Category: Me

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Me Music Sport

Empire setlist, 7th May

Taught my first actual, full, Vibe Cycle class today! Figured I should keep a record of my playlists:

  1. You Got the Love – 2017 Remode | Dr Shiver, Candi Staton
  2. Good Luck (feat. Lisa Kekaula) | Basement Jaxx
  3. Faithless | DC Breaks, Bianca
  4. A Deeper Love (Sam Halabi Radio Remix) | Aretha Franklin
  5. The Chain | Fleetwood Mac
  6. Through The Night (Radio Edit) | Drumsound and Bassline Smith
  7. Party Goin | Mightyfools
  8. Believer | Imagine Dragons
  9. Roll on my Level | DJ Hazard, Summer Rayne
  10. Into the Night – Nero 1988 Remix | NERO, 1988
  11. Twistin’ the Night Away | Sam Cooke
  12. Cooldown Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight | Amos Lee
Categories
Animals Me Photography

Molly

You can call me flower if you want

A post shared by Dan Connolly (@moscatdan) on

Categories
Games Me

Never Say Die

I decided to write a role-playing game.

It was actually really fun. I’ve been throwing around game design ideas for the best part of two years now but am yet to actually create any sort of playable protoype. The challenge of writing a complete, playable game in only 200 words was quite liberating actually.

The name (the title of this post) was a bit of a last minute throwaway if I’m honest, though looking at I think I quite like it. The game is designed to encourage using storytelling and teamwork to overcome challenges, I didn’t necessarily have a ‘world’ in mind but a band of plucky kids taking on traps and the mob to find long lost pirate treasure evokes that pretty well I think.

You can read the game below.

Each character is represented by three characteristics: Guts, Smarts, and Heart. Players assign a value to each from an array of 1, 2, 3. Each player starts with one help token.

Players agree on a goal and a number of successes required to meet that goal (e.g. Find One-Eyed Willy’s Treasure, 10 successes).

One player starts as the narrator, they describe a complication encountered by the player to their left. To overcome the challenge that player describes how they use one of their characteristics and rolls a d6. A roll equal or under their chosen characteristic is a success. Once rolled the player describes their success or failure then takes on the role of the narrator for the next turn.

Players other than the narrator can expend a help token to add additional dice to the roll before it is made. Players earn help tokens by using their weaker characteristics to attempt challenges: 2 for their weakest and 1 for their middle characteristic.

To complete the quest, players must achieve the chosen number of successes. If they accrue that many failures, or fail three times in a row, they fail to attain their goal.

Categories
Animals Me Photography

A run to bluebells

In October I will be running 8km around the Isle of Kerrera, the run is immediately preceded by a 14km bike ride around the same island, which in turn is preceded by a 550m swim across Oban Bay.

I’m pretty happy with my current fitness levels but the Craggy Island Triathlon is something of a step up (I’ve never done an open water swim, and of the several hundred hours of cycling I’ve done in the last year about 6 have been outdoors).

I formally kicked off my training with a run this morning, I didn’t have much of a plan and ended up doing an 8.5 mile out and back run to a lovely bluebell wood I stumbled across in between startling a heron (who in turn seriously startled me) and meeting a lovely horse.

Categories
Games Me

Levelling up

Categories
Me People

If Britain were 100 people

So… pretty much everyone is white!

My parents are immigrants. But they’re the sort of immigrant that’s ok nowadays (there was a time they really weren’t): we’re white, English-speaking, our names aren’t too tricky to say or spell; there are plenty of ‘more foreign’ targets. Unless I point out to anyone that I’m the first generation to be born in Britain no-one is any the wiser.

My neighbours are Indian. Well, actually they’re not, most of them are British. There are three children all born in Britain, as was their mum, and their Dad is from Punjab. There are also a lot of retirees on my street. I used to talk to them when I was gardening out front or walking to the shop but I don’t any more. It turns out they aren’t happy that there’s a brown family on our street. Our street where virtually everyone is white (there’s a Colombian lass a couple of doors down and a black guy at the end of the street plus my neighbours). But apparently that’s too many. And because I’m white (and probably British, right?) I must agree with them. “They don’t belong here”, “they should go back to their mud huts”, “it’s not right”. They’re all smiles when they see my neighbours, but they must feel so sorry for me having to live next door to them, that’s why they feel the need to come over and utterly mis-empathize with me, right? When I tell them that I couldn’t disagree more they act like I have been outrageously rude to them.

All the nationalist, xenophobic shit the government is trying to pull at the minute is terrifying. Genuinely terrifying. That people can happily scapegoat immigration to the degree they have beggars belief.

When I was kid I loved learning history but back then I didn’t understand that you learned these things in order to avoid the mistakes of the past and to understand why the world is the way it is. I honestly don’t know what happens now, so many people in this country feel wronged or let down, and appealing to their most base, racist beliefs will work. It will always work. There’s no credible opposition. I don’t know what happens.