The Gaming News

With summer Kickstarter has suddenly exploded with RPG options. I have swooped in and collected a bunch of them for your consideration.  Kickstarter has demonstrated an ability to reach out to a target market at a very personal level, which makes it fantastic for niche-operations like RPGs (and for niches-within-niches like Spy RPGs). I'm not backing all of these, but there some interesting stuff here that should pique yours interest.

The Lost Citadel: Some campaign settings aim at big, sprawling canvases that can accommodate any style or subgenre of play. The Lost Citadel is a lot more defined and refined - its world is founded by a single event, an underlying tragedy that informs everything that follows. Magic has died, the dead have risen, the last outpost of the living is a huge city of Redoubt. It is a dark world, with a single flickering point of light. This one has some serious talent, behind it and has funded and is knocking down stretch goals left and right. It also wraps in about a week.

The Yellow King: I don't know if this would exist without Kickstarter's ability to fund extremely dedicated markets. This is a four-volume set of adventures based on the Gumshoe rules used in Trail of Cthulhu, but not based on Lovecraft's work (a niche to start with) but in the King in Yellow, the creation of Robert Chambers. Starting in Belle Epoque Paris, the story bounces to an alternate universe with a horrific war, then to the present of that world, then back to "our" world with a few nasty changes around the edges. As a heads-up, this one looks like it is based out of England, and notes up front that the pledge does not support shipping.

War of the Cross: This looks like a diplomacy variant set in Theah, the "Europe" of the 7th Sea RPG. When I say diplomacy variant, it has armies, navies, area movement, convoys, etc... But it also has heroes (do differentiate the various nations) and treasures. This one has a while to go, both in time and funding - as a board game, it has a large up-front.

Torg Eternity: Long ago and far away there was TORG (The Other Roleplaying Game) from West End by BIll Slavicsek, Greg Gordon, and others. It used the multi-genre idea in divvying up the Earth into different zones, like the pulpy Egypt, the cyberpunky religious France, and horror-filled Indonesia. Now its back. You're a Storm Knight that can move between zones and fight the big bads.Torg Eternity rolled out with a 16-page introduction on Free RPG Day which was a good enticement.

Calidar: Dreams of Aerie: I mentioned Calidar as while back as Bruce Heard's design descendant of the Princess Ark concepts of flying ships. This time out he brings to the table a literal flying circus (as in three-ring) as a the centerpiece of his adventure. Suitable for use in any campaign with an atmosphere. You can see the initial maps at the link, which look cool. This one has just hit its numbers, but can increase through its stretch goals.

Top Secret: New World Order: This one has yet to go live, but has an excellent provenance. The original Top Secret was one of the early non-fantasy games I encountered back in the day, and I contributed to the Top Secret: SI line with a cyberpunky future called FREELancers featuring old movie monsters re-imagined in a sinking Mirror-shaded Chicago.  And I had a pitch in for a TS Module called: Operation: Tin Man, which involved a camera on Mars sending back a picture of a banner saying "Surrender Dorothy!". Ah, yeah, good times. Do not know more about the details here, other than Merle "The Administrator" Rasmussen and Allen "The original editor" Hammack are on board for this  It has a spiffy video as well.

Check 'em out. More later.

Play: Serious Wimsey

Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers (and M. St. Claire Byrne, whom the program neglects to credit), Taproot Theatre Company, through June 24th.

The Lovely B and I recently removed ourselves from the safe bounds of Seattle Rep season tickets with an excursion to a new venue - the Taproot Theatre, north of the city on 85th Street in Greenwood. Situated at a confluence of major roads, it is one of those neighborhoods with a variety of restaurants and somewhat challenging parking (the e-tickets specifically state that, though it may look tempting, do NOT park in the Fred Meyers).

The Taproot is a 200-seat venue built around a thrust stage (that is, audience on three sides). This particular performance of Dorothy Sayers' mystery is very popular, such that we got tickets on the right-hand balcony, along a single row fronted by a low, extremely clear glass. Nice seats, good view of the action but I have a bit of crick in my neck from two and half hours of looking slightly to the right to follow the action.

Busman's Honeymoon was originally a play (one of Sayers' first) and later a novel (one of Sayers' last). It is set in Hertfordshire, where the newly-married detectives Lord Peter and Lady Harriet Vane have decamped for a honeymoon away from the bright lights of the press, with their loyal butler Bunter. They arrive at their newly-purchased cottage to find nothing prepared for them and the previous owner dead in the basement. The house is soon awash with typically British characters; the previous owner's mousy niece, the pottering vicar, the angry handyman, and the local constable (who actually says "What's all this, then" upon his entrance).

And Sayers/Byrne do an excellent job of the challenge of bringing the mystery genre to the stage. Sayers tends to play fair with her readers, and it shows here. The scene of the crime shows up early, and all the clues are in place to be discovered, including bits of business that seem innocent but later become revealing. If you've read the book, you'll know from the outset, but for those who have not, and those who have forgotten, I will leave it there.

But where the play succeeds is in the relationship of the newlyweds Peter and Harriet. Peter at his core is delighted to be married, but saddened by his very serious detective work, which will ultimately result in the destruction of the life of the guilty. Terry Edward Moore is a weary Wimsey, and you can see when he is positively delighted and when he is putting on the good show for others. With Harriet (a sparkling Alyson Scadron Branner) he has his strength, urging him onward, matching him pace for pace, but she comes from writing mysteries as opposed to solving them, and now she is yoked to that same sense of duty that drives Peter forward.

The rest of the cast is very good. Nolan Palmer is an arch-eyebrowed Bunter, settling into having a mistress as well as a master to tend to. The setting is Hertfordshire, but the accents of the locals span the the British Isles, and fortunately are carried forward with the vim and vigor of an island fragmented by a common language. Reginald Andre Jackson as Mr. Puffett the sweep digs in deep every time he has to talk about the "carroopted sut" clogging the chimney, while Brad Walker as Constable Sellon is a bit too young and slender to pull off the officer.

It is a good performance with good performers, and actually does a bit more digging into the characters than the 1940 movie (based on this play) which has the American Robert Montgomery as a very Mid-Atlantic Wimsey. In fact, I like the play more than the book that evolved out of it - the play is tighter, stronger, and uses the space to front the relationship of Harriet and Peter and to demonstrate that they are a match made for the courts.

One minor niggle, from the program book - Sayers is identified as a member of the Inklings, an Oxford group of writers that included Tolkien and Lewis. Yes, she was Oxfordian, and her letters are included with some of the Inklings at Wheaton College in Illinois but she was never a member. That's sort of like calling Ed Greenwood an Alliterate - while a fine writer with a shared heritage, he never officially part of the group.

As for the play - worth seeing, better than the movie and the book.

More later,

The Return of No Quarter (Pieces of VIII Edition)

It has been a while, but let us engage in the yearly ritual of the America the Beautiful series (AKA the National Parks Quarters, though most of them are not about National Parks). We are now in the eighth edition of this venerable review (which is the sequel to an earlier series). But let me address a matter from last time we talked on the subject.

I asked last time if quarters are getting lighter. The metal FEELS lighter, and seems less substantial than old quarters. But I was not sure, since I did not have a scale suitable to weigh them. Spurred in the spirit of scientific inquiry a friend produced a scale that would measure small amounts, and two piles of quarters, old and new. Weighing a similar number of each type would magnify any discrepancy.

And the results were ... surprising. The two stacks came up pretty even, but the NEW quarters were just a little heavier than the OLD. So my initial assumption (which I now blame of being an old fogey) was wrong.

And that is why we science.

Anyway, here's this year's bunch of quarters. For those new to this (and shame on you, it starts way back here and here ), here's the rating system:

Way Cool =A
Not Bad = B
Kinda Lame (also known as Meh) = C
Very Lame = D
The tooth fairy will not even leave these = E

Let us begin:

Effigy Mounds National Monument.- Iowa

When the Europeans pushed west across the North American continent, they were wandering into an apocalyptic wasteland. Disease brought by earlier arrivals decimated the local populations, and the remnants were pushed out or swallowed up by the new culture. However, the newcomers found mounds throughout the northern woodlands, large earthen structures built by human hands in isometric designs or animal shapes. When they weren't looting them for valuables or tearing them down for fill, the newcomers posited who could have built these structures - ancient civilizations, lost religious tribes, even space aliens. Anyone except the ancestors of the people they whose lands they were now claiming.

So. Effigy Mounds. These are in the northeast corner of the state (have you noticed that a lot of these places are far away from the center of their states?), hard on the border of Wisconsin, across the Mississippi from Prairie du Chien. It is a collection of 200-some mounds, including many in the rarer animal shapes, including birds and a procession of "marching bears". Yet it is interesting to note, per the wiki article, that even under Federal protection we're still dealing with looting and unauthorized construction.

The coin itself? Peeps in the grass. Sorry. Maybe it's the season, but I'm looking at this and it looks like marshmallow peeps, cast-offs from an Easter Egg hunt. It is a good and accurate representation of the shapes, or even the arrangement (I'm looking at maps here, and there are three mounds in tclose proximity that look just like that), but the end result looks a bit blobby.

Good choice for the subject matter. OK execution.

Rating:  C (Just ... meh)


Frederick Douglass National Historic Site - Washington DC

So in writing this one up, I went back to the last time Frederick Douglass was in the news - When the President, in a ham-handed recognition of Black History Month, referred to Fred as if he was still next door in a briefing room waiting for Lincoln to show up. Looking at the quote, it seems to be the traditional word salad that most people have come to expect from our gonna-get-better-any-moment- chief executive, but at least Mr. D got a shout-out.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Instead, there is something else going on here. I mean, Frederick Douglass was a major statesman, writer, and linchpin of abolition (we noted last year that he gave John Brown some very, very good advise about attacking the government (that it was a very, very bad idea)). But Washington DC is chock full to the rafters with monuments run by the National Park Service. How does Fred Douglass (regardless of his achievements) get the nod here?

Image from CoinNews.net, June 20, 2008

Then I found this: A Frederick Douglass quarter, with a flipped image to the current version, was one of the nominees for the STATE quarter series, only to be beaten out by Duke Ellington (whom I always connected with New York City and the Harlem Renaissance). So the Freddie-D quarter was already a backup, and got the slot as a consolation prize.

Still, it is nice quarter, a mirror of Mr. Ellington's, Mr. Douglass at his writing desk, the Haney Place in the background, which was finally finished by Alf and Ralph. A perfectly nice coin, but I have to call shenanigans on the selection process. Alternately, I could credit them with saving money on not commissioning a new piece but instead using pick-up art. Nah, I will go with shenanigans.

Rating:  B  (Not Bad)


Ozark Scenic National Riverway - Missouri

There seems to be a definite anti-urban pitch to these coins. I mean, I get it - it is the America the Beautiful series, and it has done a pretty good job at pointing out national forests mountains, and other natural sites that normally get overlooked, but would it kill them to point out a few more locations that people may have actually seen? Missouri did put the Gateway arch on the state quarter, but turned St.Louis into a fungal forest in order to do so.

Anyway, the the Ozark Scenic National Riverway is a tetris-block assembly of territory along the Current River and the Jacks Fork. It apparently has great canoeing and tubing, along with a number of natural springs. The coin shows Alley Mill, which used steel rollers to grind grain and is still mostly intact. And it is really not that bad, what with the tree framing the mill and the water (which doesn't look wide enough to qualify as a canoeable river, so let's call it a tributary), dominating the center.

Its a challenge, when the feature you are supposed to be centering on is a river, and supposedly flat river at that. It does the job.

Rating:  B  (Not Bad)


Ellis Island  National Monument (Statue of Liberty) - New Jersey

Here we see a similar-but-different problem to the South Carolina Fort-Moutraine-but-not-Fort-Sumpter quarter of last year. We have Ellis Island which is (mostly) part of Jersey (and has been since a 1998 court case), but what attracts everyone's attention is Liberty Island and the large green lady there (No, I am not talking about She-Hulk). On one hand, the entire complex is Federal property (so it really doesn't matter WHO owns WHAT on the island), but on the other, New Jersey DID claim this for their quarter.

Ellis, of course, was where a good chunk of immigrants debarked back in the day. That day would be about 3 decades surrounding the turn the last century. Millions of immigrants passed through its gates during that period, though it was not the only immigrant port in the US (other ports conducted their processing on the boats that brought individuals in), it has the rep for the biggest and most permanent. The cool looking building on the coin is the second Immigrant Station. The first was made of wood and burned to the ground in 1897. Crackdown on immigration laws starting in 1924 dwindled the use of the island fast, and eventually it became a detention and deportation headquarters, sending people the other direction.

The happy people shown on this coin most likely showed up before we shut the gates (again) in 1924. Given the number worn on their shirts, they come from the Village, a small state that remains part of the United Kingdom but is run by a secret government agency. These new arrivals are clearly happy to be in a new land with welcoming peoples and lack of giant white beach balls that haul them back to the Village if they try to escape. The woman, pensive, is wondering if she left the iron on.

The coin design itself is pretty good - It captures both the site and its purpose, working together to make it a better coin. And of course, New York claims to be 5 cents worth of the coin itself.

Rating:  B  (Not Bad). In fact, make it B+, the best coin of the season.


George Rogers Clark National Historic Park - Indiana

This coin commemorates the first official "fun run" in Vicennes in 1777. OK, actually, it represents George Rogers Clark (he's the one in the hat) leading his forces to take Fort Sackville. Or rather, to retake Fort Sackville, since they had lost it to the British), actually, I guess it is to re-retake since it was originally a British fort that the rebels took, then lost, then took again. I mean, this can only be expected with a fort called SACK-ville. I mean, why not just call it Fort "The Key is Under the Mat"?

OK, fine, George Rogers Clark was dispatched early in the revolution to the part of the world that the Americans would call "The Old Northwest", the British called "This is part of Quebec, now", and the natives called "What are all these Europeans doing in our living room?". The Brits had put up forts through this area, but had problems funding them, until the Quebec Act put the cost on the colonials (which did not end well). Clark bounced all over the region, capturing British outposts and founding Louisville in the process. This scene shows him and his men moving through the swamps to take the fort (we don't know exactly where it is (no really), but is somewhere off to the right of the coin).

It's not a horrible coin. It is well-crafted, but I did have to go through a long song and dance just to explain what the heck you were looking at. Which is a pity, since the site of the Park itself has a really cool, distinctive memorial building on the site, with statues and murals (it would be, dare I say, both beautiful and in America). Using the memorial itself would have been a cool coin (though I would have pointed out similarity to the Jefferson Memorial - same architect), and is a missed opportunity.

And that may be ultimately what has started to bother me about the coins in these series - they are so innocuous. Mountains. Streams. Questionable actions. The carving itself has gotten better over the years, but the subject matter has become more bland in the process,

Rating:  C (Just ... meh)

Next Year: We head for the beach with a lot of National Seashores - three islands, a set of rocks, and some Canadians. I'm holding out hope that the Canadians are the most interesting.

More later,

Play: Thriller in Manilla

Here Lies Love: Concept and lyrics by David Byrne, Music by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim,

Additional music by Tom Gandey and J Pardo, Choreographed by Annie-B Parson, Directed by Alex Timbers. Seattle Rep through May 28th.

So let me right off the bat salute the Rep for the ballisest production of recent years. I have in the past tweaked them for relatively safe performances that fit within the bounds of traditional theatre. Small companies of actors, one-person shows, self-contained productions that fly in and out without seemingly touching the ground upon which the stage rests.

Yeah. All of that goes out the window for Here Lies Love, in which the theater itself, seats and all, is transformed into a disco, where the audience can be on the disco floor among moveable stages, where the actors come down and press the flesh with the masses in front of live TV cameras, where there is a continual disco backbeat and an excellent cast powers through a tight ninety minutes that tells the tale of Imelda Marcos. This is one of those performances that poses and tremendous risk for the theater, and it pays off creatively (and should pay off financially, because - spoilers - you really should go see it).

The theater space is tranformed into a massive disco cathedral. The seats on the main floor are gone, and what once the right and left banks of seats are replaced with huge stacked levels for those who chose sitting over standing. Most of us are on the floor, which it tighter and brighter and noisier. The disco beat plays, and yes, there is a DJ. The action takes place on moving platforms that slide and rotate during the performance. Unsung heroes (in the fact that they don't sing) are the jump-suited attendants with glowing sticks (called aircraft marshalling wands, I have just discovered) that keep the groundlings from being crushed by the action.

Here's the not-quick summary: Imelda is poor, romances and is rejected by Ninoy Aquino, rising young senator. She goes to the big city, has a whirlwind romance with Marcos (who in the real world is 40 years her senior, but here is just a bit older), marries him. She is Jackie to Marcos' JFK, and tries to do good, but is swept up in the heady drug-fueled seventies and betrayed by her cheating husband. She returns to pick up the gauntlet when Marcos gets ill (lupus) and effectively runs the country with an iron hand, claiming to know what's best. Her old boyfriend Ninoy returns in her life as a leader of the opposition - she has him imprisoned, exiled and is assassinated upon his reveiw, but his shooting kicks off the revolution that causes her to flee the country.

It is a potted history of the Phillipines, shrunk to 90 minutes and shown through Imelda's eyes. She is is betrayed time upon time, and feels that the wounds she has suffered justifies her actions. Her costume over time becomes more armored and military as she becomes the Steel Butterfly. Even at the end, she feels betrayed by the people she felt she served in the name of love. 

That sense of betrayal spreads to the audience as well, as the the rousing back-beat and line-dancing becomes a demand to party as the military rolls in, the cities burn, and martial law descends. The feel-good optimism of the early play becomes dark as the audience is forced to uncomfortably condone the heroine. There's a moment when it dawns on each individual (a different moment for each audience member) that this is going down the wrong path, and their encouragement is demanded.

All that said, it is a powerful performance. All the singers are fantastic and the ensemble is frenetic as they change supporting roles at an instant. Jaygee Macapugay is a beautiful, fragile, convincing Imedla. Mark Bautista is Marcos with a seducer's smile. Byrne's style of lyrics comes out fully with Conrad Ricamora, as the white-suited (no subtlety here) Aquino. Melogy Butiu is Estrella, the childhood friend left behind and the reminder of the world Imelda no longer is part of. They are fantastic, throwing everything they have into the performance.

The musical ends (spoilers) with Imelda fleeing the People Power Revolution, but in the real world, its not that easy. Marcos is dead, but Imelda has returned to the Philipines and is a senator for her home district. Two of her four children (shown in pictures but not referenced in the performance) are heavy hitters in politics, and the family fortune, built up from all the corruption, is involved in the recent Panama Papers scandal. Yet that is not the happiest of endings for the people of the Philipines, and the play ends with the positive sense of finality of the revolution and a reprise of its main song.

This is spectacle. This is an event. This is one of those plays that long-term theater goers and those who avoid such traditional forms of entertainment should see. Well worth it.

A final review of this season: Here Lies Love wraps up the Seattle Rep's season (which is just as well, because they have to put all the seats back, now). And the season has felt like a time machine this years. We started in the late 50s with Raisin in the Sun, jumped to the AIDs crisis in the 80s with Roz and Ray, jumped a few years more years to the Post-Queen Elizabeth era of King Charles III, back to the 70s with Vietgone, rolled through the Great Depression with Woody Sez, jumped into a weird interior mindspace of the 60s with Well, went contemporary with Dry Powder (the only one I really didn't care for) and then wrapped up with the 60s-80s in the Phillipines. This was a very political, wide-ranging season, and the Rep did a damned fine job. Theater as Tardis. Looking forward to what happens next year.

More later. 

Small talk with David Byrne

The Lovely Bride and I (along with 47 others) had dinner with David Byrne at Canlis. Let me explain what that means and how that happened. Yes, there will be copious links to help out.

As the kids today say: Pics or it did not happen.

David Byrne was the lead singer/songwriter for Talking Heads, a new wave band of the late seventies and eighties. And while I was a fan of the Talking Heads, I really particularly loved his music from Knee Plays, of which the Lovely Bride had a copy. We are not sure where the cassette came from, but we think it came from a mutual friend who was into such things as Brian Eno, Jon Anderson, and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. Suffice to say, we had the album on an old tape cassette and I knew most of the lines by heart; the music was New Orleans brass band backing up the simple and quirky wordplay of the lyrics.

OK. So. Big fan of David Byrne's work (more recently, he's been recording with St. Vincent). And one of his latest projects, Here Lies Love, will be wrapping up the season at the Seattle Repertory. We won't see it until next week, but (spoilers from the meal), the early previews are doing well. Here Lies Love is the story of Imelda Marcos, First Lady of the Philippines, set to a disco beat. In fact, they have converted the venerable Bagley Wright auditorium into a discotheque for the performance. More on that, again, when we see the performance next week.

Anyway, the Rep had sent out a fundraising flier for a dinner with David Byrne. As long-time subscribers, we got the postcard, which we normally pass on. But this time, the Lovely B, having missed a number of things because it is tax season, decided we should take them up on it. So, we made an (embarrassing large) donation for dinner at Canlis with David Byrne.

The private upstairs room at Canlis.

Ah, Canlis. People in Seattle know about Canlis. It is our legendary top restaurant, the place for big anniversaries and important celebrations, the one restaurant in Seattle where one is expected to wear a suit and tie (I discovered later that evening that the Columbia Club used to have this restriction until recently as well, but has slacked off at the tie thing). Nestled at the southern end of the Aurora Bridge which crosses the canal to Lake Union, Canlis commands a view of the Lake, the ship canal to Lake Washington to the East, Fremont and Wallingford, and the U-District in the distance. The view is wonderful, and the food, which has gone through a couple incarnations in the time we've been there, is legendary.

And, there is a main dining room, and a private room with an even better view directly above. This smaller space has large wooden shutters that can be opened to the dining area below, or closed for more private functions. I had never climbed the stairs to this area, though the Lovely Bride had snuck off during one dinner to explore (the staff caught her, and since there was no function upstairs at the time, gave her the full tour). So, a private function at the priciest joint in town. We arrived slightly early and we were ushered up the stairs.

These excellent photos courtesy of Seattle Rep, by the way.

And I met David Byrne. Lean, grey-haired, bright-eyed, dressed in a powder blue suit with an American flag on the lapel. He was standing next to Braden Abraham, the art director. At the time, I thought he was art director for the production, but eventually, the penny dropped for me  and I realized he was the Art Director for the entire Seattle Rep. So that was a bit stunning. I introduced Kate first, then myself. Handshakes were made. Kate moved on towards the bar for a mojito, Braden faded back into another discussion, and David Byrne and made small talk.

And here's the thing. In my very small modicum of fame (blessedly limited to gaming conventions for the most part), I have met fans who have squeed over my very presence, been dumbfounded at my words, or sought to argue some point of a project I worked on several decades previously. And I want everyone to know, that I completely understand those attitudes. Because as we made small talk, cocktail talk,, the back of lizard brain was shouting My God, I'm Talking to David Byrne! 

We talked about the process that brought Here Lies Love to Seattle, I told him I was a great admirer of his work. We talked about the weather (after constant rain since October, we were blessed with a beautiful beautiful day). We talked about seaplanes. He admired my trilobite pin.We spoke briefly of on-line comics. Others came up the stairs, and, my moment passed, I thanked him again and made way for the newcomers (it always being bad form to bogart the Guest of Honor).

Just a wonderful photo of the Lovely
Bride and I.

And, delighted (that was David Byrne!), I moved off and talked with other guests. By the time Kate returned I was chatting with Darragh Kennan, an actor I had seen at the Rep who was serving as a rep for the Rep that evening. Darragh had been Sherlock Holmes in two productions at the Rep, and we chatter about our long-standing season tickets at the Rep, favorite plays, theater in Milwaukee and elsewhere. Servers circulated with wine, and later hors d'oeuvres. When Kate could not have the steak tartar because of her allergies (a mayonnaise aoli), they retreated and reappeared a few minutes later with a sample that was egg-free. They're good that way.

We mingled. I declare that I am not a social animal, but I do like to listen, and ended up spending time with an expediting engineer who handled programming problem children, a retired couple whose apartment we could see from the horizon, and a UW geologist who had written a book on roadside geology (he, too, was curious about why I would wear a trilobite on my lapel). The Rep had a photographer present, so we did get pictures.

David Byrne takes questions from the floor.

Dinner was a limited menu but completely up to Canlis's standards. Five tables of ten. Ours had Darragh, Braden (alas, I missed my chance to recommend that, since they were ripping out seats at the venerable B-W, they could replace them with recliners), the retired couple, a psychologist working on his dissertation, married to author who writes books on investing. And a couple, the husband of which I had little chance to talk to, but whose spouse worked for Wells Fargo and was part of the Arts Fund, and who worked for one of the OTHER Jeff Grubbs in the universe. Dinner was a perfect filet mignon for me and a flaky halibut for the LB, but out attention was on the discussion, not the food. 

David and Braden gave a brief talk on Here Lies Love, answered a few questions, and had to leave for a preview of the production that evening. We chatted among ourselves -art and politics (Imelda Marcos is still with us - no, she has not seen the musical), and adjourned some time afterward. Kate and I had booked a room in Seattle, overlooking the new site of the Museum of History and Industry, and the next morning brunched at Salty's on Alki and wrapped up a wonderful 24 hours in Seattle, a vacation without a plane trip.

And yeah, people are going to catch me smiling at work for the next week  for no obvious reason.

More later,

Play: Wet Squib

Dry Powder by Sarah Burgess, Directed by Marya Sea Kaminski, Seattle Rep through April 15th, 2017

So. Yeah. I'm going to hit a bump in our plays every so often. You sign up for a season ticket with the acknowledgement that not every play is going to be to your particular taste. And sometimes (hell, often), you come out feeling that, even if the subject didn't appeal to you or the acting was weak or the plot needed some punching up, you've gotten something out of it.

Not this time. Not only do I resent the hour and half in the theater. I resent the time it took to commute there up and back in deary Seattle weather. I resent the price of my parking spot. Heck, I'd even resent the gas money if my car didn't run on house current.

Dry Powder is about high finance, a great subject, particularly in these days of Occupy America. Rick (Shawn Belyea) runs a private equity firm with the cold, calculating Jenny (Hana Lass) and the glad-handing, deal-making Seth (MJ Seiber) as the angels/devils/employees on his shoulders. The company has taken on some serious bad PR and protests from the fact that they bought out a supermarket chain and gutted it. Now they have the chance to redeem themselves with the purchase of an American-made suitcase firm in Sacramento. The founder of said luggage firm  is looking to sell out, and its CEO Jeff (Richard Nguyen Sloniker) is looking to revitalize the company with fresh cash flow and an eventual IPO.  Seth has put together a deal which risks an on-line presence but keeps the company intact. Jenny advocates a massive work-force cut and offshoring production.

And from that description you'd think the Rick was the central character, but he quickly fades as he slips from one side of the argument, then the other. Actually, it is Seth's story, as he tries to preserve the deal he made against his own supposed allies. And it is not much of a story, really, and despite its relatively tight running time, it feels like it goes on too long to get the simple conclusion: Rich People suck.

And wealth carves the deep chasm between the principles and the little people who suffer for their actions, as well as a gulf between the actors and the audience. Rick is primarily concerned that the continual protests make him look bad on the eve of his wedding in Bali (his engagement party got bad press by springing for an elephant while they were cashiering cashiers). Seth has yacht. Jenny refuses to take cabs. Jeff has the corporate jet and the struggling personal winery. There's not of lot of empathy between the characters and us, even though Rick is getting married and Seth has a kid on the way. These are the wealthy, and they are not very interesting. They are cartoons in a cartoon graveyard.

I want to like Seth or Rick, but they are both blatantly sexist and uncaring. Seth get the most potential depth where his loyalty is tested, but there is no real risk for him. Rick is the kind of boss who is firm in his beliefs until he changes his mind and then expects all to follow.  Jenny is an office Randite, quite frankly, without a single redeemable feature as she drives one of her analysts into rehab without even remembering his name. Jenny in particularly offends me deeply, since she is a character bled of anything resembling humanity. The rivals/frenemy relationship between her and Seth falls flat, and I can't ever see the two working at the same office for longer than two months. And CEO Jeff? He's a speed bump, needed for the plot and resolution.

Here's where I normally pump up the actors who are laboring with a bad script, but I can't do it. Lass delivers a Jenny that feels like Sheldon from the Big Bang, but with less self-reflection - and when she allows some passion, she scrunches her nose like a bunny. Belyea has to change his mind as Rick continually and still sound like a leader - in fact, he's often verbally abusive to both. His thought process and emotions are lost to us as he pivots. Sloniker as Seth doesn't seem to extend the warmth he feels with Jeff to either his boss or co-worker. I don't even see the actors struggling with this - they know where they are going, and deliver it with the passion of an accounting review. These aren't characters so much as talking points, and I think the actors have tweaked to that. I'm not believing that these guys, despite the jargon, actually know anything about business.

OK, we're down to praising the set, which has the Seattle Rep standard of desks and bars and chairs flying in from the sides to show progress. The cool thing is that everything is askew, presented in trapezoids, which creates a feeling of uncertainty and being off-balance. Qualities that the play itself did not have.

I will pause from all this foaming at the mouth to say the Lovely Bride actually liked it - or at least was not as deeply offended by the facile nature of the characters and the tediousness of the plot. We talked about plays about business that feature terrible people (I like Glengarry Glen Ross, for example, she does not, and I felt The Comparables from last season was better than this, while she disagrees). She is a bit more accepting of the cynical nature of people, and points out that play has some value if it provoked such a strong negative reaction from me. So there's that.

The robotic Jenny' gets the last line of the play - "That's all I have". That  pretty much sums up the play, and this review. Rich People suck. That's all I have.

More later.

The Gaming News

One thing leads to another in the Gaming News this week:

First off, I got my Kickstarter Special Edition version of the new Blue Rose RPG from Green Ronin using their AGE engine. It is a beautiful looking hardback with embossed leatherette cover, gold foil edged pages, the whole schmear. Sat down and prompty began to consume it.

Last year's logo. They always look cool.

But I had to stop almost immediately because the very NEXT day I got a package from North Texas RPG Con. NTRPG con is a venerable haven of Old School roleplaying, and while I cannot make it down to Texas this year, I had volunteered to be a judge for their Three Castles Awards. So a package with the four finalists showed up on my doorstep and demands attention. I know what I'm doing in the evenings for the next few weeks.

And speaking of the older schools of gaming, Troll Lords has put together a Kickstarter for the 7th Printing of their successful Castle & Crusades Player's Handbook. The game is old school, Their Siege Engine mechanics uniting the simplicity of earlier versions of D&D with the unified mechanics and skills of later editions.

And speaking of Kickstarters (see how I'm seguing here?), there is a brief Kickstarter up from Oscar Rios' Golden Goblin Press for Cold Warning, a semi-lost Call of Cthulhu adventure by Scott David Aniolowski. The Kickstarter is running only for one week, so check it out sooner as opposed to later.

And further speaking of Kickstarters, the Lovely Bride dropped into the home office to say that she wanted me to fund the Dry Erase Game Tiles from Gaming Paper. She said she saw it on a Facebook post by the ever-talented Stan! So, social media does work!

I always wanted to write something for Empire of the Petal
Throne. Now I have.

And finally, I earlier in this blog praised The Excellent Traveling Volume, a Tekumel fanzine by James Maliszewski, I liked it so much, I wrote a up a brief adventure for it, and submitting it to him. He's publishing it in Issue #7. I'm looking forward to it! (and you can find back issues of TETV here).

More later,