's safe to say, compared to The Wire, John Carter is primary school stuff, yet it apparently creates a script that is way too complicated. Personally, I like the fact it just went for it.

Ultimately, John Carter isn't terrible. It's not even that bad. Is it great? No. Is there the hint of what could have been a classic trying to get out? Yes, and that, more than anything else, is the most disappointing part of the film. It feels like they were aiming high and just didn't reach the summit. I enjoyed it. It kept me awake and interested despite the dulling effect of the 3D on the experience and the fact I'd been up since 0430...that says a lot to me. I'm left totally confused by the seriously negative reviews of John Carter and the positive reviews of films like Haywire, which almost did send me to sleep and that was on a day I'd had a good nights sleep.

The Cineworld Unlimited Pass has been cashed in two more times to see Safe House and Project X.

Safe House. One of those films that's advertised in a 'weighty' fashion. Serious faces. Epic music. Grand scenery, this time Cape Town just to add spice. It has Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds looking all serious and intense. When did Ryan Reynolds become a, virtually legitimate, serious actor? I associate him too much with Van Wylder: Party Liaison to fully make them leap?

I liked Safe House, it's just nothing that hasn't been done before. You have the plucky young, altruistic hero wanting to prove himself. The older, jaded guy who is a villain. Or is he? The usual double-crosses from the powers that be. Action scenes. It's loud and brutal. Despite this, I enjoyed it. The double-crosses are nothing to shout home about, but I suspect people expecting the betrayals to be shocking (a few in the cinema based on conversations on the way out) are missing the point. I think they're supposed to be obvious and have a sinking inevitability about them. The focus of the story is on what it means to do the right thing and to what degree this makes you a 'villain'? It does this quite well. While it's been a while since I watched Training Day, it probably has similar elements to that, with Denzel playing the anti-hero again. I may be wrong, it's been a while.

Last Monday, despite being up at 0430, and being effectively awake since 0300, I found myself not content to just vegetate in my hotel room and fall asleep. Go the cinema I thought. It didn't take me long to convince myself to go see Project X.

I knew hardly anything about it, other than the vague fact it was about some students organising the party to end all parties. I did learn before I went into the screening that it was filmed Reality TV style and was an eighteen certificate. The fact it was an eighteen intrigued me purely from the point of view there seems to be a general consensus that an eighteen certificate is commercial suicide. It also had a link to someone involved in some way to The Hangover, you know the drill, the brother of the producer of The Hangover, etc.

It's a very strange film. It has zero stars in it. Unless I'm missing out on some up and coming talent I mean absolutely zero stars. It's full of nobodies, which ain't necessarily a bad thing. It is effectively just one big party. It's a bit like watching trailer for the original series of Skins but extended out over ninety minutes with added breasts. There is some anaemic character development in the form of the central protagonist finally getting together with his 'friend that is a girl', but that's about it. There are some The Hangover style moments involving a violent Dwarf and an oven. As well as the drug dealer they anger after stealing his garden Gnome. Not a lot of them though. Weirdly, and I can't fully explain why, it held my interest. A part of it was the main characters are very likeable. There is 'just enough chaos' to make you want to keep watching. I suppose there was also enough flesh on display if things dipped.

This was quite an achievement considering I'd been up for a long time at this point.

I'm never going to watch it again, or recommend it to anyone really, but I enjoyed Project X more than I did Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. In fact, out of the Cineworld Pass films seen so far Underworld: Awakening was much worse as well. I'm going to add it to the thumbs up list of Cineworld Pass films.

This puts the Cineworld Pass Thumbs Up Rating at 62.5%. We are now heading into the territory of John Carter, The Hunger Games and, last but by no means least, Avengers Assemble. I always want to put an exclamation mark on the end of that, don't you?

So, last weekend we played the third session of the Promethean Institute. It was a slow session for me, relative to the first two, but it did end with a nuclear bomb destroying Jerusalem! As usual, this won't be an actual play, if you want to read that visit the GM's blog, specifically here.

This week we swapped intense relationships for some Ultimates-style superhero clashes. I love this stuff, mega-political thriller orientated scenery trashing conflicts, and it speaks to the quality of the game that I'm playing the character who is least likely to get directly involved in that element of the game and I don't care in the slightest. Despite being slightly removed from the key events this week, it was still a really great episode. The super heroic action was great to witness. We got pasted, with the appropriate amount of collateral damage, including a character who had a building collapsed on him.

I seem to have become the target for some concentrated fire from the other players. It’s a bit like one of those real-time strategy games where the most efficiency strategy seems to take gang up and take one of the players out. Basically, protagonists sleeping with my childhood sweet heart, double-crossing me and using mind control suggestions on me. I deal with it by taking it as a complement. Due to Joshua being at the centre of events, as in he his in charge of one of the power blocks trying to forge the shape of the 'Promethean future', he tends to get targeted. This certainly happened, with both NPC features trying to coerce other player protagonists against him, and other player protagonists working actively against him. It's getting...very complex. The problem is I'm not as good at that political side of the game so it's going to be 'challenging'.

A number of these things are due Joshua's imperfections so it's not just players having a go at each other for no reason. It feels logical and an extension of events. This is one of the great aspects of the game and the system...it makes player pvp work so well it's not even right to call it that. It's not. It's actually just role-playing working...well. It's what narrative is about. It's great drama. The whole thing writes itself. Character relationships actually change from scene to scene...you really do not know, in any shape at all, what the state of play is going to be at the end when you start the session and your view on where you want relationships to go changes constantly.

It's also ensuring the decisions and actions have consequences - they're actually difficult to make in some instances. Which is brilliant. You feel like a writer agonising, not painfully, but interestingly, over the direction of the narrative and the key relationships. You don't want decisions to be so easy they don't feel like they mean something. The events around Jessie meant that it felt like it meant something re-forging that relationship and changing Joshua's philandering ways. In turn, it will mean something when something happens to it in the future. There relationship will undoubtedly become tied up in world events. The complexity over Bio Dynamics is great...it being the nexus of a power play that leaves you truly in a quandary for what to do about for the best. This element, a combination of the people at the table and the rules, means you want to deliver on the scenes. To get the money shot. To not avoid the harder ones. The scene that saw Joshua and Jessie take their relationship in a new direction would have been the exact type of scene that wouldn't have been fully wrestled with in some previous games. It was great and actually tackled the relationship directly. It felt like something from a TV show.

I like the tag scenes as well. They're basically a scene each player gets at the end to reflect and round off the events that have happened to them and the growth or relationships they've challenged. It’s a bit like a personal epilogue. They also provide a way to set the scene for how things might move forward, so they're not entirely 'historic'. Interestingly, most of these scenes have been descriptions of things happening, the sort of thing you'd see played to music of some sort as the credits approach. We've not gone for a tag scene with role-playing in it yet...I think you can though. So we shall see. The scenes are probably influenced by the fact they often come when we are pressed for time.

The bomb on Jerusalem is a serious event. It takes the geo-politics of the campaign to a whole new level. I don't know if the location was chosen purely just because one of the players has a connection to Israel on his character sheet or if it was because of its narrative power, either way it's powerful stuff. This is the leader of the rogue Promethians, Tempest, who essentially follows something akin to the 'Magneto Manifesto', she believes Promethian's are the new Gods, not restricted by current laws , and she has destroyed the birth place of the son of God in Christian religion. The world is going to explode and this is awesome. It felt like a prelude to something in the first two sessions, but now the opening move has been made and it couldn't have been bigger. It's what makes it a great game overall; it's just played to the max and then some.

Each session results in us playing the system better. It would seem many people are put off Cortex+ because it appears complex and it has its own language. Both these things are true. Yet, it is complex in a good way. It appears complex but it needs to be played and actively used. This is a good thing. It's like fine wine. You want the system to be rich and drive the game. The fade into the background and influence nothing idea is a waste of time. Now we can construct our dice pools with speed, decide on the width of the rolls (the number of dice) and how and when to use plot points to bring more of those dice into the roll. The longer discussion is over the nature of the conflict. We are also using the plot points better with them now flowing more freely based on choices the GM and players make now we have the rules on GM plot point use correct.

I still have a few issues with the system around complications and 'stress relief'. When it comes to complications it’s the open ended nature of them. There is very little structure around them. I prefer the Marvel Heroic Role Playing flavour of Cortex+ in this regard, which has a more structured view of what you can do when a 1 is rolled. When it comes to 'stress relief', the comedy name aside, which doesn't help, I think the problem is it always feels forced and unnatural. Ironically, these have become the scenes we sort of mumble through or do completely in third person to get to rolling the dice.

I'm in danger of just gushing every session as the game just includes everything I like packaged into one game. It’s like someone went through my personal checklist. The scenes feel like a slick TV show. It exudes HBO.

The first role-playing campaign I ran of any significant length was a superhero campaign. I didn't know it at the time, as I didn't read a vast amount of comics, but it was probably quite silver age in feel. Alien invasions. Transportation to other time lines and worlds. Superhero bases under the sea. Epic melodrama. It all used the Golden Heroes system, which is now probably uber-clunky. It involved division every time someone caused damage!

I continue to love the idea of superhero games. The reason is quite simple: it's quintessentially an everything louder than everything else sort of model. Big sets. Big Ideas. Big Characters. Scenery trashing fights. It's like a lot of the ideas I like in fiction...maxed out. I've not run one since though, largely because there continues to be a disassociation with the systems available to run such a game. They are either too complicated (Champions / Hero), have high barrier to entry character generation (Mutants and Masterminds), too simple (numerous to mention), focused in a different area (Smallville) or old and clunky. Nothing hit the sweet spot.

The question is: does the new Marvel Heroic Role-Playing game fill the esoteric niche? Hard to say at the moment as it's an effectively simple game that takes a long time to digest. But it might. It has a number of key wins.

The first is the character generation. It gets round the high investment barrier to entry system of most superhero games by not effectively presenting a system as such. No rolls. No balancing points system. Just pick what you want within broad guidelines. At first this sounds alien and a deal breaker. Chaos. Cats and dogs living together, etc. Then you start to realise it just might be a stroke of absolute genius and this links in with how the powers and the game works. If one player wants to create Black Widow and the other Thor why shouldn't they be able to without jumping through horrendous hoops? Not only that, if the system is doing it's job right the two characters should be able to enjoy a shared narrative without Black Widow being smudged by villains capable of slugging it out with Thor or being squeezed out as a protagonist by the rules. If that can happen all the need for a system to purchase powers goes away. Just let the player design what he wants.

Key to this is the concept of characters being 'balanced in play' not 'balanced in character creation'. Now, how well this works is yet to be seen, but it's a mixture of the higher ability to generate plot points which gives higher opportunity for stunt and asset generation. It should also simulate the comics with such a fight not being entirely about pure force of blows.

Is there some room for acrimony amongst even the best and most mature of players? Of course, should that player have one more Speciality? How many powers in a power set are pushing the limit? The trouble is I'm not sure complicated systems resolve these issues, they just obfuscate them and give the appearance of being being fare and you always have some people capable of investing the effort to max out every point and some who can't be bothered. Adults should be able to handle it.

Second, I'm liking how the powers work. Okay, some are a bit vague, but this exists to different degrees in every superhero system. The realisation of true genius in the game is the realisation that superheroes don't exist on a wide spectrum of power scalability with lots of points on the scale. Yes, we may start at human and move to Godlike but the points in between aren't infinite. The vast majority of heroes, say for Super strength are buff (assumed in this game), advanced human (Captain America), Super strong (Spider-man) or God like (Thor, Hulk, The Thing). Anything else is largely dramatic license and the domain of fan debates. No getting into the fact one character can lift five tons more than another because it doesn't matter. Who care whether Spider-Man or Iron Man is stronger? They are both Super Strong while not being God like. All powers break down like this into 3 or 4 points on a scale. The amazing thing is, I think it works brilliantly. This again, removed the need for many of the other 'systems' that other superhero games accumulate around powers while not being ridiculously non-existence. It's a thing of beauty.

Third, a core of it plays a lot like Fate but with dice values attached. Distinctions are Aspects with a die value. A Complication (via an effect die) is essentially the same as placing an Aspect (via a manoeuvre) on something it just has a die value attached. An Asset (via an effect die) works similarly way, establishing something akin to an Aspect on a scene or situation. It works in the same way but instead of the Aspect analogue being called on to get a +2 or a re-roll it provides the die value (D8, D10, etc) that can be added to the dice pool. They add dice. It's quite clever. This is potentially even more clever factored into the dynamic initiative order to allow heroes to create assets or complications for later heroes to include in their die pools.

It's another game that has to be played to fully appreciate I think. There is also other elements that aren't as solid in my mind and may still put me off the game (experience, milestones, etc). Still need to figure out the Doom Pool. Still slightly concerned why some of the mechanics around the Doom Pool seem essential to play (the cost of 2D12 from the pool to end a scene, for instance). It's looking good so far.

In many ways it's a Fate-like powered superhero system with the core dice mechanic working better (for superheroes) than Fate dice while utilising a lot of Fate concepts in the mix. It also has an interesting amount of crunch that feels right and focused in the right areas.

Blackpool. What can I say? It's never really sat well with me. I remember we went there with the family when I was young, but I don't remember the details. Well, apart from the Alice Ride, as the rotating tunnel seems to have imprinted itself on my memory. The few times I've been as an adult I decided it was a scar on the west coast that stank of horse shit and burger fat or a menagerie in which human animals had taken over the asylum. Impressions were not good.

This weekend it was more once unto the breach as we went to Blackpool to spam the Merlin Annual Pass attractions that now present themselves in the 'Las Vegas of the North'.

The first observation? Thank God that Merlin have moved in and give the North end a major kick up the arse. The cluster of attractions now owned by Merlin create a nexus around the tower that's well worth a visit. The Tower. The Sea Life Centre. Madame Tussauds. The Blackpool Dungeon. All of them are worth the cash. You can even get to do them all via bundled options. Madam Tussauds, while not as vast as the one in London, you can at least see the place without having to fight the mob. It's as good as the one in Vegas. The Sea Life Centre, while lacking a killer exhibit, is very well done, with some excellently themed areas. The Dungeon is a bit random, dodging around time and featuring sets from different Dungeons around the country, but it is excellent. And The Tower? I never thought I'd say this but The Tower is great. It's well worth doing the glass floor and going to the top. It has an excellent industrial age retro thing going on that really works. It inspires. We didn't get to see the circus as it's out of season, regrettably.

While we didn't go to the Zoo this time, based on previous experience it's well worth a visit.

One of the main advantages of going up to the top of the tower is you get to see the whole of the improvement project, rather than just a small part of it in process at any particular time. They are doing great stuff on the promenade side.

The killer change? The staff. Every single Merlin staff member we encountered was brilliant. Not just in terms of the basic attraction but in terms of their natural and infectious enthusiasm for the attractions, the other attractions, Merlin generally and the potential positive effect on Blackpool. Merlin has obviously invested in Blackpool and views its improvement as critical. Whoever trains these staff, no doubt combined with their natural enthusiasm due to being local, needs to be given an award. It was Disney-scale stuff, with the over familiarity and cheese filed off. Just natural, friendly and infectious. Very well done.

Now go to the south end and you get to see the possible future of Blackpool? The Big Blue Hotel, a 4-star family boutique hotel. We didn't stay there, though we are eyeing it up for the future. The Big Blue hotel is basically the Disney Hotel for the Pleasure Beach. It's nice, relatively expensive and you get cheaper access to Pleasure Beach tickets. It's effectively on the door step of the Pleasure Beach. Not all hotels along the promenade should be this expensive, but it is certainly an indication of the direction that needs to be taken in terms of look, theme and feel. There are number of buildings that push the new look along the promenade it just needs connecting up.

Is Blackpool the 'Las Vegas of the North'? No. I very much doubt it ever will be either. Las Vegas is far too extravagant and big ticket these days for Blackpool to ever reach those ridiculous 'heights'. The comparison people often miss is International Drive in Orlando. When we first went to Florida in 1998 our verdict on International Drive was it was a different flavour of Blackpool. It had it's dodgy hotels. Cheesy attractions. Bad restaurants. We were glad we were staying in Disney as if we'd wanted Blackpool with more sun we'd have taken our chances in the UK. International Drive is now different. Slowly it has become 'high end'. When they built the Florida Mall it was ridiculed, but now it fits right in as one higher end investment after another created a domino effect that transformed the place. Between 1998 and 2007 (our last visit) we saw it transformed for the better.

This is what Blackpool could do, but it's going to take time and more effort than just changing the promenade side. The new promenade, the work on the tower and the moving in of the Merlin attractions could well be the start. After all, International Drive started by taking either end 'up market'. What it's really going to take is a transformation of the 'hotel and attractions' side of the sea front. Like in International Drive the cheap and nasty hotels are going to have slowly go. The cheesy attractions gutted. All this needs replacing with buildings and fronts that look respectable, nice and pleasing to the eye. They also need to offer quality of service akin to a great bed and breakfast at the 'bottom', solid Premier Inn performance and such in the middle and Big Blue-style higher end. The risk is they will price people out, as I'm sure people have been out of International Drive, but by definition that is what's required. The extreme low end results in the menagerie of burger fat and horse shit. All this is assuming the horrendous looking hotels are as cheap as they look, of course, which may well not be the case.

As they say in the 4D show in the tower 'Blackpool, it will be great?' You know what? in some small way, I'm starting to believe them and I hope it will be. To do it right though, it's going to be traumatic.

We played the second session of the Promethian Institute a week ago, but time and the need to digest has held me up talking about it. The short answer is it was brilliant and the actual play is in the usual place on the GM's blog. The longer discussion follows.

The session took an interesting turn because the GM didn't choose to take control of the opening narrative by defining everyone's opening scene. The effect of this was the players' rushing in to fill the vacuum. This resulted in things getting complex, which is hard to describe without getting too much into an actual play. It's suffice to say it resulted in me testing my protagonists relationship with Jesse 'who is my childhood sweat heart', Seth 'the institute poster child' and my Love value 'Sucker for a Pretty Face'. The final one precipitated the situation in session one. Basically, it was awesome and will have lasting consequences on two characters that at character creation looked destined to be a solid, reliable connections and a duo.

The scene was also interesting from the perspective of how the game enables narrative power. For example, Seth created a scene with Jessie with the express purpose of using her weak emotional state to sleep with her. The weakened emotional state due to being betrayed by Joshua and 'manipulated' into airing her grievances (by another character) on a talk show. Joshua's teleport power gives me the option to insert myself into a scene at any time with the expenditure of a plot point. In short, I could have interrupted the flow, a different journey of events would have occurred. Who knows what might have been the result if I had? I chose to let it run its course. It's interesting, because it means I'm as responsible for the current narrative landscape as the player of Seth.

One of the key reasons the game is awesome, and I'm always willing to accept some perceptions may be unique to me, as is I think it has upped our gaming a bit. In a lot of ways the game feels like the Buffy game from many years ago, as that was also a game about relationships between characters, albeit not as mechanically supported. I'm certainly playing it the same way, just better. It works better because of the mechanical support, because we are more mature and comfortable with each other in the game and this has one big effect: follow through. In Buffy we'd create great relationships but never fully follow through on some of the killer scenes, in the Prometheus Institute we are and will. That's going to be awesome stuff.

If there is any negative to the current model of play it is that things could be burning too brightly...if that's possible? I also can't believe I'm the one saying a game based on changing relationship dynamics is changing them too fast considering I've wanted games to work on this model for years. The issue is getting enough time to explore the 'as is' before it moves to something else. Have we explored the relationship between Joshua and Seth before they've fallen out? No. Joshua had one session of 'philandering in the background', albeit it very cool, before I'm feeling the pressure (not bad pressure mind) to moderate certain character traits with respect to changing the Jessie relationship. You get the idea. If a relationship changes too fast there is little value in any particular state the relationship was ever in. It's sort of an issue born out of a hyper-positive.

This could probably be mitigated by there being more air and less vacuum in the sessions, ensuring the protagonists forge their relationships around grand events rather than filling the vacuum with them.

Smallville uses the Cortex+ system which, as I said last time, is hard to decode from reading it. This is because of the organisation of the book, but as I'm coming to appreciate it may be because it's a system that actually has to be played rather than just read. A few discussions on the new licensed Marvel RPG are showing how actual play is the key, though comparisons are dangerous as the flavours of of Cortex+ are different and the Marvel RPG seems to be close to Fate but tied into the Cortex+ dice mechanic (while Smallville isn't as close to Fate). Anyway, those discussions show how playing is the key no so much reading. The session felt like it was running more on solid foundations.

Great game. Great session. I still need to decide on the new shape of two relationships, a value and what to spend my experience pool on. Drama. Then onto pushing the relationships that don't involve Jessie (NPC) and Seth (Player).

The first session of the Promethian Institute took place on Sunday. Really enjoyed it. Some brilliant scenes. I probably have to admit I didn't fully understand everything that was going on both in the game and in terms of the system. As is the usual practice, I'm not going to give a detailed actual play as that's always done somewhere else, in this case it can be found on the GM's blog.

It was a brilliant first session. I really like the tone of the game, which feels like Heroes if the series was done by HBO, with a substantially larger budget, and written from the perspective of a global power-play over the future destiny of powered individuals (a bit Ultimate X-Men in that regard). It had great relationships, some brilliant scenes and some budget blowing action.

I think some characters came across clearer and louder than others initially, but that's probably to be expected. It seemed to be a divide between the more subterfuge and publicity focused characters. It seemed easier to generate 'defining scenes' for the more celebrity orientated characters. It's easy when being various degrees of outrageous is the order of the day. The subterfuge orientated characters take a bit longer to come out. Of course, this may be a perception unique to me.

I'm playing a character that pushes the envelope a bit for me. It's not so much that I usually play a certain type, it's more that I don't normally play a character that outrageous. Hard to explain. In the game, I'm playing Joshua Thorne, the 'rock star' scientist, eminent genius and leader of the Prometheus Institute (as of this session). Essentially, part Professor X (as leader of the Institute), Read Richards (genius), Johny Storm (in that he's 28) and Tony Stark (hubris, arrogance, womaniser, etc). Brilliant, literally capable of changing the world scientifically, politically and to a lesser extent financially, but there is a lot of hubris, arrogance and womanising thrown in. It's great to play because the one thing you shouldn't do is think too much about what you shouldn't say and do.

This why I've never played a character of this type before as I'd think about it too much. I didn't think about it too much in this session. A reporter hounds you over sleeping with a minor porn star (due to an opening scene I put in albeit the porn star element was new), admit it and make a play for the journalist. Want to give the UN speech rather than your father, engineer him not turning up and then announce your taking over the institute and reverse the tone of the intended speech completely. That was a bit of a Tony Stark at the end of the first Iron Man film moment and it worked brilliantly. Loved it. So yeah, I'm enjoying it. I'm sure it will eventually have to be moderated due to the fall out, but that's fine as well.

As for not understanding what was going on? That comes down to system and the relationships.

I am sure the Smallville system is deceptively simple, it just seems to be doing everything it can to obfuscate that fact. I always used to shake my head incredulously when people used to complain that they found FATE complicated, as it always seemed quite logical and simple to me. A number of these people focused on the fact that it was the new terms with specific meanings that was the problem. After playing Smallville I may finally be experiencing their problem. It's a system that does specific things, in specific ways, using specific terms (some of them obvious, others obscure and a few that should have not have got past the 'check for comedy edit') and that makes it unnecessarily confusing. The utilising of every type of die known to man also doesn't help. As I say, I'm sure it is quite simple, it just seems to want to make you work hard for it. I usually get systems quite quickly (though remembering lots of specific rules is another matter), so Smallville has managed to achieve something unique in my personal experience.

Have to admit,for the first time ever in a game we've played, I don't fully understand what's going on with 50% of the table. I'm not sure what they are up to and why. I don't fully know why some outcomes came out the way they did at the table. This isn't so much a problem other than it makes scene creation difficult as I'm not sure what the premise, farming or foundation is. I realise a part of this is me getting on board with all the relationships in the map. There is a lot of them and it takes time. It's also only the first session. At the same time it was interesting to see the table not so much divided from my point of view, but certainly there was two levels of clarity.

The conflict and progression system is also a bit odd at the moment, though I'm sure a lot of this is practice. It's a problem we often have in conflict resolution systems: making the conflict something the player really wants to win. This isn't a matter of the group not liking conflict resolution or the conflicts not being consequential enough. In my case it's that what I find interesting is the fact the story goes in interesting directions I didn't expect and it would seem a lot of the time I either don't care because the conflict isn't that interesting (rare, and in this case we have done it wrong) or it is high stakes and consequential but both outcomes are interesting. Also consider this: since you define your winning condition, it's often losing that is the unexpected direction? The unique wrinkle with Smallville is your character progresses only if you take stress. You take stress by not giving in on a conflict. This can create the perverse situation of continuing a conflict for a few rounds to take stress when in truth you are fine with winning or losing. It feels like gaming the system if you don't mind losing. I want to lose, but just not yet.

That's about it. Excellent first session. It was great because it went in directions I wasn't expecting. The early fall out of the opening scene I put in wasn't expected. The relationship with Jessy has already gone in an unexpected direction (still working out how to deal with that) and the dramatic UN speech certainly wasn't expected at all. That's good. It's what makes it different to reading a book or watching a film. It's also great to be in the 'modern world' again, the most interesting change around this return being the social media influence on the game. Reminds me of the post-X Files influence of mobile phones back in the day.

I'm also interested in feeling our way through the system to execute it better.