Theatre: A Very Wooster Holiday

 Happy Christmas, Jeeves by Heidi McElrath and Nathan Kessler-Jeffrey, directed by Karen Lund, based on the stories of PG Wodehouse Taproot Theatre Company, Through December 31

Let's round out this festive season's holiday plays with a Wodehousian romp. The Lovely Bride and I, along with our friends Janice and John, set out for the northern reaches of Seattle for lunch at Saffron Grill in Northgate (Indian/Mediterranean fusion, which was quite good), then doubled back to Greenwood and the Taproot Theatre for Happy Christmas, Jeeves, And it was all quite enjoyable.

Happy Christmas is not based on any one particular Bertie and Jeeves story so much as it is based on all of them. Indeed, one of the criticisms of Wodehouse's stories is their similarity - High-class toff Bertie Wooster gets himself in trouble, and only his sage and unflappable valet Jeeves can extricate him. And while this is true, but it is a little unfair, sort of like saying that The Simpsons have one story, and they just keep telling it different ways for 35 years. So this particular creation, from the pens of McElrath and Kessler-Jeffrey, features all the characters, hallmarks, and tropes of the traditional Bertie/Jeeves stories, mixed together and served as a Christmas Pudding. 

Here's a deal - Bertie would like to do nothing more than spend the holidays alone, curled up with a new book by his favorite author. Such is not to be, of course, because his dreaded Aunt Agatha descends upon him with the demand that he put his hapless cousin Claude on a train to South Africa (spoiler- Claude doesn't go), and then the situation is made worse by Bertie's old chum Bingo Little having fallen in love with a waitress named Mabel, but doesn't know how to get HIS aunt's approval of the cross-social-class match. Add a few cases of mistaken illnesses and an escaped ferret and you culminate in an inspired collection of door-slamming and hallway-chasing. 

And it's a lot of fun. And I should add that for this particular matinee performance, the understudies took over. There was a flurry of addenda slips in the program book, and folk stepping up into the leads. Jon Lutyens emerges as a pitch-perfect Jeeves, all manner and decorum even when armed with a net and a broom. Joe Moore was a delight as Bertie, all loose-limbed, slack-jawed, and goggle-eyed. Moore had been listed as Cousin Claude in the program, but after being promoted, that role was nicely assayed by Giao Nguyen. Kim Morris is a juggernaut-class Aunt Agatha, all sound and fury. William Eames was the endearing and infuriating Bingo Little. Nikki Visel was the very precise and proper (and cougarish) Lady Bittlesham, Bingo's Aunt and author of books on proper etiquette. Mabel was Rachel Guyer-Mafune, and this would be the fourth production I've seen her in at a fourth different theater. She's a hard-working actor.

They're all good. Delightfully so. And the direction was top-notch, dealing with the challenges of a small theater with a thrust stage and flanked on three sides by the patrons. This performance had pacing, and would set up and delivered jokes and humorous situations, with enough breathing room to let the audience catch up. The acting was broad, the action was slapstick, and there resulting confusion completely enjoyable. The audience was enchanted and engaged.

I liked it a lot, so much so that afterwards, I sat down to pen this, since it runs for only one more week (they did extend it over the weekend). This was the best Christmas show (Though Snowed In was nice as well). So if you need something to do in your post-Christmas break, here's a breath of fresh air with a very familiar setting. Happy Christmas to all!

More later, 

Theatre: Metaphysical Humor

 Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, directed by Allison Narver, Seattle Rep Through December 22

Despite the playwright's name, this is not a Christmas play, though it is the kind of play that fits well within the holiday season - light, frothy, traditional, safe. Something to take in as a break from cookie baking, or to take the out-of-town visitors to. And indeed, it felt like a full house was in attendance this past Sunday afternoon.

But as a play I found it frustrating, in the same way I found By the Skin of Our Teeth frustrating. It is classic theatre in the expected style, and parts of it are excellent, but it ultimately misfires for me.

Here's the skinny - Charles and Ruth Condomine (Arlando Smith and Gina Hammond), both on their second marriages after the deaths of their first spouses, throw a dinner party with the Bradmans (Sara Waisanen and Nate Tenenbaum). Charles is working on a new novel involving a fraudulent occultist, and to that end has invited a local medium, Madame Arcati (Anne Allgood), to hold seance. All the others are skeptical, even mocking, but Arcati proves to be the real deal, and summons the spirit of Charles' first wife, the ebullient Elvira (Kirsten Potter). Whackiness ensues.

But, like Skin of Our Teeth, it should work, but it doesn't. This is a venerable old warhorse of a play, long-running in London's West End, subject of numerous revivals and innumerable summer stock and school versions. It should burble with wit and verve, but instead most of the banter shouts along at a uniform volume level and speed, such that I'm worn out trying to keep up. The pacing feels off. The three main characters in this love triangle are not expected to be particularly likeable, but by the same token, none of them seem to deserve their ultimate fates. They're all shallow. A little callous, but not delightfully so. They all seem to be talking, but there is little actual conversation going on here.

Where the play succeeds in where the talking stops and the physical comedy takes over. Allgood as Madame Arcati is a wondrously comic medium, a loose-limbed crane as she works her spells and flings herself bodily into trances. And Sophie Kelly-Hedrick as the maid, Edith steals every scene she is in as a Monty-Python-Gumby-turned-servant. The stagecraft is top-notch in the Rep tradition, and fits particularly well for the physical comedy. And the Lovely Bride has informed me that the gowns were excellent. 

But ultimately, it misfires. Maybe the old plays I enjoyed have grown long in the tooth. Maybe it's just the modern approach to them. But the end result is just OK - not great, not horrible, just fine but not worth a strong recommendation for the holiday season. But just sort of indifferent. Truly blithe.

More later. 

The Big Pile of Books: Plane Books

A Right To Die by Rex Stout. Bantam Books, originally published in 1964. 
Too Many Clients by Rex Stout, Bantam Books, originally published in 1960
And Four To Go By Rex Stout, Bantam Books, originally published in 1958
Fade to Black by Robert Goldsborough, Bantam Books, originally published in 1990
The High Window by Raymond Chandler, Vintage Crime originally published in 1942
Pickup on Noon Street by Raymond Chandler, Ballantine Books, originally published in 1952
Playback by Raymond Chandler, Ballantine Books, originally published in 1958
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, Arcturus Books, originally published in 1920 

So I've been doing a lot of air travel this year, and when I travel, I bring along paperback mysteries. They are small, portable, you don't have to turn them off when landing or worry if the batteries are low. I usually get them at used bookstores, so if you lose them, you're out a few bucks.

And there's something I've noticed that I haven't seen anyone else comment about - the demise of the mass market paperback. I've been in a couple big chains, and the stubby pocket-sized mass-market paperback has been almost completely replaced with the larger-size trade paperback. The only mass-markets I'm finding (even in grocery stores, is the aisle next to the greeting cards) are by established authors and part of larger series that have been running in that format for years. Even a couple of the entries here are trade-sized reprints, purchased while on the road. Is this change-over really a thing? Are we losing the traditional mass market paperback of our youths?

Anyway.

These mass-market mysteries are also relatively short, unlike the doorstop fantasy books of the last several decades. That works out as well, since I can finish a book in one hop from Seattle to Milwaukee, or a round-trip to LA. 

I still tend to favor Nero Wolfe mysteries, if you haven't noticed, but I am getting towards the end of the Rex Stout canon, and have actually bought the same book twice under different covers because I was unsure if I have read it or not. I've even engaged with Stout's estate-approved successor. So I'm doing a bit more experimentation, this time with some Raymond Chandler I had never encountered before, and dabbling with Agatha Christie. 

Anyway, here are some recent additions

A Right To Die - Usually, Wolfe's world exists in a 7-year bubble. When we first meet Archie and Nero in the 30's, they've been together about 7 years. In the fifties, they've been together about 7 years. But now we are in the 60's and suddenly we get a direct call-back to an episode in the 30's. Back in 1938, Wolfe cracks the case in Too Many Cooks by appealing to the better nature of a group of African-American waiters. Now, one of those former waiters shows up at his door, quoting the speech that Wolfe had made that night. His problem is that his son is engaged to a white girl, and he wants to find out what's wrong with her. And then, of course, the white girl turns up dead. I mentioned that Wolfe's world is predominately white, but this is one of the times that Stout touches on racism.

Too Many Clients - This is Stout's sex mystery (amusing since the back cover of the paperback edition has a promotion for Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (But were afraid to ask). Much as A Right To Die delved into race relations, Too Many Clients deals with a high-level exec maintaining a sex-den in Spanish Harlem, where he um, entertains young women. When the exec turns up dead, Wolfe starts gaining client after client who wants to know who did it (and confirm that it wasn't them). The sex is polite, gentile, and mainly confined to the erotic art on the sex-den's walls. And since Archie Goodwin, our narrator, is a gentlemen, it doesn't get much further than a passing glance. Very much of its age.

And Four To Go - This is collection of Stout's shorter works, which originally saw print in glossy magazines like Look and The Saturday Evening Post (both long-gone as regular periodicals). This collection deals with a murders set around the holidays - A Christmas Party poisoning, an Easter parade shooting, a Fourth of July picnic stabbing. Each with a host of suspects and motives and a solid reason for the relatively inert Nero to get involved. Also was a fourth story that was an alternate version of a story that appeared elsewhere, with only the age of a female character changed. Interesting and a pity that such few avenues for this type of fiction now exist.

Fade to Black - Robert Goldsborough is the appointed heir (by Stout's estate) to carry on the stories of Nero and Archie. And it's all right - I can't really fault it. All the pieces are there - the brownstone, the orchids, the gourmet meals, the dicey relationship with the cops. But is does feel a little off, oddly because Stout's stories were always in the moment when they were written. Wolfe is always reading some recently-published volume, and the New York of the era is drivable. Fade to Black hews to that rule as well, but it feels weird once we get into later decades. The first line is "The whole business started at Lilly Rowan's Superbowl party", which just feels odd to me. The mystery involves dueling add agencies and stolen ideas, and there is a body, of course. It's not bad, but we are looking at a different place and time.

(As an addition, this volume was publishing in 1990, and the evolution of the mass-market paperback is clear from the earlier books of the 60's. It is a mass-market, but the margins are wider, and the leading (the white space between the lines) is larger. The book itself has more pages and is thicker, though I doubt there are more words. Paper in this later era was apparently cheaper, allowing the book to swell and take up more space on the bookshelf).

The High Window - This was purchased in Missoula Montana at Shakespeare's, a bookstore across the river from the hotel where MisCon was being help. I had finished Murder at the ABA and wanted to get a book for the return trip. I had read most of the "big" Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye), and wanted to dig into the ones I had not heard of before (or had not been turned into movies). In The High Window, Phillip Marlowe is hired by an upper-class client to recover a rare coin. . Almost immediately hoods start leaning on him and dead bodies start piling up. Two things stay with me as I read through these - one is how Chandler managed to turn LA into a character, an impressive thing for a town that legendarily has "no there there". Chandler here is dealing with the upper crust and the roots they've set down in the more sordid parts of LA

(And by the way, this the trade version of the book, reprinted in the 1992, and can be compared against the earlier mass markets. Thinner, taller, but also wider margins and leading. And a higher price tag, even taking into account inflation). 

Playback -  One other theme that haunts Chandler's pages is broken women - those who have been traumatized as a foundation for their actions. You notice it after reading a few of them. In The High Window it was timid secretary Merle Davis. In The Long Goodbye it was Linda Loring. In this case it is Betty Manning (with a host of other names) who is on the run to California. Detective Phil Marlowe is hired to shadow her, then switches sides and becomes her defender in a cluster of lies and betrayals. The part of LA that Chandler defines here is Enclave Culture - those wealthy colonies along the coast where the old money retires, the young money wants to be included, and the help staff can't afford to live within the town boundaries. That part is the most interesting feature, along with Marlowe's internal monologues.

Pickup on Noon Street - This is a collection of shorts originally written for pulps like Black Mask. There's no Marlowe here, but rather characters named Dalmas and Carmady, both of which have their own internal code that Chandler relies on. LA is here as well, but seedier, seamier sides, which means a lot of hoods and guns, troubled women, and bodies on the floor. I picked up the book at Half-Price, and it came with its own little mystery - a polaroid used as a bookmark of what could be a shoreline or a distant mountain range in the distance, with a non-descript skyscraper along one side. 

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - The first Agatha Christie novel, and the first Poirot, this feels like a bloodless affair in the wake of Chandlers continual callousness and Stout's colorful domesticity. It is the classic Manor Mystery where the suspects are all in the house the night of the murder and everyone has a motive somewhere along the line. Christie wanted to write a mystery where she plays fair, and gives all the clues needed to solve the puzzle, but the passage of a hundred years made this reader sail past the pertinent clue in identifying the murderer. Yet it has a clockwork logic to it and a very British reserve that contrasts with the other books described in this post. The character with the most personality is narrator Hastings - Poirot's expository sidekick in the style of Doctor Watson and Archie Goodwin - who falls for one of the suspects. This particular edition was another trade paperback, nicely presented and large-formatted. 

And that's it for the Plane Books of 1924. The thing that strikes me in this mystery reading is the frame holding the mystery is sometimes more engaging that the mystery itself. Dorothy Sayers has a very political in her writing. Stout (and his successor) takes New York City and turns it into a cozy place for the occasional killing. Chandler reveals the LA outside his window, and Christie gives a tour of the upstairs/downstairs life in the interwar years. The books are centered on the mystery, but what makes them successful is what they're really about.

And I'm looking at stocking up for next year's trips. There will be fewer of them, but they will still be there.

More later.

Theatre: Holiday Mood

 Snowed In (Again) by Corinne Park Buffelen, Music composed by David Taylor Gomes, Directed by Kelly Kitchens. Arts West through December 22.

Ah, with the first windstorm shaking the last leaves off the broadleaf maples and causing widespread power outages, the first holiday play of the season is now upon us, and just before Thanksgiving as well. Last year Arts West put together a revue centered around four actors (and a pianist) going to a cabin in the mountains to work on a Christmas Show and getting ... snowed in.

It was fun. And so we do it again this year. New cast, similar cabin, tasked with putting together a SEQUEL to the previous show. So we get a mixture of songs from the previous year ("Bonita the Sexiest Christmas Elf") with a few newcomers (Grampus" - a wonderful paen to family holiday gatherings with that Grinchic patriarch), along with interstitial material dealing with family traditions and paralyzing deadline pressure. And Olive (the Other Reindeer) makes a return as well.

And the cast is in fine voice and high spirits -  Lauren Drake, Ays Garcia, Alexander Kilian, and Brandon Reil as the "new kids" ensemble, Aaron Jin on the keyboard. And they are excellent, though competing with Sarah Russell's rendition of "I'm Happy Being Hosted" is a tough lift. That's one of the challenges of doing a sequel - comparison with the original flavor.  And the choreography was sharp and in places hilarious.  .This year's version had less nods to Seattle and more to the season, which is cool as well.

A nit? Sure, but just one. The blocking and set design had a seat for the actors directly in front us in the front row, so I had a case of looking at the back of the actor's heads. And butts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And it was amusing to see Alexander Killan curled up in a fetal position from the sudden stress of creating an all-new show with the old material. So there's that.

The humor is broad, the actors are spirited, the feelings are grounded. No heavy stakes, no character arcs, no (major) lessons learned. It is very much a Holiday Revue, put together with heart and soul. Yeah, it was fun and a great way to enter the holiday season.

More later,

Bomb Cyclone

 So, I'm writing this from a friend's house, about 15 minutes south of Grubb Street. Because Grubb Street is currently without Internet. 

You may have heard that the Puget Sound was hit recently by a "Bomb Cyclone", which is a scary term and in real life is no picnic either. A Bomb Cyclone is a tropical depression that develops quickly (The Bomb part) over the ocean, creating high winds (The Cyclone) along its periphery. It is not a hurricane, though it can have hurricane-force winds. 

And what it does is pull in air from the surrounding area to power those winds. And in the Seattle area, this means that said winds get pulled through the mountain passes to the east of us. The passes are currently closing due to snowfall already, but the winds get HOV access. These winds get concentrated by the passes before blasting into the more settled foothills. 

And that's why its a bad thing for those living in the foothills. Whenever we get a bad windstorm, it's because the winds are coming out of the east, being pulled through the mountains. That's the case here.

Power went out at the height of the storm and stayed out for about 9 hours. The Lovely Bride had years ago (after the last outage) purchased a large cinder-block-sized battery and so got to hook up her CPAP machine there. I did not, and didn't want to take the chance of draining her battery too much. But we had some level of preparation. And we still had land-lines phones, functional cell phones, a gas stove in the bedroom and a gas stovetop in the kitchen. So we were not knocked down to "Little House on the Prairie" status. But a lot of folk (like, hundreds of thousands) lost power and a lot of them still don't have it restored, particularly in the valleys leading down from those windswept passes. 

Anyway, nine hours. Good work on the recovery from Puget Sound Energy. Our neighbors are on another line, and they are still out, but have an extension cord long enough to plug into our socket near the back yard, so their freezer is still running. 

But also, as the storm passed through, a large branch from one of the firs out front came down and neatly severed our Internet cable. So even when power got restored, we still were without Internet. So we called Comcast, and they sent out a guy. Guy shows up and explains that the area still does not have Internet service at large (something about a nearby Node being out), and until they repair the Node, they can't re-hook up the house. Something tells me that the "Node" may be on the same line as our unfortunate neighbors, so we'll have to wait until power comes back up for them, and then they can fix the node. And THEN they can come back an hook up the house again. 

No, Comcast has no idea when all this is going to happen. The guy's suggestion was to keep calling in to complain. Yay.

Anyway, we are Internet-less for the immediate future. A road crew from Kent came by the morning after the storm and cut up the fallen branch and hauled it away (just as I was coming out of the garage with a handsaw in hand and my face set with grim determination). So, good work Kent Road Crew.  And Wednesday morning consisted of cleaning up the mid-sized branches. Thursday is when we got the bad news that Comcast was neither as cool as Puget Sound Energy or the Kent Road Crew. And by Thursday afternoon I was already looking for a way to get back online.

Yahsee, my current gig (Senior Writer for Elder Scrolls Online - I don't know if I mentioned that), requires I get online to communicate with coworkers and put things into the engine. So no connectivity, no work. It was a forced vacation, and while I still had some PTO left for the year, I was planning on spending it elsewhere. And after two days of quietly reading in a warming waterbed, I was pretty much chomping at the bit to get back to it. 

So, I made some phone calls. Some friends were still without power at that point, but one had both power and connectivity, and I hauled my desktop down to his place and set up on his usually-unused dining room table. And then had to get a "wifi usb dongle" to hook everything up to the friend's Internet (at home I use a long Ethernet cable plugged directly into the router). But now I am back in business, such as it goes, for the foreseeable future. Just in time to lay down my tools for Thanksgiving.

I will update this when/if we get to the stage where I return to my former haunts. In the meantime, I am in a bit of exile here. But at least I can contact the outside world again.

More later, 

[The Updates: On Saturday our neighbors got their power and Internet back. Comcast's website said they could get to us by Wednesday. The Lovely Bride called them and got an appointment for the next day. Sunday morning a young man came out on his lonesome and hooked us back up. Good work, young man!]

Recent Arrivals: GameholeCon Swag

 So a few weeks back I wrapped up my final gaming convention of the year, Gamehole Con, in Madison, Wisconsin. I usually do only one or two conventions a year, but with the 50th anniversary of D&D, I ended up at five of them. For me, that's a lot of travel.

Oh, the name? Well, Gamehole Con is run by an attorney named Alex Kammer. He also owns a restaurant in Middleton called the Free House, built into a historic building. The stairs to the second floor were too steep to use for a restaurant, so it became his gaming group's hang-out - the Game Hole. In it Alex has collected a huge amount of old gaming material, including the original TSR Forgotten Realms map. And he oversees Gamehole Con, which has been in the Alliant Energy Center to the south of the city. It's a really good convention, incredibly well-run. High marks all around.

And one of the things I like about going to conventions is seeing what is out there as far as new games are concerned. While our local game stores are good, they don't always carry the depth and variety I see at conventions, in particular from small publishers. So I tend to go indulge in a bit of shopping therapy. Plus, you're often buying from the publisher and sometimes from the creator, so that's nice. 

Not everything here is from the convention. one is a local purchase and one from a kickstarter. But the bulk are from the convention, so let us start with those:

Gamehole Con swag: Program Book and a Rust Monster Plushie  The program book is a spartan and effective twenty pager, with ads from the supporting sponsors, maps of the site, policies, and a list of exhibitors and guests (no bios, which is fine).. The events themselves are online with QR Code, which creates a nice versatility (the site itself is very searchable as well). The plushie is a standard for GHC as well, and a freebie to guests (I still have the Mimic from several years ago). The traditional Monster Manual rust monster is this year's plushie. The Lovely Bride has already named him Palladium. 

[Note from the distant past - when the Rust Monster first appeared in D&D, there was no illo to go with it, so, since it showed up with various oozes, I assumed it was a pile of rust with Cookie Monster googley eyes. We didn't hear about the plastic toy until later.]

Wardens of the Eastern Marches, Alex Kammer with Josh Hoyt and Jason Knutson, Gamehole Publishing, 28 page saddle-stitched digest, 2024. Gamehole Publishing (Yes, connected with the Gamehole con) is launching its own organized play at the convention, and this was a free giveaway. The Eastern Marches are the setting for a bunch of adventures they've published over the years (see next entry). This tidy little booklet gives an overview of the world, as well as the basic ground rules for their organized play. All the information in the book can be found here, but it's nice to have a hard copy.

The Brain Gorger's Appetite by Alex Kammer,  Gamehole Publishing, 40-page softbound, 2016, GHC Purchase. Into the Deep Dark by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 46-page softbound, 2017, GHC Purchase, Trillium, City of Enchantment by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 62-page softbound, GHC Purchase,  2018 All three of these were published over the years by Gamehole Publishing, and sold at the convention. I meant to pick them up last time I was there, and finally did so this time. The three adventures are part of a larger arc, set in what is now the Eastern Marches (see above), and involve a mind flayer brain gorger named Marlipp. The trilogy starts in the small town of Okney's Hold, journeys into the Underdark Deep Dark, and ends up in the faction-ridden city of Trillium. It's old-school adventures wired up for 5E action. 

Lands of Runequest: Dragon Pass by Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford, and Jason Durall, 190-page hardback, GHC Purchase, Runequest doesn't get as much coverage out here in the local hobby stores, so I'm always glad to see it at conventions. Dragon Pass has its roots Waaaay back in the White Bear, Red Moon board game, and it is a highly diverse chunk of land at the crossroads of Glorantha. Lottsa sentient creatures, factions, and politics rolling around. Dragon Pass probably has the greatest weirdness-per-acre of any location in Glorantha. Nice to see the update.

No Time to Scream by B.W. Holland, Bridgett Jeffries with C.L.Werner  Chaosium, 104-page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase, Call of Cthulhu shows up in the local stores more often, but hey, I was there at the convention booth and they had a sale. No Time to Scream consists of three straight-forward one night-and-change adventures. Though aimed at novice Keepers/GMs with instructions and advice on how to play, the scenarios work well for pick-up games and (insanely) quiet evenings with more experienced players. Works best with pregens, which are provided and also available as an online download (which makes the assumption that the buyer has access both to a computer and a color printer (having a color printer readily at hand is one of the plus sides of the return-to-office push. That and free pens)).

The Order of the Stone by Jared Twing, Lynne Hardy, and Paul Fricker, Chaosium, 152 page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase. This one feels like an old-school CoC scenario - three chapters, ancient cult, entrapped eldritch god, world-ending threat, hiking distance from Arkham. At first glance, it looks pretty good, with a collection of Lovecraftian set-pieces - ghost ship, small port town, rural wilderness. It's really good to see Chaosium do new old-style adventures in addition to updating the classics for the new system. Player handouts available online, which still has the challenge of No Time to Scream.

Seeds of Decay by Darryl T. Jones, Splattered Ink Games, 436-page hardbound, 2004, Gift of the Author. A big adventure about tiny heroes. The Dobbers are a diminutive people living in the Alwaysgreen Forest, threatened by an eldritch evil that is spreading like rot. Set up specifically for Dobbers and other tiny-size creatures, its two parts cozy game and two parts heroic horror. This is the deluxe edition (gold-foil on the cover). The author is also the artist, so it is a very good-looking product. The hat on top of it is for an upcoming product A Time-Traveler's Guide to Dinosaur Hunting. Nice hat. 

Mazes by Chris O'Neill, 9th Level Games, 240-page hardbound digest, 2022, GHC Purchase. I mentioned Sentai and Sensibility in an earlier write-up, and I found the core mechanic (a single type of die tied to each character class) intriguing, but buried beneath a pile of setting-specific verbage. So when I discovered the system this was based on at GameHoleCon, I had to buy it. This is a revised edition, and is based on the original fantasy version of the game. It is much deeper than Sentai, and uses a number of interesting new systems. I'm currently digging through it. Its presentation is excellent, and it feels like a solid game. 

Scurvy Buggers by Irene Zelinski, 9th level games, 76-page softbound digest, 2024 GHC purchase from designer. I got this from the designer at the Con, and we chatted. This was a pirate (I'm sorry - PYRATE) version of the game system, and it may be that I was already reading the Mazes game, but the rules went down a lot smoother for me than for Sentai and Sensibility. This is very much Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death with genderfluid pyrates. Zelinski expands the one-type-of-dice per class mechanic to include ship types as well. Neat idea. 

Dead Man's Cove, by Tyler and Luke Stratton, Limithron, 1-page folder scenario, GHC Purchase, Buried in the Bahamas, by Luke Stratton, 22-page saddle-stitched digest, The Sinking of the Cthgan, Limithron, 8panel fold-out scenario, all GHC Purchases. It may occur to many readers that I am a sucker for pirates. Pirate Borg was a definitely superior evolution of the Mork Borg system, reshaped to fit the curves of the golden age of piracy. I have these in pdf from the kickstarter, but I really wanted to get hard copy as well. They are radically different in approach, and reflect very much a "maker" culture of craft where the presentation formats are elastic. I think I can keep them with my core book, which is a challenge when you have so many different physical approaches to the supplements. 

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, Del Rey, 592-page trade paperback, gift from the author. I met Peter doing a livestream dungeon adventure on Saturday night, and he gave me a copy of the book. Imagine a world where demons show up every night in a twisted version of the initial day of a Minecraft game. The only thing that keeps them at bay are magical wards, and humanity sort of lies low behind its magical walls in the darkness. The Warded Man is the guy who manages to incorporate and utilized the wards, challenging the demons on their own ground. Yeah, this goes on my TBR pile. 

Shadow of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment, 288-page hardbound and Secrets of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment LLC, 296-page hardbound, 2024 Kickstarter. About ten years ago, Rob Schwalb wrote the very excellent Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is an update to the system and a new world for that system. Demon Lord was very grimdark, while Weird Wizard is much more in the heroic mode - still a deadly world, but not a doomed one. Call it Greydark? Without too much digging (and yes, it rewards digging), it advances the design of Demon Lord just as Demon Lord advanced the design of D&D Third and Fourth Edition (and in a case of ironies, Demon Lord showed up around the same time as 5th edition, and Weird Wizard showed up with D24 (Yes, I'm still trying to make that a thing). Secrets is both the campaign setting and monster book, and takes the entire system out for a spin. The thing I can dun them for is that the tables use a light grey typeface that is hard on these old eyes. But a lot is going on here, and I'm going to be spending some time with it.

Godzilla The Encyclopedia by Shinji Nishiakawa, Titan Books, 216-page softbound, purchased at Midgard Comics. I bought of copy of this a while back, gave it to a friend who is a BIG Godzilla fan (we plowed through most of his DVDs from the Showa to Millennium era), then went back and bought a copy for myself. Titan is known primarily for their comic book collections, but this one started as a series of articles and just expanded from there. It's write-up of almost every monster in the Godzilla films, and every version of Godzilla, Missing are those that had an original version elsewhere (Rodan is there, but only appears here for when he first fought Godzilla), and the American versions. The writeups are two-page spreads, beautifully illustrated, that cover both in-world facts as well as design discussions of how the various Godzillas changed over the years. This is an incredibly excellent book if you're a Godzilla/Kaiju fan.

That wraps it for now. And more things have shown up while I was putting this together, but for the moment, more later. 

The Political Desk: Final Edition

 I usually wait for a few days for the dust to settle, but the vote margins most of these races are pretty decisive. Let's take a look

Yes to Initiative Measure No. 2066 - Protect the natural gas industry This is tight, and usually late ballots skew to the left. However, it has been pretty stable for the past few days. 

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2109 - Repeal the capital gains tax.

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2117 - Destroying carbon tax credits.

NO to Initiative Measure No 2124 - Bankrupt the state-run long-term care insurance.

President - Donny Trump and JD Vance. Hey, color me surprised.  For what its worth, Washington State generally pummeled the heck outta the GOP - it looks like none of his minions got close to the levers of power on this side of the state.

US Senator - Maria Cantwell

US Representative Congressional District No. 9 - Adam Smith

Governor - Bob Ferguson

Lieutenant Governor - Denny Heck

Secretary of State - Steve Hobbs

State Treasurer - Mike Pellicciotti

Attorney General - Nick Brown

Commissioner of Public Lands - Dave Upthegrove

Superintendent of Public Instruction - Chris Reykdal

Insurance Commissioner - Patty Kuderer

Legislative District No 11 State Senator -  Bob Hasegawa

Legislative District No 11State Representative Position 1  - David Hackney

Legislative District No 11 State Representative Position 2 - Steve Berquist

State Supreme Court Justice Position 2 - Sal Mungia  The other tight one, but the late ballots had it for Sal.

Superior Court Judge Position No 41 - Paul Crisalli

Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Capital Projects and Technology Levy - Yes, much to my surprise. This one is razor-thin, and could flip back as we move to fruition. 

Final thoughts before we cover the Political Desk with a tarp for the winter? Well, Washington State did a fine job protecting itself from Washington DC. And if the new/old administration does half the things that they promised to do, there's going to be a lot of buyer's regret for the rest of the country. But that's the nature of democracy (see Brexit). In the land of Ivar's, we'll keep clam and carry on.

More, as always, later.