• No plan survives Monday morning. #
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• Overheard outside Sayers… Japanese Tourist "What is a sausage roll?" American Tourist "Its a traditional British street food delicacy." #
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• @Ghostwoods Some were doing what I can only describe as freestyle: Japanese Elvis, Soviet Elvis and plastic Elvis #
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• @DaddyDM I'm assuming orc and pig cheeks are roughly similar #
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• Watching the Andromeda Strain. #
• In a strange twist of creativity I need to go and get a Sayers Sausage roll for a blog post. Maybe a Greggs one too for balance lol. #
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• @undeadbydawn What really annoys me (as someone who found work through an EU funded Work Experience scheme) is that if it was done… #
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• Whas is a Sayers Sausage Roll? http://t.co/kdqD12y3 #
• @johnlambshead More expensive if you drop it in the loo! #
• @johnlambshead And if you find there is no loo roll in public toilet can't be used as emergency replacement. #
• @cthulhuchick Saddly I don't have a picture of me as a cloud as that might compete with you for worst costume #
• @johnlambshead Maybe this is the selling point old media need to push to win back customers – softer and more adsorbent than new media #
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What is a Sayers Sausage Roll?  I suppose that could be a philosophical question but I’m thinking of things a little more concrete.  A Sayers sausage roll is different things to different people…

First Encounters of a Sausage Roll Kind

I remember when I was a student describing them as napalm wrapped in crispy cardboard.  If you eat it hot the pastry is crunch but the filling will burn the roof off your mouth.  Wait for the filling to cool and you risk the pastry goes fatty on the bottom.  Leave it to go cold and you risk the pastry going soft.  The filling is a strange sort of texture free, pink material that has been waved past pork at some point in its creation.

Sayers Sausage Roll

Wikipedia

Wikipedia in a meat related stub says

“A Sausage Roll is a type of savoury pastry commonly served at parties and available from bakeries and milk bars as a take-away food item. Originating from the United Kingdom, it is also very popular in the Republic of Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, and the Netherlands.”

History

Now Sayers is a Liverpool institution founded a hundred years ago with 150 odd shops in the North West.  When I arrived in Liverpool it was the dominant bakers across the city.  If you needed something to eat and didn’t know of a better shop nearby you could at least guarantee a Sayers nearby and that the food would be just like every other Sayers.  In any busy row of more than a dozen shops the odds would be on there being a Sayers.  Often there would be two one toward each end of a row of shops.

Then came Greggs.

Greggs spread across the city as they’ve spread across the country.  Sayers faced real competition:  Greggs shops were more modern, the food a tiny bit more expensive, a tiny bit more modern and the food a tiny bit more exotic.  It divided people: do you eat at Greggs or at Sayers?  I’ve seen family groups go into both a Sayers and a Greggs to get sausage rolls.

Greggs Sausage Roll

Market Research

I did a quick survey of Sausage Roll availability at the shops near where I live.

Iceland Sausage Roll

The Science Bit

Well sort of the science bit.  OK its completely unscientific.  A sample of sausage rolls were bought from each seller for measurement, tasting and dissection.

Sausage Roll Length Comparison

The Sausage Roll Disections…

Greggs Sausage Roll Cross Section

Iceland Sausage Roll Cross Section

Sayers Sausage Roll Cross Section

Taste and Crumble Test

It was a dirty job but someone had to do it.  I tasted all three sausage rolls.  Its been some time since I’ve had a Sayers sausage roll: it seemed to me the filling has been improved.  Less like a vaguely flavoured napalm mousse and more like lightly spiced sausage meat.  I couldn’t really say there was a significant difference between the Sayers and Greggs sausage rolls.  The Iceland one had a spicier filling but was generally as palatable.

The most noticeable difference was the pastry.  The Sayers pastry was slightly crublier than the Greggs while the Iceland one had a more robust puff pastry possibly engineered to survive transportation better than the others.

An Outsiders Perspective?

Working on the edge of Liverpool’s Cavern Quarter there are tourists about all year round.  I was walking past a Sayers last week and I overheard a conversation between two tourists.  I’m not going to try and reproduce it word for word but more in spirit…

Japanese Tourist “What is a Sayers sausage roll?”

American Tourist “A sausage roll is a traditional British street food delicacy.”

Japanese Tourist “Yes but what is a Sayers sausage roll?”

The Woman in Black is a solid attempt to make a classic ghost story from the revived Hammer .  The film making combines the best of the old school Hammer with 21^st century production values.  It takes a classic approach to horror eschewing the slasher / blood and gore school of horror.

The cinema I saw it in wasn’t completely full but was very close.  There were lots of teenagers there to see Daniel Radcliffe.  The teenagers next to us couldn’t believe a 12A could be a horror.  Half an hour later they literally jumped feet out of their seats at the first fright and one was watching through his fingers by the end.  And they loved every minute of it.

The Woman in Black’s production values are extremely good with excellent cinematography and dramatic editing.  The sets are beautifully dressed and atmospheric.  The score is jarring in all the right places building tension not distracting from it.  There was a nice mix of old school practical effects and CG.  I’d be interested to know if the island was enhanced or even created with Vue as there was just a touch of something artificial about it.

Having only around half the Potter films I’m not trapped in seeing Daniel Radcliffe as Harry.  Daniel Radcliffe is on-screen in pretty much every scene and gives a solid performance that is maybe a little wooden in places. But that could just be him playing a rather tightly strung young Edwardian lawyer whose job depends on resolving the estates paperwork and who is still in morning for his wife.  There were good supporting performances especially from Ciarán Hinds and Janet McTeer while I’d like to have seen more of Mary Stockley’s Mrs. Fisher and some of the other locals.

If you enjoy an old-fashioned Hammer ghost story with a quality modern production The Woman in Black is well worth a trip to the cinema.

The Woman in Black Roleplaying Notes

If I was going to run something inspired by The Woman in Black as a roleplaying game I’d probably use it as a scenario for D&D Ravenloft, Trail of Cthulhu with Shadow over Filmland or a Victorian age mortals World of Darkness game.  If you want to turn it on its head you could use it in a game of Lost Souls with the PCs taking the roles of ghostly children.

The majority of the story takes place in an isolated Northumberland coastal town.  It’s a backwater with a post office, grocers, a single public house with a few rooms for paying guests and a solicitors.  The Daily’s, the richest couple in the town, have the only car while other residents use horse-drawn vehicles.  The date of the events in the film is sometime in the late early 20th century judging by the relatively new Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Mr Daily drives. Electricity hasn’t reached the town yet.  The only communication with the outside world is by post or telegraph – there are no telephones in town.  Its two changes on train from London.  The railway station is some way from the town and is on a small branch line with a limited service.

The locals are hostile and suspicious of strangers especially anyone planning on going to the island.  Whenever someone even glimpses the Lady in Black a child dies in a terrible accident.  The locals are over protective of their children and hide them from strangers.  Player Characters can expect a very unfriendly welcome.

Across a causeway open only at low tide from the town on an island stands a classic haunted house.  Its overgrown grounds include a small graveyard.  The house itself is run down and full of junk.  There are stuffed animals, broken furniture, clockwork toys and old oil paintings on the wall.

Within the houses walls is hidden the evidence of a dark family secret.  A woman declared insane.  A child adopted and isolated from his natural mother.  A tragic death with the body never found.  A suicide.

The titular Woman in Black is a ghost associated with the death of children.  She’s out for revenge on the town and kills children by possessing them before forcing them to kill themselves.  Ghosts of the children she has killed manifest on the island and sometimes in other places.  The ghost of her son manifests but not at the same time as she does so they don’t meet.

The children can communicate through possession of Daily’s wife.  They can speak through her but are more likely to use her to draw crude images by scratching surfaces with sharp objects.

Key to PCs solving the mystery are:

• Basic paperwork provided to investigator on way to the scene
• Superstition about The Lady in Black and the house from the locals
• Birth, Death and Institutionalization certificates that can be found at the house
• Letters from The Lady in Black at the house
• Scratched messages from ghost children through possessed woman
• Birthday cards from The Lady in Black to her son
• Son’s body lost in the marshes around the causeway

The player characters and their loved ones are threatened by accidental death resulting from the Lady in Black’s possession of children.  Their sanity is challenged by the effects of her haunting.

In addition to possessing children The Lady in Black can visually manifest and scream although she never speaks.  She can affect objects including locking and unlocking doors in the house, affect clockwork toys causing them to work without being wound and affect other objects including a rocking chair.  At least once she cause an impenetrable darkness to appear behind her.

The Ghost of her son can visually manifest on the causeway, the island and in the house.  He can leave a trail of muddy footprints.

The other ghosts appear to be able to visually manifest and possess Mrs Daily.

The haunting can be ended by finding the information about what has gone on.  This allows the PCs to search the marsh for the body lost in the mud near the cross marking the rough location of the son’s death.  Placing the cards sent by the woman in black with the body and winding the toys in his room will summon the lady and lay her to rest.  She and the other ghosts may not go immediately to their grave.

• @GRIMACHU By alive do you mean a) Awake b) On Twitter c) It's Alive!!! ? #
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I quite often make maps and other diagrams for games I’m running using Vue and other computer graphic software.  Over the weekend I was messing around with GeoControl2 and it randomly produced a landscape I quite liked the look of but I don’t have a game it fits with at the moment.   So I thought I’d post it here for anyone who might find it useful for the game they’re running.

The maps represent an area of hilly upland terrain with several large lakes connected by rivers. The map covers an area 22.5km on each side.

In absolute measurement the lowest points on the model at around 430m above sea level and the peaks at 2500m. However relief models are often scaled vertically to show features more clearly. If you take each contour line as being 10m and start with 430m for the lowest point the terrain’s peaks are around 770m.

Hopefully this will be useful to someone for their game – I’ve already had ideas for using it with D&D and Call of Cthulhu.  I’d love to know if you use it or what you think about it…

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Its BAFTA weekend and I’m not expecting The Grey to be getting any nominations other than for film shot in the coldest location (and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy may beat it in that category too).  As is pretty obvious from the poster above it’s another Liam Neeson vehicle trying to find the ingredient that he brought to Taken a few years ago.

The plot is pretty straight forward: a plane loaded with workers from an Alaskan oil drilling operation crash in the wild.  Those that survive are threatened by the weather, lack of food, lack of medicine and hostile terrain.  Driving them is a belief that no one is coming looking for them and a hungry pack of wolves.  Holding them back are their personal demons and internal disputes.

The story is interspersed with flash backs to Neeson’s Ottway in what appear, at least at first, to be happier times.  This little sub plot is somewhat laboured.  I can understand what it was trying to achieve often interrupted the more visceral conflict between the group of crash survivors.  Maybe if, like the lads sat behind me in the cinema I’d not spotted where it was going, earlier in the film it would have provided a more interesting twist in the sub plot to set up the last scene of the film.

Overall for me this is a relatively fun, reasonably acted survival horror film but not a personal classic.

Role Playing The Grey

However The Grey is eminently suitable for any Game Master looking for ideas for a survival horror role playing adventure.  The five key elements I’d consider using are:

• Low powered Player Characters
• No outside help
• Limited resources
• Hostile Environment
• Hunted

Let’s tackle these in order…

The characters in The Grey are all hardy oil workers, some have served time in prison but they aren’t ex-soldiers or survival experts.  There certainly aren’t any ex-special forces or super heroes here.  No man nips round the back of the plane to change into his spandex costume and fly off to fetch rescuers.

Once the plane crashes they have no outside help.  Mobile phone doesn’t work, the wrist transponder doesn’t summon rescuers and they see no rescue planes and barely any signs that humanity has touched the wilderness.  They are on their own.  If you don’t include any NPCs then your PCs will only have each other to interact with.  You could try insisting that once that is the case that they should discuss everything in character.

They only have what they can scrounge from the crash and later their surroundings.  At no point do they have medical kits, survival rations, firearms, improvised bombs, rope, survival gear, satellite phones or a host of other stuff that would have given them more of a chance and less of a challenge.  From memory the resources they have include:

• Backpacks
• Warm clothes
• Boots
• Miniatures of alcoholic drinks from the flight
• Knives
• Basic tools
• A flask of aviation fuel
• Paper from books and magazines
• Lighters
• Some food
• A handful of shotgun rounds
• Cloth
• A bit of thin rope
• Mobile phones with no signal
• A survival watch with a radio beacon built in
• Burnable material from the plane
• Shelter in a mostly intact section of the plane
• Scrounged water
• Scrounged firewood
• Scrounged wolf meat
• Scrounged sharpened sticks

If I were using The Grey as the basis for an adventure I’d follow its lead and keep resource sparse.  Make a list before you start of things they can find or have with them.  Don’t let your players start expanding the list in play.  Remember role players will probably make a better job of improvising weapons.  This group lacked the sense to attach knives to the end of long sticks to make better spears.  While I’d not normally count every shotgun shell used or every alcohol miniature drunk in a game keeping track of their resources could be an essential part of a survival horror game.

As in many survival horror films the weather and environment are both dangerous and unpredictable characters as deadly to any character as hostile forces.  Here blizzards swallowed them, the cold sapped them, hypoxia slowly strangled the life from them, lighter snow limited their ability to see, deep snow hampered their movement, hidden drops tumbled them, fierce rivers drowned them, drops killed them and darkness left them vulnerable to surprise.

Finally there are the hostile forces hunting them.  In The Grey that takes the form of a pack of wolves with an Alpha male, the pack and loner Omega that can be thrown against the group to test their resolve.  Changing the nature of the hostile force would change the nature of the adventure.  For example a lone alien like that in Predator can’t flank or outnumber its victims like the wolves but doesn’t have to get into close quarters to kill.  A group of human hunters could have any equipment they are carrying taken and turned against them as Officer John McClane turns Hans Gruber’s gangs weapons against them in Die Hard.

With a little work The Grey includes elements that could be incorporated into a wide variety of games:

• D&D and other Fantasy RPGs: PCs versus the elements and a pack of wolves.  Especially good for low level / powered groups.
• Traveller / Serenity RPG / Star Trek: PCs crash on an ice planet.
• All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Pretty much as it is or have the dead from the crash rise as zombies for some added danger.
• Call of Cthulhu / Trail of Cthulhu: Pretty much as it comes or throw in Ithaqua or some other mythos creature for added nastiness.  Personally I think the environment, wolves and halucinations should be enough to wipe out most groups of investigators.
• Vampire: Strand a group of vampire PCs in the wilderness with a pack of hostile werewolves after them.
• Cyberpunk: Take away their guns for the flight and leave them

Role Playing The Grey

• A little Vue for a Sunday afternoon. #
• Daz 3D installer for Meet Me At Sundown filename is MeetMeatSundown.exe which suggests a more slasher horror themed valentine #
• Is there a correct form of words for telling a busker that they are rubbish, shut up and go and get some music lessons? #
• @HairyDM That might just work #
• @sandchigger Hello #
• @sandchigger Not heard that one before but its in the Urban dictionary #
• @sandchigger A sunny hour and 18 minutes into the past noon here. How's Texas today? #
• @sandchigger Yes. Just not heard "Play Freebird" used as an insult. Asked the office and its not just me. #
• @sandchigger We like it here. It may have spread to a little corner of Liverpool. #
• Busker just finished murdering Wonderwall for fourth time and is now killing Here Comes the Sun. And not in a good way. #
• @ianf Not sure my Simon Cowell impression would be up to it. Not sure who'd do Barlow, Contostavlos & Rowland here either #
• @GeekyLyndsay @TheAngryDM Wow. Yellow. Don't think I've seen that much yellow since they moved the yellow submarine out of the city centre. #
• 5 hours and 4 repeats of Wonderwall later thankfully the busker has been silent for the last 20 minutes #
• @GeekyLyndsay That should keep the cost of buying cars down as yellow and orange are often sold cheaper as they are less popular #
• @GeekyLyndsay You'll not have any problem finding any of those in yellow in a parking lot. #
• @6d6Fireball I'd worry about that being NSFW #
• @KimKnox Fear of beards is one of the most common phobias in UK. More worried about implication of Doctor Who / Tin Tin mashup accident #
• .@GeekyLyndsay How about Settlers of R'lyeh with non-Euclidean board pieces? #
• @symatt Did you have fun in Edinborough? #
• @GeekyLyndsay In Settlers of R'lyeh converting sheep to bricks causes san loss. #
• @GeekyLyndsay In Settlers of R'lyeh on the back of the board are stars and when they're right… I think you can guess what happens. #
• @symatt And I thought I was pushing it doing it in 4 days. Did you like Black Lion Games? #
• In Settlers of R'lyeh beware the water tiles one will be Ahu-Y'hloa where the Deep Ones live… #
• @sandchigger I was going for the Cornish Deep Ones but Y'ha-nthlei will do too. Plenty of sea tiles to have things lurking under #
• @MoonWolf95 Blame @GeekyLyndsay with her square tiled Catan it set me off on "alternate" settlers #
• @Ulyverse Once you've beaten it into shape send it my way although really I just play CoC not read a lot of Lovecraft. #
• @DaddyDM Night #
• @symatt Night #
• @DaddyDM Lol Tweet deck messages passing through too quick to hit the right one to reply. #
• @sandchigger I've not played in ages. Anyway Settlers of R'lyeh wouldn't be boring – although I doubt anyone would survive to play twice #
• @DaddyDM Ta. Funnily I was going to thank you for reminding me I wanted to listen to Free bird earlier. #
• @grahamwalmsley A Fleet Street journalist claiming that in the 70s on BBC4s Timeshift about Alcohol after extensive empirical research #
• Successfully worked out how to make a crowd using Daz Studio Collada exported animation, lorez figures and Vue 10 EcoSystem phasing. #
• Now time for a little sleep. Night all. #
• Just missread @guardiantech tweet as "Obama discusses US use of clones in online Q&A – video". Clones was actually drones. #
• @UKdigitalforum Thats better than one study of US high school pupils in the 80s most of whom put the UK just north of Cyprus! #
• If I was in London this would be a must see RT @DesignMuseum: Muji display Product fitness 80 @DesignMuseum from 9 – 18 March #
• @UKdigitalforum They used a stamp to mark uk on a map Europe. No wonder US tourists dropped as they were afraid of Lebanese terrorism here! #
• Refining my crowd EcoSystem #
• @xyleanne69 Its in the field of bounce under the clouds of big boxes that are the best thing ever #
• @xyleanne69 Here you go http://t.co/FWyBteCV #
• @xyleanne69 Cool – Glad you like it #
• I seem to be multitasking. At least I have different things for different projects all running on at once on my computer. #
• @Ghostwoods We need a UK version of that! #
• @DanDiplo lol. Running SortSite + Joomla info to the wiki + updating a spec + reading twitter. My total coding today: 1 line! #
• The spider bots from Runaway are just a brief nighmare away RT @Ghostwoods: Swarm of nano-quadcopters. http://t.co/idJQQ2rm #
• @Ghostwoods I sometimes wonder if we'll have Cyberpunk 2020 in 8 years minus the punk and the cyber. #
• @dr_monkeyface Not reallty a c4d user but booleans sound the perfect solution unless you're going to model the cutaway. #
• @dr_monkeyface Drawn cutaways aren't always simple slices to avoid that. Could you use a set of smaller booleans to get a smoother cutaway? #
• @mersipan Hope your day gets better. Ice on the ground in Liverpool this morning hopefully its warmed up now I'm on my way to lunch. #
• @xtamsynx @Ghostwoods I think I had a very sleepless night the first time I saw it. #
• Klout always makes my day when it tells me I'm influential on a topic that I can't remember ever tweeting about. #
• @Ghostwoods @xtamsynx Not safe on the loo and not safe in your car with those remote contolled bombs. #
• @pookie_uk @Ghostwoods Now all we need is a massive financial disaster around 2005-10 to make it fit better #
• @TheAngryDM I've not used them since they moved to new owners but http://t.co/06WNBe2t do a wide range of dungeon and other terrain #
• @pookie_uk @Ghostwoods After a four hour meeting that tweet was what I needed to see #
• @jearle I wish I still had a copy of the Rider for Doctor and the Medics when we booked them in the early 90s for a student gig #
• "Warning the following report includes…" the news anchor paused & I hoped he'd say "images of Harry Redknapp" but it was flash photography #
• @GeekFaerie There seems to be a rash of them at the moment – I think I've picked up 9 in the last 2 days #
• I was trying to come up with the daftest idea for using up left over Haggis but I found a recipe online for Haggis and winter tzatziki wraps #
• @Ghostwoods lol. Winter Tzatziki is apparently Tzatziki made with dried mint. #
• @DaddyDM I didn't. Never seen tinned haggis. I buy them fresh and freeze it. Never really sure why haggis bothers any one who eats meat #
• @DaddyDM So its up there with canning a burger or a whole chicken as an exercise in what can we can rather than a good idea then #
• @Ghostwoods There's a rash of bots at the moment although not ones that look like Mr Seagal. Similar acting ability but not looks. #
• @cultauthor And a nice crunchy cultist biscuit or two to dunk in it. #
• @GeekFaerie I've picked up 3 with the same rather chest focused avatar overnight – one called Matthew! 6 in total #
• .@simonjrogers I know what you're thinking "Did he fire six billion partilces or only 5,999,999,999?" Do you feel lucky quark? #lhcthemovie #
• @GeekFaerie Teenage boys don't need to acquire home shoping catalogues or google porn they just join twitter & wait for it to follow them! #
• @GeekFaerie Sounds like an odd comedy sketch "Hello I'm Theodora but my friends all call me Earl". 4 of my new followers now don't exist! #
• The old sayings about things going up and down like underwear need replacing with Twitter follow count going up and down like spambots. #
• @symatt @DMSamuel You need help going for a TPK? #
• @magisterrex Teenage boys don't need to acquire mail order catalogues or google porn they just join twitter & wait for it to follow them! #
• @symatt @DMSamuel lol. My monsters are usually too wussy. Except when I run Ravenloft [insert mad cackling laughter here] #
• Bruce Willis crawling through accelerator ring to Ode to Joy "Come out to the Geneva, we'll get together, have a few laughs" #lhcthemovie #
• @GeekFaerie My new friend is "Soon Gunzaliz" who it would appear could have posed for the Macho Women with Guns "top heavy" special ability #
• I hope all these top-heavy spam bots are a BTRC marketing drive for Macho Women with Guns #rpg ? #
• @nardan Nice bit of SSS #
• When pigs fly should the collective noun change from a Drove to something else? #
• @robwillb Judging by the suddent surge in spam I've seen in a few places I think the spammers have broken some more CAPTCHAs #
• @Feanan That's a nice list to have to pick from #
• @cimota Single pixel flaws I can live with. Imagined half pixel flaws that only 1 person with power can see: those I hate #
• @cimota I would be too but saddly sometimes they pay the bills #
• @simplychrista Thanks for the #ff #
• Having seen the trailer Jason Statham is taking a new more sensitive, nuanced direction in Safe – Not! #
• @xtamsynx You take your clothes off in closets? #
• @xtamsynx The joys of the English language #
• @Danacea Are you caught up in the mess caused by the derailment on West Coast main line? #
• @Danacea I've had my fair share of magical rail mystery tours. Hope you find a way through it all soon. #
• Apparently I just had a good idea. #
• @ehlanakovas I just found it funny being told I'd had a good idea (in a nice way) #
• @MartinShovel Thanks for writing an interesting piece worth retweeting #
• @jearle Maybe he used his last moments as Energy Secretary to send a cyborg back in time to change history allowing NoW to take the fall #
• @d20plusmodifier The big plastic ones can do impressive tumbleweed impersonations in stong wind. #
• @DaddyDM Thanks for the #ff Are you gaming this weekend? #
• Underworld: Awakening review http://t.co/8WeDHJGA sometimes the best thing a film can do is what it says on the packet. #
• @GeekFaerie lol. Thanks for the #ff #
• @DaddyDM Hope you both have a great time #
• The D&D edition wars are daft. If you really want to rile everyone up pick Buck Rogers in the 25th Century #
• @undercoverman Please tell me "but being kicked in the head is funnier than either of them." #
• @MoonWolf95 Thanks for the #ff #
• @greywulf I did something similar a long time ago and I've never been back to see if they'd gotten better. #
• I know its the wrong continent but Sunday's Time Team is excavating at Dunwich. Does that make the team either cultist or investigators? #
• @greywulf I'm a bit annoyed that having paid for DS4Pro I'd quite like to have had a none Beta that worked before they gave it away for free #
• @greywulf I was wondering if that's why they have a second presenter… just in case lol #
• @greywulf I switched from Poser to DS4P. Not a small outlay to be a tester for free software. To me its a niggle not the end of the world. #
• @greywulf As I said a minor niggle. #
• @greywulf Hang on my. I've checked everywhere. My kittens are all missing! Blast them. Oh hang on I don't have any kittens. #
• @K23Detectives You missed – the female avatar also turns up as a possible "date" on annoying facebook ads or on 3 other new followers #
• @greywulf I'm sorry I haven't a clue what you're talking about. And why is twitter blank now? #
• @greywulf What forum? What sillyness? Who are you? Where's my mummy? #
• @magisterrex Thanks for the #ff #

If you know the original Underworld you’ve a pretty good idea what you’re getting here: Vampires, Werewolves, action, a palette of blacks & blue, a certain amount of gore, a British character actor of a certain age, a gut shaking thump to the soundtrack and, of course, Kate Beckinsale in that outfit.

Yet for each of those characteristics they have in common each of the Underworld films is a slightly different beast.  The first is more political, Evolution is more of a chase and Rise of the Lycans is more historical.  So what of Awakening?  Humans have discovered the existence of Vampires and Lycans and set out to exterminate them.

After three films most people will already have some idea if this is a film for them or not.  The real question is does it deliver (and does it have Kate Beckinsale in that outfit)?  Personally I have to say it’s a definite yes.  It delivers.

I’m not going to over analyse it because, frankly, analysing this film too much would be silly.

I still think the first film is my favourite because the politics and mystery added a level of nuance to the story.  Underworld: Awakening is a new fairly close second place.

And it has Kate Beckinsale in that outfit.  With guns.