GRUBB STREET

23 Questions

2012-01-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

I've got a lot on my plate at the moment, so please accept this set of meme-questions from Zak's D&D with Porn Stars blog. The blog is tucked behind an "Adult Subject Matter" wall (so be aware), but is no more salacious than, say, that old copy of "Eldritch Wizardry" you have in the closet. Here's what I said:

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
The Universal Table for MSH. In a world where CRTs have gone by the wayside, this remains viable and used to this day. Close second is the random encounter tables for the first MM II.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

About a month back – Call of Cthulhu, Goodman games series. The next time will be this coming Monday.

3. When was the last time you played?

Last night – ArenaNet 4E game (I discovered most of the traps by walking into them). Before that, two weeks ago – Steve Winter running his D&D Cyclopedia campaign.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

The Man from C.T.H.U.L.H.U – 60s CoC adventures in Swinging London.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Make jokes, check references, make monsters tougher.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Cheese, fruit, girl scout cookies.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Yes, after about five hours I start flagging.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Covering our tracks after breaking into a underground complex of gator-men, making it look like OTHER dungeon monsters took out the guards.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

When they are being unserious in a serious situation, it is usually that nervous humor of walking across the graveyard. I find that rewarding. Of course, I also run Call of Cthulhu with Scooby-Doo characters, and watch for the moment when the scales from their eyes and they see the twisted horror are the core of the adventures.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Not much. Kobolds tend to be my amusing low-level monsters, and Toede has the hobgoblins staked out. Goblins, which lacked an iconic look until Pathfinder, have been the ugly step-humanoids for a long time in D&D..

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

Reading Norman Davies Vanished Kingdoms and using it in the final write-up of the Grand Duchy of Dornig. Before that, using Greek city-state history as an insight into dwarven kingdoms.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

“I lift my lantern to get a better look” – famous last words from a CoC adventurer before they “Surfed the Shoggoth”.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Midgard manuscript for Open Design, but that’s work. I READ gamebooks for fun – the most recent being All For One: Regime Diabloque, from Triple Ace Games.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

There are a number of excellent artists currently working in the industry, but you dance with the ones that brung yah – In my case that's the TSR bullpen of Easley, Caldwell, Elmore, Parkinson, Butler, and Brom (Jaquays and Fields are part of that group as well, and while excellent, were not part of the “art room”). Imagine a team like that with Brom as the “new guy”.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

I have frightened people off the sofa.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

I run canned CoC adventures. The Beyond the Mountains of Madness mega-adventure was the best and most detailed.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

D&D – Big table, comfortable chairs, room for snacks.

CoC – Open room, easy chairs, low lights.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Dogs in the Vinyard and Avalon Hill’s Blitzkrieg.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and the Marx Brothers.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

Older, accomplished professionals. I don’t look for them – it just works out that way.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

Using knowledge of modern cities for 20^th Cent RPGs. Like explaining how our zombie-hunters get to St. James Cathedral up on Cap Hill with detailed street directions.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

I may be working on that one.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

I talk a lot with those who don’t play. My conversations come with annotations and footnotes.

More later,

A World Lit By Fire

2012-01-23T13:43:00.000-08:00


Typical Snowstorm in Seattle

For the past four days, Grubb Street has been without power. It went out Thursday morning, and stayed out until Sunday afternoon/evening.

Let me lay out what happened. Seattle expected a major snowfall event this past week. Despite all the panic in the media, it DOES snow in Seattle, about once or twice a year, just enough to snarl everyone. Usually this is a snow that melts in a few hours. This was expected to be major, upwards of 12 inches, and while it was not expected to last long, we cued all the attendant panicking.

And Tuesday night it started, but produced only about 4-6 inches. Major roads were turned into impromptu sled hills, work was canceled, and things were pretty good. The dumbest thing we saw was the local news time driving around in the snow, as the driver gives an interview on camera about how you shouldn’t be driving around in the snow and giving an on-camera interview. Warm rain was expected, and that would be the end of it.

But we didn’t get warm rain, we got freezing rain instead, which left about a half-inch of ice on everything, with another inch of powder on top of it, and at that point the fun truly began.

Grubb Street lost power about 8:30 Thursday morning. The local trees could not handle the weight and started shedding branches. On yards. On houses. On highways. Power lines came down. The small pines out front looked like very depressed nuns, shrunken in their places. The temple bell out front, on its unstable, hand-repaired wooden frame, withstood huge cedar branches coming down on all sides, without a direct hit. The air was alive with snapping branches and the distant thunder of exploding pole transformers. And everything went dark.

And we held up pretty well. Mind you, being hardy Wisconsin expats, we already had massive flashlights and numerous candles, and a wind-up radio my parents got us several years ago (yes, it has a crank). And we also discovered that multiple energy delivery methods were a good thing. We had lost power, but kept the gas, and we had a gas stovetop and a gas fireplace in the bedroom (newly replaced). And we had a wood-burning fireplace and a side yard filled with the salvaged debris from previous years of blown-down branches and trees. So the house chilled down, but it was not bad.

The cell phone network was patchy for the first few days, but the land lines lasted into Friday before succumbing. So that was covered as well (Internet and cable were still shot as of Sunday night). The full idea was multiple systems made it much more bearable when the electricity went.

The Lovely Bride went pretty much full Little House on the Prairie, heating washwater on the fireplace top (until we remembered we had a GAS water heater and it was unaffected by the blackout). Our neighbor loaned us a gasoline-powered generator he was using for an evening in an attempt to keep the fridge cold, but in the end we just moved everything in peril out to the coolers in the garage (and the brisket and other frozen meats kept solid). I cleaned up what I could but retreated to careful use of my iPad games (Tiny Towers, downloaded right before the storm) marshaled by computer battery to get work done, and used what sunlight I had to review hard copy. We sat in front of the fire and listened to jazz on the radio. .

And on Saturday, when the warm rain finally did arrive and most of the snow went away, I went to work, getting both a lot done AND recharging all my battery-operated devices.

And in the end, it worked out. Another two days would have been dire from the spoiled food and need for laundry, but in general its been a pretty good thing. We had the local neighbors gather out front as we cleared away some of the branches and chatted, and all ascertained we were in good spirits and health. Oh, and it will take a couple days for the waterbed to heat back up, but that’s small stuff compared to what a lot of people have gone through. All in all, we’re pretty good.

Thanks for asking. More later,

White Out

2012-01-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not talking about the upcoming Megastorm about to hit Seattle, but about SOPA and PIPA.

SOPA is a bill in the US House. It stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. PIPA is a similar bill in the Senate, and is short of PROTECT IP Act, which in turn is short for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Threat of Intellectual Property Act. I swear, there's a job in Washington for coming up with names like this to provide cover to bills like these.

I'd normally send you to Wikipedia to learn about these bills, but Wikipedia is down for the day, in protest. So are some other sites. And if you scan down this page, you'll see a whole lot of nothing (I hope - I just set the text to white against a white background). Because that's the direction these bills will take us.

These bills, despite their cute names, do not protect content creators, but rather further empower content owners, a different class of beast, and gives them greater control over the Internet you enjoy. So here's what you'll get once bills like these become law. A whole lotta nothing.

More (maybe) later,

Update: And we're back up. Future readers will wonder what this is all about, but for one day, I whited out all the body copy on my site in protest of a horrible pair of proposed laws - SOPA and PIPA (as noted above). Now, I was not alone in this - a few other sites like Wikipedia and Reddit went blank, along with a lot of personal sites. And the interesting thing was that the bulk of the sites doing this were content creators - supposedly the very people these laws were (on paper) to protect. Google gave a strong head-nod. Twitter and Facebook noted it all, but stayed open, allowing the entire 'net to compare notes.

And this thing is, it was fairly successful. A lot of congressmen came out against the bill. Some of them were the original backers. A couple admitted that they hadn't read the damned things but were assured that it would be a good thing. The president has come down on it. Not bad for a buncha nerds.

Oh, and the spokesperson for the Motion Picture Association of American, a former congress-critter himself, complained, without a sense of irony, that everyone taking their free information off the 'net was an 'abuse of power'.Like having ten films up for "best picture" isn't.

This isn't over - not by a long shot. They are already talking bout floating this bill later once the heat is off, or it showing up later under an even cuter acronym (Freedom Respecting Every Action and Knowledge). And our Supreme Court just declared that stuff out of copyright can regrow its copyright (though not necessarily under the original owners). There's going to be a lot more of this going on as we go forward. But for the moment, this has to go down as a win.

More (definitely) later

Top Ten List

2012-01-17T15:19:00.000-08:00

Beating the Late Show to it.

From the Home Office on Grubbstreet, here are the Top Ten things you're hearing Seattle natives talk about today (feel free to use a Letterman Voice to read this).

Number 10: Convergence Zone

Number 9: Microclimates. (Micro-climates. Micro Cli-mates).

Number 8: No, I'm sure a bus will be along at any moment, now.

Number 7: So, how do you put these chains ON?

Number 6: So, how do you get these chains OFF?

Number 5: OK, we're going to have a big snowstorm on Wednesday AND the Internet will be down? (Because, you know, Paul, Wiki and other sites are closing down to protest SOPA. SO-PA. Sounds like a Mexician desert treat).

Number 4: Meteorological cage match - Cliff Mass vs. Al Roker.

Number 3: Wait, wait, we have a Pro Football team?

Number 2: No, I'm sure a snow plow will be along any moment now.

And the number one thing you're hearing Seattle natives talk about today:

MEGASTORM!

(Thank you Seattle Times, for adding a new word to the Seattle repertoire. As if we needed one more word to describe the weather).

More later,

Meanwhile, back on Cap Hill ...

2012-01-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

It's snowing in Seattle.

More later,

Pouring A Horse From A Bottle

2012-01-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

The Four Accomplishments (SAM site)

This past weekend the Lovely Bride and I went to the SAM (Seattle Art Museum) to catch the last day of the Luminous exhibit of SAM's Asian Art. As many exhibits, it gave me a lot to think and reflect about, but for this essay I want to point out one piece in particular. This is a four-panel screen called "The Four Accomplishments" by Kanō Takanobu (Full screens shown right).

Now, you will notice that it is a four-panel screen. And it is called "The Four Accomplishments", and the text to the left of the art piece states that the four accomplishments are an imported idea from China to Japan of the period that defined a gentleman. The four accomplishments were calligraphy, playing go, playing the zither, and painting.

So your have four panels describing four accomplishments, you'd think there were one accomplishment to a panel. Right? And on the first panel I see caligraphy tools (ink stick, ink stone, burner, reeds, etc.) before a gentleman as a small child climbs around the furnishings behind him. The second panel has two men playing go, while a woodcutter pauses from his tasks and a woman sets out the tea. The third panel has a family patriarch playing the zither for his family (who have varied levels of interest).

Source: Susan A. Cole/SAM

And the last one has a man pouring a horse out of a bottle (see left).

OK, that's odd. You start at the left again. Calligraphy, go, zither, and pouring a horse out of a bottle. Go back and re-read the explanation for a clue. Look again. OK, there is a painting on the reed screen behind the calligrapher, so you have two accomplishments on one panel, and the one-to-one connection is not there. Now it is calligraphy/painting, go, zither, and pouring a horse out of a bottle. It is odd that a four-screen panel would not use each panel for a work titled (later, probably not at the time) "The Four Accomplishments".

Am I looking at magic? Is spell-casting a mysterious "Fifth Accomplishment"? It is a very realistic-looking horse. Was I having one of those weird Cthulhu moments, where an item in the museum kicks off a slow descent into madness?

And as I was watching, a young lady was explaining to her date about the piece. She seemed knowledgeable, so I asked her about it. She tossed out the idea that it was someone doing stage magic Indeed, the gentleman is pouring out the miniature horse for a small child. Another couple joined it, and expressed their confusion as well.

And I thought about it, and instead of stage magic, suggested puppetry. What we thought was a bottle was really a paddle for control of a lifelike horse. Still no mention of a fifth accomplishment, but it sounded like something that a gentleman would do when he is not playing go or operating the zither.

And these I do the research and this figure is described as "A Taoist Deity". Which takes me back a bit, because a) everything else in the piece seems mundane, and b) Most Taoist Deities (or "Taoist Deities") have particular icons attached to him, much like Western Saints (Catherine has her wheel, Chang Kuo-lao rides backwards on an ass). So if this is a Taoist Deity, which one pours a horse out of a bottle?

I'm going to go back to the puppetry explanation, but part of me really likes the "friendly wizard" idea.

More later,

Update: Ask the Internet and it shall respond. Josh Reyer writes in:

Regarding the "Four Accomplishments" painting. In Japanese the title
is better translated as "Zither, Go, Calligraphy, Painting, Sennin".
Sennin, called xianren in Chinese, were not deities per se, but
hermits who'd found the secrets of magic and immortality by esoteric
Daoist training in remote mountains. Basically, wizards. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sennin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_(Taoism)

So there we have it - the translated title sets us off in the wrong direction. And it is magic that we are looking at in that last panel. The Lovely Bride had a theory that the "Taoist Deity" mentioned was a the horse, and you have to pour him out of the bottle because you don't want a Taoist Deity drinking all your good liquor.

Thanks to Josh for the info!

A Game Divided Against Itself

2012-01-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of news on the 'net about the Next Iteration of D&D (WotC is not calling it 5E, even if the media and fans are, and I will support this view for as long a I feel like it). The coverage has been interesting, but one thing I've seen a lot of is that the legendary Edition Wars of 4E/Essentials versus 3/3.5/Pathfinder have "split the hobby".

To which I have to say - this is news?

Most of D&D's lifespan has consisted of D&D product competing against itself, usually (but not always) against other D&D product produced by TSR/WotC competing against itself. Here's a partial listing that comes to mind of the story so far:

Original D&D versus the various Basic Sets. What is now called Original D&D (the little books in the little woodgrain or white boxes) originally showed up in hobby stores and mimed miniature rules of that era in format, presentation, and structure. The various early Basic Sets (later subdivided as Holmes, Moldvay Basic, Basic/Expert) were flat boxes with more frontage, but started out with a limited number of levels (introductory crippleware, if you prefer). Those who were weaned on (O) D&D were a bit skeptical of these new kids with their easier-to-understand, more mass-market game (something you're going to see many times here). Only the extinction of that OD&D caused them to move on, and then to AD&D (see below).

D&D versus other FRPs - The Success of D&D brought about a small host of Fantasy RPG competitors, but let's keep this to the obvious D&D knockoffs. Some of these were attempts to improve/fix/expand the game game (Arduin Grimoire) comes to mind, while others were more about cashing in. The most notable of these were Mayfair's roleaids series, which not only used the D&D rules, but (through reasons I'm not sure of - I wasn't there at the start, but got sucked in over the years), could continue to do so, as long as they put something on the cover saying that TSR did not approve of them using those rules. Sort of a Bizarro license - they were allowed to publish, as long as it was clear the licensor had nothing to do with it. Some were good, many were bad, some were adventures written for conventions. Minor, but this continued into the 90s.

D&D versus AD&D - Most people know of the split between the Arneson/Gygax D&D and the Gygax only AD&D, which again, had its roots before I got to the company. For most of my (O)D&D gang, we made the switch over the two years of release of AD&D. D&D, at one point, was planned to be opened up into a wah-hoo over-the-top game (One of the older artists hit me up at a convention and wanted to know if I had known about it when I did Spelljammer). As it turned out, the version of D&D known as BECMI (Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters/Immortals) produced a steady expansion of rules into high-level play, an excellent one-volume Rules Cyclopedia, and a well-organized campaign setting called the Known World but eventually renamed as Mystara.

AD&D (1st Edition) versus AD&D (2nd Edition) - This split is not nearly as bad as you would think, in part because we made the case when we released 2nd Edition AD&D was more of a collection of "stuff that worked" from 1st edition, and existed in part to reduce the entire weight of what we were covering. (I joked at the time about how you needed your official AD&D fork lift to haul the stuff around. How little I knew then ...) Stuff went away and other tweaks showed up, but it was a relatively smooth transition. There were those who preferred 1st edition AD&D, but in those early Internet days, the conflicts between the two editions were minor.

AD&D 2 versus (AD&D Multitude of Worlds) - This is hailed as being a horrible, horrible thing by modern conventional thought, in that creating all these worlds thereby created too much choice, and spawned all of these smaller worlds that demanded attention and brought back limited results. Yet for a while, AD&D ruled the roost bycapturing and dominating shelf space and player mind-share. This was a time of the "Flavors of Fantasy" ruled the roost, and TSR attempted to be all things to all gamers by providing options. Looking back on this, I think it was a good move, and I learned a few things (but which merit a completely different post).

AD&D (1st/2nd Edition) versus D&D (3rd Edition) - This was a major break, the transition made easier by a change of management (and location) and a willingness and ability of the new guys to pillory the previous editions (Most of all the revised 2nd Ed of its later years). Those following previous editions were simply ignored for the new shiny, the idea being that if it was cool enough the old grogs would come back to the fold. The business plan did not care, to quote one executive 3rd". "If any player of 2nd Edition came over to 3rd.". We had T-shirts made mocking 2nd Edition weaknesses. And it was successful.

D&D 3rd Edition versus the OGL - The OGL, short for Open Gaming License, kicked off a glut of games from other publishers using the D&D Engine. Originally one of the in-house selling points for the OGL was that the smaller companies would pick up the small stuff - adventure modules and support product that would be of marginal profitability. What happened, of course, was that third parties launched full-fledged into hardbacks and full product lines, without the benefits of scale that a larger publisher provided. Note that while having a huge host of competing campaign settings and rules was a BAD thing for 2nd Edition, it was just dandy when those settings and rules were published by others. No, I don't get that logic, either.

D&D 4th Edition versus (3rd/3.5/Pathfinder) And this is the huggamugga you've heard about, the most recent of the splits, the great Edition Wars. 4E in many ways tried to launch the same way 3E did, but the fan base wasn't going to have it (making fun of the involuted 3E grappling rules didn't win any allies, even if it was true (and hilarious)). And furthermore, with the OGL, they could still have new products not controlled by the company holding the D&D name. As a result, D&D is supposedly broken between them. People playing different games with the same name is a problem.

And it may only be solved by (wait for it) a new edition.

Looking at the listing of the various internal conflicts above, I have come to the conclusion that D&D has always had self-created, often internal competition, and that this is a feature of the game, not a bug. And furthermore, it is a good thing. It creates a robust environment that can bring in new ideas. (Remember THAC0? That wasn't an in-house thing, but rather came from tournament games that needed to quickly figure its to-hit numbers). It allows for flavors of fantasy that reach out to many different styles of play. It provided growth and evolution of the game over time. And it allows the game to reach out to new generations through that growth, and those new players to take "their" version of the game to heart, as they know it is superior to all that has come before, and all that is to follow.

And those are good things, all in all.

More later,

The Magic Realm of the Talisman

2012-01-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

You know how some gaming blogs post long entries about game rules that only maybe THREE people in the world care about? Well, this is one of those...

Some from column A ...

New Year's Eve the Lovely B and I held a gaming open house. Friends came over, ate pizza, talked, and played some old favorite games with a new twist - Ticket to Ride with the Asian Boards, Alhambra with the first expansion, Citadels with the alternate characters. And my friend from the early days of gaming Steve Shafer brought over a true vintage classic - Talisman on a Magic Realm board.

Talisman was a board game from Games Workshop where you marched a unique character around a board, collecting life, craft, and strength to eventually get a Talisman and challenge the demon in the center of the board (there have been a number of editions, but we're talking the 1986 Second Edition, which is the classic one). Magic Realm was a hex-based game from Avalon Hill where you marched a unique character around various paths, gathering stuff until you ... well, I forget the ultimate goal. The short version of this is that back when I was just out of college ... oh, 25 years ago ...(and Steve and other friends were in Grad school for computing), we played a lot of BOTH games.

...some from column B.

Steve believes the mash-up of the two came from a gaming weekend in the mid-nineties of himself, Bob Chancellor, and David Lamb. The challenge was - Talisman had a wide variety of characters, a set goal, but the game length was interminable and the board was extremely repeatable (outer ring, then inner ring, then an inner sanctum). Magic Realm, on the other hand, had a great board (first use of hexes as the board, long before Settlers of Catan), but the rules were ponderous and clunky and set-up time interminable.

So they put them both together, and I am transferring the rules to this venue [and I am using bracketed text to handle stuff we learned as a result of the game on New Years' Eve or to clarify rules for people beyond our little universe]. I have sought to maintain the original language and formatting where I can. Here goes:

The Magic Realm of the Talisman

At Start:

[Divide the Talisman Character cards into Tough and Wimp characters] Tough characters are: the four Specials [(from the City expansion)] + Amazon, Astronaut, Astropath, Centaur, Chainsaw Warrior, Cyborg, Dark Elf, Elf, Gipsy, Gladiator, Highlander, Knight, Leprechaun, Monk, Ninja, Philosopher, Prophetess, Soldier, Sprite, Swashbuckler, Swordsman, Troll, Valkyrie, Warrior, Warrior of Chaos, Wizard, Woodsman, Zulu. [All others are Wimp characters - Hey, that's the terminology we used].

Deal 3 Tough character to each player. Player may choose one of these, or any Wimp character.

"Always Have Spell" status is evaluated at the start and end of the Player's turn. On each occasion, the player may first discard zero or more Spells, then, draws new Spells up to the indicated number.

The game is Talisman, but uses the Magic Realm board, a new set of hex feature counters, and slightly modified rules to accommodate the board. With these rules, on all the auxiliary boards (City, Dungeon, and Timescape), players who end their normal Turn on such a board immediately take one more Turn. [Maximum of one additional turn in this fashion per normal Turn].

[So what you need for this is: the hexes from Magic Realm;, the cards, characters, items, and spells from Talisman, along with any auxiliary boards you are using. You will also need 20 counters in four colors (we use blank wargame counters). There are:

4 Cave Counters, marked "C" on the back. The front of these counters are marked as follows;

6 Crypt

6 Mines

6 Oasis in Desert

6 Warlock's Cave

6 Woods Counters, marked "W" on the back The front of these counters are marked;

Black Knight on 1

Cursed Glades

4 Ruins

5 Ruins

Two counters (2) are marked "Forest on 1".

5 Mountain Counters, marked "M" on the back The front of these counters are marked:

1 Castle

Chasm on 1

Crags on 1

2 Hidden Valley

6 Temple.

5 Valley Counters, marked "V" on the back. The front of these counters is marked;

5 Chapel

5 City

5 Graveyard

5 Tavern

5 Village

Goal

To win the game, you get a Talisman, take it either to the Temple or Castle to have is "attuned" to you, and then take it to either the Mines or the Crypt and succeed at the die roll to cast it into the Abyss [Roll equal to or under your Craft or Strength on 3d6, depending on your location].

A Talisman can only be attuned to one character at any moment. It can be attuned to a different character at the Temple or Castle. attuning takes the place of encountering the Temple or Castle location. A character may have any number of Talismans, attuned or not, at any moment.

If you fail the die roll at the Mines or Crypt by 1, 2, or 3, you get teleported to a randomly selected hex adjacent to the hex you are in, and to a randomly selected clearing in that hex.

Movement

Movement is [on the Magic Realm board and is] from clearing to clearing along paths.

Cost is 1 movement point to enter a clearing, 2 to enter a Mountain clearing, 3 to enter a Cave clearing. You must use your full movement, unless you get stuck trying to enter a Mountain or Cave clearing [or are forced to move off the board]. Note that you might not be able to move at all, in which case you stay in your clearing and encounter it normally.

Horse, Mules, Etc. will go into Cave clearings at a cost of +1 Movement point [for a total of 4 Movement Points]. Unicorns will go OK [From the original manuscript: This rule is under discussion.]

If you Teleport using a Special Ability of your character, you choose the destination hex but must roll randomly to select the clearing you land in.

If you or a card are instructed to "move away" by d6 spaces (etc.), instead you roll to randomly select an adjacent hex, and then roll to randomly select your destination clearing in that hex.

A raft can be used to take you to any hex containing a dwelling; roll randomly to determine the clearing you end up in.

As you are moving, you can roll d6 ≤ Craft to discover a Hidden Path (brown) that connect to your clearing. If you succeed, you can move along it as though it were a normal path for the remainder of this Turn. Similarly, you can discover a Secret Passage (black) by rolling 2d6 ≤ Craft.

You may end your move in a clearing containing a Dwelling [even if your move would take you past it].

Board Features

"Woods" spaces are all clearing in Woods hexes. "Hills", "Fields", and "Plains" spaces refer to all non-Mountain, non-Cave clearings in Mountain and Cave hexes.

Normally, all clearings are "Draw 1 Card" except for clearings with special interpretations, which have that interpretation instead.

Enchanted Hexes

At the start of the game, all the Valley hexes are Enchanted to the Gray side; other hexes are on the unenchanted (Green) side.

After movement but before encounters, the moving character may enchant the occupied hex by rolling 2d6 ≤ Strength + Craft.

Each color defines a Region (for game purposes): Green (unenchanted, Gray, Gold, and Purple. Clearing in enchanted Border Lands are in one or another region; clearing in enchanted Crag are in the Gray, Gold, and Purple regions all at once. The entire City is in the Gray region; the Dungeon is in the Purple region.

All "Draw n cards" clearings become "Draw n+1 cards in the Gold and Purple regions; and become "Draw 0 Cards in the Gray region (excluding Crags).

Encounters

When movement ends, all face-up cards in the hex are considered to be in the clearing of the moving character, and are encountered according to the normal Talisman rules. When the character's Turn ends, any remaining face-up cards are placed in the hex.

Recall the Talisman rules" Face-up cards must be encountered if they are Enemy cards of its the clearing is "Draw n Cards"; otherwise they may be encountered instead of encountering the location itself.

~~In Mountain and Cave clearings, draw from the Tough deck, in other clearings, draw from the Wimpy deck~~. [Yes, we divided the Talisman Encounters Deck into Tough and Wimpy versions as well. If I ever print the house rules for that, I'll give you how we divided it. For this game it does not matter.]

[All face-up cards on the hex are discarded when a hex is enchanted or unenchanted. This does not apply to the Warp Gate (entrance to the Timescape board) or the Dungeon Doorway (entrance to the Dungeon).]

To get rid of the Poltergeist, you must cross any bridge (over or under). For other Followers that you cling to, you get rid of them at any dwelling.

There can be only one Dungeon Doorway on the board. If there is one, discard any others that are drawn and draw again.

The Archer, Bolt Gun, Etc. shoot in the current hex or an adjacent hex.

At Start

First, select characters.

Next, deal out the board tiles, and set them up according to the Magic Realm rules (start with the Border Lands; roads and blank hex sides must match; High Pass and Ledge [hexes] must have roads connection to both paths).

Place a Hex Feature Counter of the appropriate type, face down, on each hex (Note: High Pass [hex] is a Cave.).

Flip the Valley hexes to the Enchanted (gray) side, and reveal their Feature counters. The indicated clearing on these counters are the "dwellings". Other Feature counters will be revealed only when a character ends movement in that hex, or when needed to resolve a Teleportation.

Characters who start at a dwelling or on an auxiliary board are placed there; all other characters roll randomly for their start location (1: Chapel, 2; City, 3: Graveyard, 4: Tavern, 5: Village, 6 roll again)

Hex Features

Valleys: (These are the Dwellings.)

5 Chapel: Clearing 5 (or highest numbered connected clearing) contains the Chapel. At the Chapel, Good character may either be Healed free of charge back up to starting quota, or may Pray by rolling 1 die:1-4= Ignored, 5 = Gain 1 Life, 6 = Gain 1 Spell. Neutral Characters may be healed back up to their original quota at a cost of 1G per Life. Evil Characters lose 1 Life.

5 City: Clearing 5 (or highest numbered connected clearing) is the entrance to the City. [If you don't have the City expansion, if functions like the City square in the game]

5 Graveyard: Clearing 5 (or highest numbered connected clearing) contains the Tavern. At the Tavern, you must roll 1 die; 1= Miss 1 Turn, 2 = Fight a farmer (Strength 3), 3 Lose 1G, 4 Gain 1G, 5=May Teleport to any hex in this region on your next Move, 6= May Teleport to the hex containing the Temple on our next Move.

5 Village: Clearing 5 (or highest numbered connected clearing) contains the Village. At the Village, you may visit one of the following: Healer will Heal Lives for 1G each. Blacksmith sells Helmet 2G, Sword 2G, Axe 3G, Shield 3G, Armour 4G. Mystic, roll 1 die: 1-3=ignored, 4=If Evil or Neutral you become Good, 5=Gain 1 Craft, 6 = Gain 1 Spell.

Woods:

Black Knight on 1: In any clearing of this hex, roll 1 die; the Black Knight appears on a roll of 1. When the Black Knight appears, you must either give up 1G or lose 1 Life. On any other roll, treat the clearing as "Draw 1 Card" (with the usual modification if Enchanted).

Cursed Glades: All clearings in his Hex are "Draw 1 Card", but you cannot count any Strength or Craft points derived from any Object or Magic Objects, nor may you use any Magic Objects nor cast any spells.

Forest on 1: On a roll of 1 on 1 die, you encounter the F0rest (I.e. appears the same way as the Black Knight does in his hex). In the Forest, roll 1 die: 1=Attacked by brigand Strength 4; 2-3= Lose 1 Turn, 4-5= Safe, 6= Ranger give you 1 Craft. If you don't encounter the Forest, treat clearing as "Draw 1 Card". (Note: There are two Forest on 1 hexes).

4 Ruins: Clearing 4 (or highest number connected clearing) is Ruins: Draw 2 Cards.

5 Runes: Clearing 5 (or highest numbered connected clearing is Runes: Draw 2 Cards.

Mountains: (includes High Pass)

1 Castle: Clearing 1 contains the Castle, where the Royal Doctor will Heal you up to your starting quota at a cost of 1G per Life. Alternatively, if you have one more Talismans there, you may have them attuned to you. [despite all the notes above, this should say Clearing 1 (or lowest number connected clearing is Castle].

Chasm on 1: On a roll of 1 on 1 die, you encounter the Chasm. In the Chasm, roll 1 dies for yourself: on a 1 or 2, you lose a Life, and roll 1 die for each follower: on a 1 or 2, the follower is killed. If you don't encounter the Chasm, treat as "Draw 1 Card".

Crags on 1: On a roll of 1 on 1 die, you encounter the Crags. In the Crags, roll 1 dies: 1 = Attacked by Spirit of Craft 4; 2-3=Lose 1 Turn; 4-5 Safe; 6= Barbarian gives you 1 Strength. If not Crags, treat clearing as "Draw 1 Card".

2 Hidden Valley: Clearing 2 is the Hidden Valley, where you Draw 2 Cards.

6 Temple: Clearing 6 is the Temple, where you may Pray by rolling 2 dice: 2= Lose 2 Lives, 3=Lost 1 Life, 4=Lose 1 Life or 1 Follower, 5=Enslaved until you roll 4-6 for movement, 6=Gain 1 Strength, 7=Gain 1 Craft, 8-9= Gain 1 Spell, 10=Gain a Talisman, 11=Gain 1 Life, 12=Gain 2 Lives. Alternatively, if you have one or more Talismans, you may have them attuned to you.

Caves:

6 Crypt: Clearing 6 contains the Crypt. At the Crypt, if you have a Talisman attuned to you, you may roll 3 dice and subtract your Strength: ≤0 YOU WIN; 1-3=teleported to adjacent hex, 4-5=teleported to Warlock's Cave hex [if revealed, otherwise to City hex], 6= teleported to City hex.

6 Mines: Clearing 6 contains the Mines. At the Mines, if you have a Talisman attuned to you, you may roll 3 dice and subtract your Craft; ≤0 YOU WIN; 1-3=teleported to adjacent hex, 4-5=teleported to Warlock's Cave hex [if revealed, otherwise to Tavern hex], 6= teleported to Tavern hex.

6 Oasis in Desert: Clearing 6 contains the Oasis, which is "Draw 2 Cards." All other clearing in this hes are not Caves, but are actually Desert, which cost 1 movement point to enter and have the encounter "Lost 1 Life and Draw 1 Card."

6 Warlock's Cave: Clearing 6 contains the Warlock's Cave, where you may choose to go on a quest by rolling 1 die: 1=Kill (take 1 Life) another player; 2 = Kill 1 Enemy; 3= Deliver (discard) 1 Follower; 4 = Deliver 1 Magic Object; 5 = Deliver 3G, 6 = Deliver 2 G [What it fails to mention is that the reward for succeeding in the quest is get a Talisman]

David Lamb Rule:

In David Lamb's set, the 5 Chapel Feature is on a Woods hex, and there is only one Forest on 1 [I have no idea why this rule is here, other than maybe David Lamb's set is missing a Valley.]

© - Steve Shafer, David Lamb, Bob Chancellor, 1994 or so.

More later,

Politics: Reps as Dems

2012-01-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I've been putting off talking politics, keeping to some local stuff. But as things heat up for next election, where we're not only choosing a president but the entire Washington State government, we'll get more notes here. In this case, we're in that wafer-thin space between the last debate and the first primaries and caucuses. Most people haven't been paying attention, and we've already seeing dropouts even before the first vote.

Now, for those new to the 'street, let me be clear - I'm a leftie. You can call it progressive, but I will go with old-school liberal. Worse, I am one of the goo-goo types (goo-goo being short for good government, a Chicago term), who believes in seeking consensus and using process to advance your cause and honoring the spirit of the rule as opposed to just the letter. And while I am to the left of the current occupant of the White House (who will be his party's nominee, and as such is bad television), I still can see daylight between the two parties, even if I think both are being too conservative and/or corporate.

So I'm not going to concern-troll here. There very little that will make me vote for any of the folk running for the GOP position (yeah, I voted for Ford back in the day, but that was forever and a half ago, so calling me a former Republican is like calling me a former child). I would prefer to see a Republican candidate who, if elected, would do a good job as opposed to a nutter that hopefully be unelectable (though Americans are often punished by getting the leaders they deserve).

All that said, I think that the problem for the Republicans is that they are acting like Democrats. The GOP is supposed to be tight, small, organized, and heavy on message discipline. And most of all, following Reagan's Commandment of "Thous shall not speak ill of another candidate". This bunch? Not so much. In fact, it looks like they looted the political graveyards of previous Dem candidates in order to pull their gang together. I mentioned this four years ago, and it is even more clear this time out - I mean, look at the comparisons:

Romney - A Massachusetts, non-protestant who supports universal health care and is accused of flip-flopping on his nuanced views? Meet John Kerry.

Gringrich - A charismatic, intellectual populist intensely disliked by Washington and known for adulterous relationships? Why don't you just nominate Bill Clinton and be done with it?

Paul - Equal parts enlightened and scary with a good ground game and organization, passionate, young supporters, ignored by the mass media until they find the right tool to slam him? Say hi to Howard Dean.

Santorum - The political bad penny. Odious and sanctimonious, he leaves you wondering how the heck he keeps showing up at the weirdest moments. Assumed to be running for VP. When he grows up, he'll be Lieberman.

Perry - A tough one. But he was considered an obvious contender until he actually entered the race, upon which he was set upon, dismembered, and left for dead. Let's go with Bill Bradley or Mario Cuomo.

Bachman - There are candidates that are not running for president or to make sure their issues are heard so much as maintaining their brand, so that after the inevitable defeat they can appear on TV shows as representing a particular demographic. The Dem version? Al Sharpton.

Huntsman - The candidate that everyone supposedly loves, but has no chance of winning. And if he ever got over single digits would be immediately savaged. Treated as a punchline by the cogonesti. The liberal version is that perennial short straw Dennis Kucinich.

(Cain) - Already dropped - Complete non-politician with hardcore following and makes whacky statements - Lyndon LaRouche.

(Palin) - Never declared but made a number of headfakes, looked at as being the great hope who would ride to the party's rescue - Wesley Clarke.

(Trump) - Another one dedicated to his personal brand, willing to run a third party despite the fact that it would be ultimately bad for his side of the argument - Ralph Nader.

(Palenty) - Here's an apparently nice guy for a politician, but never really gets any traction, could be confused with most of the rest of the Senate. Gephardt. I mean Edwards. I mean Richardson....

What's missing from this collection? A centrist who gives a good speech. Of course, we already HAVE one of those running as the Democrat.

More later,

The Voter on the Borderlands

2011-12-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

So Washington State has announced its new congressional borders, with the introduction of a 10th district and a shoving around of most of the others. And I'm not quite sure where I belong yet, but regardless, I resolve to not be happy about it.

So here's the story of how this happens. We have a Census which determines the population. Then we have a team made up of Democrats and Republicans who are supposed to come up with new borders for the congressional districts - dividing Washington into ten equal population parts, since we just picked up a seat. Their deadline is the first of the year.

By the way, one of the things learned watching the Ken Burns picture on Prohibition is that the "Dry" forces successfully staved off reapportionment for six years after the 1920 census, effectively suppressing and under-representing the wetter, urban areas. So yeah, the whole redistricting thing is major. But I digress.

Drawing up the boundaries is a balancing act of multiple needs. Adequate representation is an ultimate goal. But each party wants to keep its incumbents safe. Individual politicians want to make sure that their house is in their new district (or that the house of a rival is in a different district, or best of all in the district of another rival entirely). Certain budgetary plums should be kept. And there is a desire for a majority/minority area, where there are not as many white folks (and to be honest, we have a lot of said folks in Congress already, and it really hasn't worked out that well). The end result has horsetrading, backroom dealing, inter and intra-party realpolitik, and once presented, no one is really happy with the result.

And that's the case for me, even though I'm not EXACTLY sure where I am yet.

According to the map from the paper and on the various sites, Grubbstreet is on the border between the 8th and 9th District. But map is of such a large scale that I don't know which side I would be on. Going to the main site requires Google Earth, which I am not putting on (if only because I put it one once, several machines ago, and had the devil of the time with it. It may have improved by now but I am resistant).

If I am on the 8th side, that would be sad, since I would condemned to have Dave "dances with the one that brung him" Reichert as my rep for as long as he wants the job. Mr. R has survived some close shaves (for an incumbent) for the past few elections, but as a result of this redistricting, he has lost the northern, more liberal chunk of his territory, and has seen his district jump the Cascades and include more friendly and conservative climes. Now freed of keeping his enviro creds up (he once told a bunch of supporters that it was all for show), it will be interesting to see how his views change. In an ironic world, he would get primaried by a Tea Party candidate that finds him too tree-huggery.

If I am on 9th side, that would irritate me as well, since the 9th is the "majority-minority" district, where the Caucasian population is only 49%. It feels partially like a self-esteem award and partially like a bit of political ghettoization. The Washington State nonwhite population is hardly monolithic in its voting habits and political views, and it feels like a lot of different goals have been shoved into one territory just for the purpose of political theater. Adam Smith is the Rep for this district, and he's also going to be around for a while.

So I am in one or the other, and each new district smells of sulfurous intrigue. My plan on how to handle the redistricting (and you know I would have one) would be to create a computer program that would start in one of the four (roughly) corners of the state and state counting people. Each time you reach a tenth of the population, you create a new district. Then you'd iterate the map so they would be roughly uniform in shape. You'd end up with four maps (one from each corner), and then vote on those maps. The areas might be funny-looking, but no worse than the gerrymander we currently see when we let politicians set their own boundaries.

More later,

Update: AHAH! I found a PDF on the state site which allowed me to definitely put myself in District 9. It looks like the eastern border of the district is nearby Soos Creek, which puts all of Renton and northern Kent in the 9th, and pushes unincorporated Fairwood over into the 8th. Have fun with that, guys.

Christmas Evening

2011-12-26T10:28:00.000-08:00


Photo by Sally Hutchinson (reflected in window)

More later,

Happy (D&D) Holidays!

2011-12-23T11:07:00.001-08:00

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the DM gave to me:
Twelve Greedy Players,
A Saturday Night Special,
Tenth level Dungeons,
Nine Ochre Jellies,
Eight Ogre Magi,
Seven Robbers Robbing,
Six Enchanters Chanting,
FIVE CUR-SED SCROLLS!
Four Hobbit Thieves,
Three Zombies,
Two Skeletons,
And a Kobold on a Golf Tee!
(Traditional, lyrics approx. c.1976, Purdue Friday Night Dungeon Group)

Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season from Grubb Street

More later,

Svengoolie and the New Digital Revolution

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

On to other matters. I am channel surfing last weekend and encountered Svengoolie playing a horror movie with a side order of bad jokes, and I am surprised, not the least because I am in Seattle and he is part of my Chicago area past.

Clear all Airlanes for the Big Broadcast! (WCUI/Jim Roche)

OK, backing up. Svengoolie, (better called Sven, and played by Rich Koz) is a horror host out of Chicago. I used to watch him on Saturday afternoon on WFLD, which we got up in Lake Geneva, back he was called the Son of Sven (because there was an earlier horror host named Svengoolie and ... yaknow, never mind). This time Sven turned up on ME-TV, which in Seattle is a small reruns station in the upper registers of the cable that showed up about a year ago.

And I got to thinking - where did this station come from, and why am I watching Sven in Seattle?

Part of the answer goes back to when the area (and a lot of other areas) went fully digital and dropped the analog (old rabbit ears) mode of transmission. Now our stations come through cable, with an added fee where it was once free (well, you had to get the antenna, but other than that, it was free, and what you got depended on the strength of the broadcast signal). But the other result of this change was the creation of digital subchannels.

Now this is the cool part. Programming that used to be coming through the airwaves now comes through digitally over the cable line. You don't notice the difference unless something fouls up, and you get this big grainy pixels. But as a result, you can ship a lot more info through the lines. The local broadcasters don't need to use all their bandwidth, and can now create new channels in their allotted spots.

Here's a partial local list - KOMO4, which is ABC, is also THiS Television (showing old movies). KIRO7 is CBS, but is also giving bandwidth to Retro TV (Old TV shows). Channel 12, KVOS is also MeTV (where I found Sven, but also has old TV shows) as well as KVOS2 (which is playing old rock videos), 22 KZJO ("Joe TV" - recent old TV shows) is also Antenna TV (Older TV shows), and while KCFQ (Q13 is Fox), which has Accuweather, but both 22 and Q13 are Tribune stations. the full list is here and contains some interesting connections. Oh, and all the parent channels have HD components as well.

So what do we take away from this? Well, despite the fact that we have more channels, we still see a lot of the same local guys involved in running the stations. But countering that, we see a sudden need for content. Cheap content. So we are seeing small, new, national groups that may turn into the next Nick (remember when they used to run old Dick Van Dyke shows?). So old repeats of "Too Close for Comfort" and "Peter Gunn" have returned.

And with it, ~~Son of~~ Sven (and Elvira as well, I have discovered in my digging - what's next, Rhonda from "USA Up All Night?")

Now this is the third time that I can point at where this sort of thing has happened (and by "sort of thing" I mean late night, hosted horror movies). Back when stations actually stopped signing off right after the late news every night, there was a demand for content. Late night programming thrived, and with it the Horror Hosts. Then, when we saw the expansion of cable options, we saw another rise, this time of the national movie hosts, the most prominent being Elvira and MST3000. Now, we're in the same place again - we have an increase in ecological broadfcast niches, and old movies (and old television, and music videos) have moved into those niches, like groundcover after a wildfire.

How it all turns out will be interesting, Late night "former broadcast" TV has mostly given way to (even cheaper) infomercials. The plethora of cable channels have gone through repeated material to generating original material. Will these new digital sub-networks create their own evolutionary path, forcing out the early pioneers into yet another incarnation? I dunno, but to be frank, for the moment is is good see Sven again.

More later,

Back Among the Deck Chairs

2011-12-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

(Yes, the title is a reference to ANOTHER Titanic/TSR joke among the employees. We had a lot of them, for some reason).

I hadn't planned on coming back to this particular subject so soon, but the Fates planned differently. My last post went a little viral between friends picking it up on the Facebook/Google regions and posting on industry discussion boards. Still, I felt I had advanced the idea of looking for root causes as opposed to merely bemoaning our lots in life.

And then THIS shows up on the 'net. For those not linking, it is an announcement that the CEO of Hasbro is getting paid $23 Million this year. And yeah, it is like pouring oil on troubled water, then tossing in a match.

Now, doing the digging in the article, the CEO gets a raise in salary from $1 Mill to $1.2 Mill (hardly chump change), and the rest being common stock. And to the best of my knowledge (the Internet will correct, of course), this means that it comes out of the company till - they are reassigning stock held by the company to the individual. And this assignment may have other strings attached - the stock cannot be sold except back to the company, it may only be sold at a particular price, it must be sold on leaving the company. So it is a fuzzy number, but a very large fuzzy number.

The article also makes clear that this is a retention payment, negotiated last year, to keep the CEO around. It also notes that Hasbro had a weak 2010 in sales (stock prices went up, though). 2011 is nothing to write home about (stock prices have since deflated) and 2012 is not shaping up to be any better (Upcoming big movie: Battleship). So this is not about performance, but rather about stability. This is payment for showing up.

What is important gets back to the idea of shareholders as being the ultimate measure of company success. By rewarding the management of the company with shares, they reinforce that mindset - increasing the net worth of the company (judged by stock price) also increases their personal wealth. Therefore decisions are made with more than a weather eye to how they will affect those stock prices in the near term as opposed to planning for a longer term.

This is a chosen and deliberate corporate mindset. The last time I was in Pawtucket at the Hasbro headquarters, several years ago, they had in the lobby a stock ticker showing the Hasbro share value running continually. This is a feature, not a bug, and informs on the rest of the decision-making involved.

More later, but hopefully not on this.

The Titanic Had A Band

2011-12-18T19:57:00.000-08:00

So Wizards of the Coast had holiday layoffs again. It is not a regular occurrence, though regular enough to merit mention here. (And by regular occurrence I mean they don't have layoffs every year at Christmas time, but they do manage to squeeze in a layoff or two every year or so, and do it between Thanksgiving and Christmas more often than not).

Go visit http://www.dorktower.com/

Some friends were let go. You may have heard of them, if you pay attention to that sort of thing.

But the question that was put to me was - how does this always happen at Christmas? (Or rather, how does it happen frequently enough at Christmas that a company now has Christmas layoffs as part of its brand image)? And for that, we should look to see how corporations work. This is not to vilify or apologize - we've seen enough of both on the 'net when this subject comes up, but to try to explain.

It starts with the budgets. Each department or suborganization in a corporation lays out its budget - how much it plans to be bringing in, and how much it pays for it. This goes into a major discussion, where people (usually not the same people as provide the initial numbers) finish out their final budget, which percolates back out to the other areas. The just who said they need X dollars don't always get X dollars. In fact, they get X minus Y dollars and a note that they have to produce more with less in order to keep the company healthy.

And part of it is that the corporation demands continued growth and profit. It can defer some of its growth for long-term development, or keep on an unsuccessful project that someone really likes, but really it boils down to guaranteed growth. And if you attain that growth, then they need to increase that rate of growth. And lord help you if you have a very good year - that very good year becomes the baseline for further calculations. In short, it is a vicious cycle.

So they pass out the budgets for next year and now the departments have to plan. Yeah, some of that planning involves going back and telling the guys with the budgets that this makes no sense and sometimes that works. More often it involves figuring out what goes overboard in order to jack up profitability.

Sometimes it is a new process that saves times or lowers cost of materials. Sometimes it is a new market that has been opened. Sometimes it is that "big hit" that suddenly arrives and surprises everyone (businesses actually don't like the "big hit" - it really screws up their planning. If they say you are going to lose 3 million this year and you instead MAKE 3 million, you make them look like idiots, and you will be punished accordingly).

But much of the time, it comes down to manpower reduction. Layoffs. And if you're talking about a creative industry with a in-house creative staff (a rarity, by the way), that will involve removing some of the same talent that has gotten you there in the first place.

In particular the old guys. Now, you will see early layoffs when companies get into this downward spiral where they lay the new guys off, the equivalent of eating the seed corn, But when you can lay one guy off instead of two, its a better idea. And ditching a veteran frees up more investment.

And for the long-term employed, here's the warning sign. After a slew of good reviews and standard raises, you get a warning flag. Nothing major, but a mild disapproval in your performance. Congratulations, you've gotten as much salary as they want to give you, and you have pitched over into a new box - candidates for dismissal. It is not even a case of what have you done for us recently; It is just looking at your cost as a healthy target to make the division more profitable.

And here's the thing about corporate life - the guys who set the budgets don't hate you (heck, they probably don't even know you) - they are just laying out the numbers. And the guy you're working for doesn't hate you (well, maybe he does - if you left him stranded by not refilling the coffee machine). No, he's just bound by making the best of a horrible set of choices. Someone has to go, and you're suddenly not an asset, you're an expense.

And this is one of the things about corporations you may have noticed. The blame is spread about. Nobody has to take the fall. Heck, your immediate boss may like you and think you're contributing, and STILL have to lay you off. Its just the numbers.

As a digression, one of the things I really love about losing your job in today's America is that "Your position has been eliminated". This is the corporate version of "Its not you, it's me." It's not like you haven't been doing your job or your didn't refill the coffee maker, it's just we showed up one morning, and your position? It's gone! Vanished! Gone in the night! And we don't hate you. We hate your job. You probably hate your job too. See? We're on the same side!

OK, fine, but why Christmas? Because corporations also drag their feet. Inertia is a powerful thing, particularly when you have do something rotten like deciding who gets shown the door. So things go through a lot more processes than they intend. So if your budgetary process starts in June with the end of Fiscal in December, and you try to find some way to make the numbers work without canning someone, you wait for it. Maybe things will work out. And when they don't you have to make the tough decisions late in the year. Multiply that desire and hope against all the layers involved in the task of removing people and you can see why it happens so late in the year. Merry Christmas.

What it all boils down to is a mistake at the very start of the process. The budgets have to work and the bottom line has to be determined. And all this has to make the shareholders happy. For the most part, these shareholders are faceless (and in the case of investment portfolios, inhuman) entities that supposedly only care about maximizing their investments. Actually, when you talk to THEM they never told anyone to fire anyone, either. They just want to get their money's worth.

So what needs to change (and I have seen it happen in places) is to not think about shareholders but about STAKEholders. These are the people with a stake in the company, which includes the monetary stake of investors the effort of employees, and the interests of consumers.In the hobby game market, you may not have a SHARE of WotC, but a fan of the games, you have a STAKE in WotC. You want to see it succeed. Oddly, so do the shareholders, management, and employees (See! We're on the same side!")

Now the whole argument of stakeholders versus shareholders is not a panacea. Instead it is a guarantee of ongoing discussion as all the contributors vie for the returns that they seek (investors want value, the employees want security, and the consumers want product, but this are very broad statements). It is going to be more of a rugby scrum than a stately procession, which bothers the hell out anyone who likes an organizational tree. But I think it produces a better result.

I have sympathy for those who were let go. For older creatives, this leave-taking comes with compensation, and enough time to figure out the next move (You have a new job - that job is finding a new job). In our field, you also get the joy of reading your own eulogies - people who have beating on you in the forums for years will suddenly pronounce you a genius. You get to walk around for a few weeks saying things like "Apres moi, le deluge", and "The living will envy the dead". And you get to engage in a bit of gallows humor (the title of this article is the answer to an old joke: What is the difference between TSR and the Titanic?).

But it really doesn't make up for the sudden lack of security, the absence of a long-term paycheck and health care. And as long as the dedication of any company is ultimately to its shareholders and its bottom line, its employees and other stakeholders who are left out of that calculation should treat it with the suspicion and wariness that its deserves.

More later,

Company Picture

2011-12-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

Here's the ArenaNet company photo. The stylish guy in the center rocking the black A.R.E.N.A soccer shirt is our boss, Mike O'Brien. I'm off to the right side, about three rows back, in the Hawaiian shirt. My eyes are closed from the flash.

More later.

Meanwhile, in the early 1600s

2011-12-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

Still buried, but that's no reason you guys should suffer. Here, have a rendition of "Who's on First" done in the Shakespearean fashion. It is written by Jay Leibowitz and David Foubert and directed by Jason King Jones. The video breaks up a bit at the end, but the sound is still good.

More later,

Meanwhile, on Cap Hill ...

2011-12-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

I'm very busy with a number of things, but offer this while I am wrestling with other commitments.

Original creator unknown, but the statue itself is by Daryl Smith. Thanks to Learsfool for sending this.

More later. No, really.

Play: Shaggy Dog Story

2011-11-25T17:17:00.000-08:00

Sylvia by A.R. Gurney, Directed by R. Hamilton Wright, November 11 December 11, 2011, Seattle REP.

I was listening to conversations at the theater before and after this play. Before the show, the guy behind me talking about Microsoft getting aced by Apple as an investment. On my left, my wife and her friend Patricia talking taxes, on the right a couple talking about a recent trip. That was before the show.

At intermission, and after the show, they were all telling dog stories. All of them. About their dogs, about friends with dogs, about memories of past dogs and about dogs last week. Because this is that type of play, a play that fires your own memories and ideas and everyone is a part of it. Even those of us who do not have dogs.

Sylvia is a four-actor play. Alban Dennis is Greg, who brings home a stay dog to his New York apartment. Mari Nelson is his wife, Kate, who has finally gotten the kids out of the house and has a plan for the rest of her life, one which doesn't include a dog. Darragh Kennan is everyone else (I'll explain the a bit later) who isn't a dog. And Linda K. Morris is the dog, Sylvia.

The play itself is a slender thing, little more than what I just presented, but it bounces along merrily, aided both by its stagecraft (furnishings sliding along a Magritte-shaded stage), and the effusive nature of the cast itself. Morris as Sylvia carries the bulk of the task, being incredibly dog-like, right down to a canine's mercurial temperament and lack of long-term memory. Actually, she's not playing the dog as much as the other characters' projection on the dog. We all anthropomorphize our pets, and part of Syvlvia's rattletrap nature is what her masters expect of her. But as dog or imposed representation of a dog, Morris bounces through the role.

Mari Nelson has a tougher road as the heavy, the Shakespeare-quoting wife who wants nothing to do with the dog. She doesn't have nearly so much to play with, and hers is the treacherous job of providing resistance (so as not to seem weak) without being mean. There a moments she seems to verge on full-fledged MacBethian cackle, but she redeems herself nicely. Interestingly, both Nelson and Morris were in Dancing at Lughnasa last season, along with two of actresses over in Circle Mirror Transformation. It appears that Dancing at Lughnasa is the Kevin Bacon play of actresses at the Rep.

I mentioned Darragh Kennan as everyone else. He shows up as a fellow "Dog-Guy" at the dog park, then transforms into a Lady Who Lunches, a malapropping friend of Kate's, upon whom Sylvia heaps embarrassment (and a cold, wet nose), and lastly as the ambiguously gendered psychiatrist brought in to deal with Greg's obsessiveness with his canine soulmate. He has the chance in the latter to go even broader than he does in the last, and should take it. Indeed, when dealing with a triangle, it is the supporting characters that can do the most work to convince the audience of the central figures sanity. These characters show there are crazier things than Greg and his dog.

Alban Dennis as Greg has a odd problem, in that I've seen and enjoyed the acting work of R. Hamilton Wright, who was the both the original Greg when the play first showed up as well as the director here. And as a result, I kept projecting Wright into the role. The end result makes Dennis' Alban seem too continually perky and mild in the part. Wright has the ability to work himself into a grounded, manic enthusiasm that the Greg portrayed here seems to lack.

The end result? Well, this is a holiday play, not that it's about a holiday, but it is a nice, comfortable piece of theater that doesn't put any great demands on the audience. It's the kind of play you can bring a theater-phobic relative to (particularly if that relative is a dog-person and can stand a cursing canine). I like the production and direction of Sylvia, but recognize the actors efforts better in CMT as being superior. But the writing is fairly innocuous in both plays, living in a very comfortable and innocuous space. An acting class versus a romantic triangle with a dog. Forced to choose, I'd go with Sylvia's writing, but only by a nose.

A cold, wet nose.

More later,

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles Part V (C)

2011-11-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Long Reach of Evil, Abominations of the Amazon by Mike Ferguson, an Age of Cthulhu Adventure from Goodman Games.

So, here's the last of the trilogy that makes up Goodman Games Long Reach of Evil project, and it proved to be the shootiest Cthulhu adventure I have ever run.

The good news with this one is that it bends one of the Goodman Games precepts. Yes, you are invited to a distant land. Yes, the person that invites you is dead/missing (but you have a chance of effecting a rescue). But the big difference is that the Cthuloid threat is not summoning an Elder Thing into the world as the big resolution. (Oh, yeah, grab that spoiler flag, will you?)

The individual that invites you to Peru is Professor Edwards, whom for my team I introduced at the funeral of Sam Avery way back in the Tibet adventure. Naturally, he's not there when you get there - he's gone on to the dig site where he is anticipating discovering the Treasure of Llanganatis. Of course, he and his team are overdue on their return (cue ominous music).

So you start in Iquitos, on non-Pacific side of the Andes, in the part of Peru that is Amazonian in nature. Our native Peruvian in the group (oh, you don't have one?) says that Iquitos has a reputation for alcohol and loose morals, but you won't get any of that from the adventure - it is just a launching point - you are supposed to get on the boat and go downriver after the missing expedition.

And the story of what the expedition was doing is a bit light as well. You have to take a boat to the expedition site, but the expedition is overdue, so why is the boat you are taking back in Iquitos when it should be at the site? Further, how does our guide, Ramon, know where we are going? If he was with the expedition, he would have fallen prey to the Cthulhlian minions. If not, then how does he know where he is going (the map, with a lot of arrows saying "Here's the treasure!" is sort of large-scale, as it shows all of Peru (sort of like finding your street address on a map of your state)). These are the sort of logic problems the GM needs to navigate around - I ended up describing a temporary camp on the river, and a destroyed base camp on the verge of the ruins itself.

And the thing of it is, it is not as if there is not room for this level of detail in the adventure. In these adventures, we go into a lot of history that the players may never see in play, yet skimp on the little stuff that helps build the reality of the world. Plus, inevitably, there is at least a half page of white space at the end of each adventure, indicating that the word count did not wrap up cleanly.

For once, there is no real problem with the maps and the handouts. They are relatively limited (a letter and a rough map on the handouts, a surface and underground map beneath), and are cleanly presented. For the surface map of the ruins, I would put in a place for where the players enter, but it is pretty intuitive it is from the west.

The biggest problem is the read-aloud text. This would be called "boxed text" in the old D&D modules, but is not boxed, but is rather in italics, and is supposed to be read or paraphrased to the players. Here's an example paragraph:

You've been walking along the jungle path for hours. The path is narrow, twisting, and dark - often, you see nothing but leaves and tree branches just inches in front of your face. You know that without a guide, it would be easy to become lost in the jungle wilderness. As dangerous as the waters of the Amazon River proved to be, you feel as though you may have been safer there. At least on the river, you could see where danger was coming from.

Now here's the thing - I (the GM) am telling you how you (the player) feel in this. Big sin. I can evoke mood or a response in my text, but I should never take over your PC to tell them what they feel, or make them draw conclusions. Players, being what they were, will react immediately in the opposite direction (and mine, coming from so much of the gaming industry, greeted the with hoots of laughter). Here's a better version:

You've been walking along the jungle path for hours. The path is narrow, twisting, and dark - often, you see nothing but leaves and tree branches just inches in front of your face. Without a guide, it would be easy to become lost in the jungle wilderness.

Also, the read-aloud text would tell you things your PC could not see at that moment. - If you read the text when you're close enough to see the human sacrifice, you should see the well in front of the sacrificial altar, but not the bones at the bottom of that well.

Also, also, if you're going to evoke the spirit of a foreign land and language, a pronunciation guide always helps, particularly if you're going to expect the Keeper to read the text without the Spanish-speaking Peruvian player breaking into the giggles.

There is also the, shall we say, ammunition-heavy nature of the game. There was no problem in this game that was not solved most easily and directly by a direct and intensive application of firepower. As soon as the PCs grokked the idea that their attackers were "not-quite-human" there was an explosion of gunfire at every opportunity.

And it serves to underscore that the combat system for CoC (and for Basic Roleplaying) is wonderful old school kludge. And I think this is why Call is so successful as an RPG while others using the same system seem to struggle -in Cthulhu, if you have to pull your weapon, something has already gone horribly, horribly wrong. Maximum rifle damage is equal to average PC hit points, and when you add bits like multiple attacks, increased chances to hit for point blank, and the dreaded autofire of a Thompson Submachine Gun, and you have a potential massacre limited only by the PCs own moral values and the amount of available bullets.

Mine you, a mobster with a Tommy Gun versions a saurian abomination did result in a dead abomination and a completely empty Tommy Gun. And our mobster, stripped of his projectile protection, started to get the shakes.

Our particular game was truncated by our archeologist, playing the consoles in the first room, through random pressing of buttons rolled randomly into the self-destruct button. That put a very short timer on any exploration of the underground, as they had to clear out as quickly as possible (they had also brought the sweaty dynamite down from the top of the pyramid and stored it by the main entrance, for additional explosive fun).

All in all, it was a averfage adventure. No one really discovered anything about what was going on, other than there were serpent men in those there pyramids. The rebel serpent man who could have "explained everything" was not found in the pell-mell search to find the missing professor and escape. As a Cthulhu adventure, it lacked the creepiness (that it tried to force in the text) but as an adventure tale, in the Indiana Jones school of archeology, it was OK.

Overall, the total Long Reach of Evil project was good, not great. The cold opening of Sumatra has stayed with the players, and that is their favorite adventure of the three. I felt the Tibet adventure was good, though Tatters of the King walked those lands more effectively. And Abomination was very much a D&D-style adventure that revealed some of the challenges in CoC/BRP combat.

More later,

Play: Group Therapy

2011-11-14T22:02:00.000-08:00

Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, directed by Andrea Allen, Seattle Rep until November 20th

Let me get to the point here: I didn't care much for the play, but the acting was amazing. And there will be a dissenting opinion.

CMT is an actor's play. That is both to say that it is about acting and actors, and that it is also a great opportunity for actors to act. As the former, it shows all the indulgent nature that makes me dislike plays about actors. As the latter it shines.

The setting for the play is the community center in Shelby, Vermont, which is to playwright Baker what Lake Woebegone is to Garrison Keillor. Five people are gathered together for a six-week acting class - Queen bee and instructor Marty, her understanding husband James, effusive new-to-town Theresa, wallflower teen Lauren and relationship wreck Shultz. And the acting class consists of acting exercises as opposed to reading and portraying particular parts. Now, acting exercises are all about making the actor comfortable with his body, with what can be done with it, and translating the natural of everyday life translate onto the unnatural of a stage with people watching. Acting exercises are also pretty silly-looking to the uninformed (a group including most of the rest of us). And the exercises here are live social grenades that, in the hands of an Albee, would kick off screaming fits. Over the course of the play you are sort of waiting for the screaming fits to set in, as many of these exercises kick off the internal response of "Oh, yeah. THIS is going to end well".

And things go about how you'd expect. Relationship wreck and effusive new-to-town get together, old marrieds fall apart, wallflower blossoms. And there is nothing wrong with all this, but it just takes forever. Portrayed in a series of blackout sketches over a period of weeks, you feel time crawl like you are, well, watching an acting class and waiting for the drama to really start.

This problem is the writer's domain, but is made even more excruciating by the director's pacing. Leisurely is a kind way of describing it. The long pauses, the interrupted conversations, the frequent black-outs, it feels like the writer and director are actually getting in the way of the play itself, preventing forward motion because otherwise, things would wrap up too swiftly. Keillor keeps his radio bits to about twenty minutes. At two hours, the play feels thick and ponderous (and the play lacks an intermission because there is no Act 1 cliffhanger, and polite escapees among the audience are thereby foiled).

The actors, though. Ah, the actors. Michael Patten as Shultz is freaking brilliant in his slack-jawed thoughtfulness, a deep and real portrayal - yeah, I know this guy. Heck, there are days I've BEEN this guy. Anastasia Higham as Lauren is amazing as well, and for all its sins, the play has to be commended for taking the time to let her move out of her shell and become the center of the play itself. Of course, you're still an hour in while she's bunched up in a fetal squat as the others carry on, but her blossoming is one of the things that makes this a comedy (in the classic sense - with a upbeat ending).

This is not to slight Gretchen Krich as queen bee Marty, a woman looking for activity in her life, and Elizabeth Raetz as the larger-than life former actress, who holds the fort as the center of attention before acceding it to Lauren. And Peter A. Jacobs as the husband James, obviously the guy who was dragged into this and is being supportive, hits a lot of the right notes. All three sell us on very real, very human character- they are actors portraying people who are learning to act, and you can feel their diverse reasons and emotions.

Now, as mentioned at the start, the theater department at Grubbstreet is in dispute about this play - the Lovely Bride thought it was brilliant throughout, and gave it a (one-person) standing ovation at the end (yep that was her). She felt that this was an accurate portrayal of life - how is lingers, waits, and moves forward in stops and starts. I agree that it does all that, but disagrees that such a portrayal is good theater. We are agreed, however, that the actors are just bloody brilliant, and we both want to see them all again.

More later,

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles Part V (B)

2011-11-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

The Long Reach of Evil, The Fires of Sumatra by Richard Pett, an Age of Cthulhu Adventure from Goodman Games.

This is part of the continuing reviews of the Goodman Games The Long Reach of Evil product. The product is broken down into three adventures, each by a different author, so it really merits three separate entries. Now, I tend to review stuff that I've played/moderated, so such reviews take a while to move through the entire pipeline. And as always, here be spoilers.

The basic pattern of the Age of Cthulhu adventures goes as follows - you are summoned to a distant location by someone who will probably not be alive when you arrive. There you find something squamous and rugose, usually in the department of people summoning an Elder Thing. Rinse, lather, and repeat.

And that's pretty much what happens here. But what makes it cool is the cold opening (unfurl that spoiler flag, willya?). You can start the adventure in media res, with the protagonists waking up in a cave, having been infested with a nasty little spell by the bad guys. Said nasty little spell puts a sense of urgency as the play unfolds, as does the big empty space it creates in everyone's memory. The adventure does provide the option of running the initial capture, but that really consists of throwing ever-more-difficult challenges at the player until they at last succumb to the inevitable and start the adventure proper. In my opinion, go with the cold opening.

Since my group consists of long-standing players - the mobster, the writer, her subject, the photographer, the archeologist, and Thurston Howell the Third, the cold open was a bit of a shock, and gave them a lot of drive to figure out who is behind this and, more importantly, how to get rid of those pulsing cysts all over their bodies. Oh, and filling in the hole in everyone's memories. Oh, and getting their stuff back. Those are good drives as well. The cold opening in cave gave them a LOT of motivation.

A note about the cave - the opening throws in some NPCs who were kept there by the cultists. There were five people also in the cave besides the PCs, driven mad by their own mystic infection. That's good for showing the results of what the players are confronting, but once introduced, these NPCs are never mentioned again. Are the players responsible for them? What should they do with them? What happens when they do an autopsy on one of them? I reduced the number to three, used one to show why you don't attack the initial monster, and had the second one kill the third one and threaten the party in the back of the cave.

Oh, yes, one more thing. The cave has camping equipment that includes paraffin. That's a British term for kerosene. Sweet, flammable kerosene. I had forgotten that, but my Brit-based players caught it immediately.

Once they flee the cave and reach Panang, the adventure needs some filling out. What is there on the city is a bit light, and the characters did some of the things the adventure anticipated (checked out the port of entry, went to the local hotel, where they pretended they had already checked in to see if they HAD checked in). But the adventure did not do a lot for some other options, like hitting the local bank to try to draw funds, or the telegraph office, or finding a doctor, or, most importantly, what it was like on the street for little matters like clothing and food (thank you, Wikipedia for filling in a lot of the bits, particularly on rendang and street vendor culture). They attracted enough attention to flag both the bad guys responsible and the local rebels, the latter of which is a good thing for their continued progress through the adventure.

The most frustrating thing is that they never get a handle on who and what they are fighting. Half of the named bad guy NPCs are never properly introduced, so the heroes are referring to "Guy with thick glasses" or "nervous German guy". Worse yet, in the overarching aplot (Spoilers flag waving around frantically), the cultists are trying to summon one entity, but end up summoning another. Short of a strong knowledge of the Mythos ("Say, that doesn't LOOK like Cthugha"), that little plot point is lost on the players. Which is a pity, since the ultimate big bad has a pretty cool concept and look.

The maps are maddening even by Call of Cthulhu standards. The hotel map cannot be navigated, and the plantation map's room descriptions do not line up with map key. Oh, and if you say in the text that they ultimate monster appears at location "X" on the map, it behooves you to bloody well put a bloody "X" on the map.

The handouts for this adventure were minimal and could be done away with entire, which is a good thing, since for this adventure supposedly set in the 1920s, the summoning telegraph is dated August 27th, 1883 (and yeah, Krakatoa fits into the adventure, but not here). That seems to give the tip-off that the adventure was originally created for another time period and then ported over to here.

In the end, The Fires of Sumatra requires a lot of GM/Keeper flexibility to handle things not covered in the text (and deal with those awful, awful maps), but has a great hook in its cold opening, which proceeds to drive the PCs forward (as well as slowly driving them mad). It feels like a good convention module that is trying to expand its wings, and only partially succeeds.

More later,

After Action Report

2011-11-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

Back from Paris, currently wrestling with a nasty cold. However, let's take a look at the remains of the election.

In the Puget Sound area, it was a good time to be an incumbent. People in office tended to stay in office. An exception was the head of the Seattle School Board, who was replaced with retired teacher Marty McLaren. The Seattle Times feels that this is not due to the lack of leadership or attention of the school board for all its recent scandals, or a solid and rational ground game by the challenger, but rather those darn unions (I swear, the Seattle Times is so darn CUTE sometimes).

Onto the initiatives. I-1125 (the Eyeman one) went down in flames, not getting enough support from the rest of the state to overwhelm the deep hatred of it in vote-dominant King County. If I-1125 was a movie, it would be one of those Uwe Boll clunkers. the ones that come out that everyone wonders how a movie this bad got made. And in fact, like Uwe Boll movies, the movie is not the reason for the project, but rather the deal to MAKE the movie. And once the deal for this initiative was made to draw off huge sums of money to launch it, really winning the initiative was besides the point.

If I-1125 is a Uwe Boll movie destined for perpetual repeat on the Syfy channel, then I-1183 (the Costco one) is the too-big-to-fail blockbuster that had star power and huge press going in. And like the blockbuster, it had its great opening weekend, carrying handily to allow the poor, impoverished big box stores to market megaliters of Jack Daniels. The deal won't go down for another six months, so we're about a year out before we start seeing the articles about what went wrong with this plan. For the moment, the Times feels we need to make the change immediately! The people have spoken!

(Actually, the Costco initiative not only shows that our initiative system can be bought, it sets a price tag on it - $33 Million (22 from Costco, 11 from the Beer and Wine lobby opposing it). Now we just need an initiative saying that you can pass your own law for $33 Mill, and leave us middle-men voters out of the process entirely).

And then there is I-1163 (the care workers one), the quiet indie picture that pops up, grabs the awards, and then disappears again. Lacking the hoopla of the Costco and Eyeman amendments, it coasted to an easy victory. Of course, the Seattle Times scolds that we don't have the money (having just sold off all our liquor stores) and we should ignore this. The people are fools! (Like I said, the Seattle Times is SO CUTE in its lack of self-awareness).

The Resolutions passed without any problems, and while it is nice to be asked, this is the sort of thing that is the second feature, the lower billed, less talked-about film. Nothing big on those ones, and no surprises.

So that leaves us with election 2011, the offist of the off-year elections. And now begins the slouching towards 2012. Oh joy.

More later,

DOW Breaks 12,000!

2011-10-28T02:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am still on the far side of the world (or rather, all y'all are the ones on the far side of the world), but I am still paying attention, and note with my clockwork precision of another milestone in the Fantasy League known as the Dow Jones.

Now the official economic news is filled with how this is tied in better economic forecasts for the states, or the settling of the problems facing the Euro over here, but we all know that it is because there is a large group of people down the street from the markets who are protesting hard and heavy against economic injustice. And as a result, the guys who normally make their daily bread pushing around stacks of money have to look busy and productive for once.Because, you know, they just can't go out to lunch in the park anymore.

If Occupy Wall Street keeps up, we may hit 13k by Christmas.

More later,

Election

2011-10-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

So here's the deal, folks. I'm going to be on the road for the next few weeks, and my posting during this time will be erratic at best. Which is a problem since this space often goes into mind-numbing detail on the various elections. So I'm telling you right at the outset, that you're not going to see a lot of that this time around.

Which is a pity, because this year's off-off-year election has a lot of the meat and potatoes of government. City council members. Schools boards. Medical commissioners. County Offices. Local things. The guys who are going to do stuff that you're going to gripe about two years from now.

So I am going to cover here the stuff that has the maximum bandwidth - the Initiatives and Resolutions that everyone is going to have to vote on in Washington State. For the rest, I point to the usual suspects - The Muni League, the Stranger, the various smaller blogs that cover this stuff, and the Washington State and King County Voters Guides. And the Seattle Times as well, with a larger than normal chunk of salt applied - They spent the past three months pointing out how fouled up the Seattle School Districts are, pointed out how incurious the school board is in the matter, then proceeded to endorse all the incumbents (because, yahknow, stability is more important than curiosity).

OK, without going on too long (too late), here are the big things this year.

I-1125. This is this year's Tim Eyeman initiative. There always is at least one, and is usually notable for a) promising the voters a pony, b) screwing up government, and c) having consequences they don't tell you about. The "pony" is restricting tolls, like on the 520 bridge ( I know, how dare we put a toll on a bridge that we built in the first place with tolls). The screwing up is keeping government from moving construction funds around to needed areas, making them less responsive. The consequences are to kill the idea of light rail mass transit across the lake, since you can't toll concrete roads to pay for mass transit. That last one is why most of the money pushing this idea comes from Kemper Freeman, a big real estate wheel in the trans-Lake Washington region, who is desperately afraid that the people of Bellevue, confronted with cheap mass transit, will go somewhere else than his expensive malls to shop. The stench wafting off this is palpable. Lets go with a big NO on this one.

I-1163 - This one is a good idea in a bad year. Let's have training for the care workers for the elderly and disabled. When they are not talking about how the school board has screwed up, the Times also carries a lot of stories on badly trained or criminal caregivers. Then of course, they DON'T support this initiative, because the state is tight with money right now. So sorry, old folks - we don't love you enough to actually PROTECT you or anything. Maybe when things pick up, so keep in touch. I, my goo-goo heart aflutter, strongly support YES on this.

I-1183 - Last year, we had TWO initiatives that involved privatizing the State Liquor Stores. Both claimed to be the absolutely BEST deal possible for the state. They were voted down. Now, a new version of one of them has popped up, with an EVEN BETTER Best Deal Possible for the state. This is the Costco-backed version, which will allow hard liquor sales in stores of a particular minimum square footage (square footage that Costco has in abundance - Quelle Surprise!). The side opposing the spread of alcohol has a lot of funding from the beer and wine distributors. Wait, what? See, if this goes through, then beer and wine will be fighting for that same square footage in the store as the hard stuff (unless they take out the bakery, and you DON'T was to mess with the baked good lobby).

On this initiative, though, my conservative roots start to show through. I kind of LIKE to have an inefficient specialty store with tight regulations and a bureaucratic burden on top of it that throws a lot of money to the state that I don't pay unless I want to get sloshed. I think liquor restrictions are a pretty good thing - I don't think of Jack Daniels as an impulse buy, and if I get to the point where the local distributor knows me by sight, I may need to cut back a little. Plus, I'm from Pennsylvania, and they wrote the BOOK on badly managed, corrupt, lousy State Stores. And Washington State hasn't seen anything of that stripe, so its not like they're doing a particularly bad job as my barkeep.

Further, has there ever been a case where privatization has helped the stakeholders of that good or service? I don't mean shareholders (the guys who make the money, and Costco just jacked up its membership - you gotta pay for all this democracy somehow), but rather the stakeholders, a group that includes employees, customers, and communities. I've drawn a blank, so despite my budding alcoholism, I have to vote NO on this one (and wait to see when next year Costco brings us and BESTEST OF BEST Deal possible).

Resolutions in Washington State are legislation that changes the state constitution, which then needs to be approved by the general populace. Sometimes they are just cleaning up language, sometimes they are more important.

SJR-8205 concerns the the length of time voters must reside in Washington to vote for President and Vice President. AHAH! It is one of these laws manipulating the rules to reduce voting that you hear about in all the GOP-dominated state, keeping people from voting! Uh, not quite. Actually, in Wash State you have to live here 30 days in order to be able to vote. But you have to live here 60 days to vote in national elections. This resolution makes it all the same - 30 days. That's it. Yep, it makes it easier to vote and brings everything in line. Nothing to see here. Vote YES.

SJR-8206 involves the "rainy day fund", which is money put aside from the budget for times when the economy craters (like, um, now). This measure makes it possible to jack up the amount deposited in boom years ("extraordinary revenue growth"), and provides rules about taking it out ("Budgetary emergency", State employment growth below 1 percent, or we get too much money in the account). It's all not bad, but it really is a bandaid. Washington State relies on its sales tax, so in good times we boom and in bad times we have to make those hard budgetary decisions that result in bad roads and crappy schools. What we SHOULD be voting on is a more stable form of revenue, some sort of TAX on the INCOME, perhaps,and ditching the state sales tax entirely. Still, I'm going with YES on this one.

Those are the biggies. Best of luck with the rest, stay informed, and make your voice heard. More later,

Play: Send in the Clown

2011-10-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

Humor Abuse, created by Lorenzo Pisoni and Erica Schmidt, directed by Erica Schmidt, Seattle Repertory Theatre until 23 October.

The Lovely Bride and I have season tickets to the Seattle Rep, and for many years support they sent us a discount card, in the hopes we would pass it on to someone else, who would then enjoy a play and thne get wrapped up in the whole theater thing. And I gave the discount card to a friend, with the warning - the first show is a one-man play, and those are always iffy propositions.

I speak from experience. It could be the fact that the pressure is on one set of shoulders that provides a heavy load. And while a one-actor wonder can be truly wonderful (K of D, last year), or thoughtful (anything by Mike Daisey), it can also be pretentious ((Texts for Nothing, which occurred before I started blogging in this space) or just godawful (Thom Paine). So knew of which I spoke.

However, waiter, I am ready to order - The crow special looks very good, but I think I will start with my hat. Oh, and could I have a slice of homemade humble pie on the side?

Humor Abuse is a funny, warm, enjoyable, one-man show about a boy who ran away from the circus. It is Lorenzo Pisoni's autobiography of his life growing up in the Pickles Family circus, and his relationship with his father Larry. Now it is the clowning that gets you in the door - for a man who at the outset claims to not be very funny, Pisoni is hilarious as he moves through his father's routines and his own. But you stay for Pisoni's own story, of joining the act, staying with his father, continuing with the circus after his father was asked to leave, trying to escape form that past, and finally coming to terms with it.

The Pickles Family Circus was a small west coast operation of the 70s - more kin to the later Soliel than child of Barnum and Bailey. The Pisoni humor is physical, and more in the domain of painful pratfall than smiling laughter. The younger Pisoni's training was along the lines of learning how to fall down the stairs than delivering a pie. The clowns of this era (Bill Irwin was part of the gang) are more existential than funny. So the Pisonis were dealing with the humor of frustration, punctuated with the very real chance of personal injury.

I always take after the Rep-style theaters when they do one-person shows in that they don't by definition use local actors, one of the purposes of a Repertory. Well, we've seen Lorenzo Pisoni before, both as the Gatsby in the Great Gatsby, and as Jeff Ablom's schuck persona in Tuesday's at Morries. So we know he is an excellent actor to begin with. What we didn't know is the strength of his physical acting. And, the fact that he is that as a humorless clown, he is hilarious.

The performance moves through quickly, and if anything, I want to know more about Pisoni than I want to see his acts by the end (and his clowning is very good). Not only did the audience give him a standing ovation at the end, but they also stayed for slide show that was playing as they left. The slide show was supposed to play as they left, sort of end credits. And they stayed, unsure if things were really over.

Well done. Well worth seeing. More later,

Under Kandorian Skies

2011-10-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it is irony when it takes me longer to tell you about the vacation than it did to experience it. But that's what happens when you have a lot of plays involved.

So this is closure, wrapping things up. We left Ashland, stopped in Portland overnight, and then headed up the Columbia Gorge to Marysville, jumped over the border into Washington State, stopped for dinner in Yakima, then home in the evening. The end.

That IS a Doozey!

Oh, all right, the details. In Portland we stayed as the Modera, a small downtown hotel reimagined for an upscale crowd - the rooms are small but original art is everywhere, and the central court is dominated by a green wall of plant cover. The afternoon was spent at the Portland Art Museum, which had a nice permanent collection within a pair of already-existing buildings, creating a large number of cul de sacs and side rooms. Three Monets, four Rodans, a John Singer Sargent. A very nice collection, and if you haven't been, you should go. The interesting thing was a temporary show of "the Art of the Automobile", which translated into classic cars parked throughout the main gallery. Things like Steve McQueen's Jag, a Tucker, a Corvette Sting Ray, and my personal favorite car of all time, the 1931 Duesenberg (where you get the phrase"That's a Doozey!")

You hear that Portland is a younger and more vibrant town than Seattle, and its downtown has much to recommend. The hotel was awash in young artistic professionals, and walking back from dinner, we passed a group playing D&D on the porch of a game store while a young lady was parked under a lampost using the wifi. In downtown Portland. OK, I can get with it.You're younger and hipper than us. That's cool.

Kate's favorite modern art piece

The day following Portland was a day of hits and misses. We got to the Portland Rose Garden, which was all in bloom. Kate enjoyed the foliage while I considered the idea of roses as genetic intellectual property, and the huggamugga a few years back about patenting a life form. But we missed the Tea Garden. We drove up the gorge to a beautiful overlook to Vista Point, a thirties-era project that looks from afar to be something that escaped from a GRRMartin book, but could not find anything of Maya Lin's Confluence project, which is being developed along the length of the river. We got to Marysville and toured around the great Stonehenge there , but did not get to the museum there because we took the "historic" road up to Vista point, turning a 2 hour trip into a 6 hour one.

Vista Point, with wildfire.

And all under a strange red sky (hence the title of this entry). Oregon was on fire, or rather a chunk of it to the west of Mt. Hood. From Portland it was a grey line across the sky, like a belching smokestack. First I thought it pollution trapped under an inversion, but as we climbed beneath it, we discovered that the ground beneath our feet turned red from the scattered light, and our shadows were strange and shifting. It was a subtle shift as we moved through the waterfalls along the gorge, and gave the sidetrips and small hikes we made a strange quality of another world.

Oh yeah, waterfalls are all along the south side of the gorge, with walks of various length to get there. Personal fave was the Bridal Falls. The Multnomah Falls is higher, and closer to the main road, with the sad result that it was mobbed by other tourists, and parking was a pain. So if you walk, take the long road and hit the smaller falls for a better experience.

The Marysville Stonehenge

Oh, and the Stonehenge (having seen the original in England). It was created as a war memorial for local WWI vets by Sam Hill, whose tomb is nearby. The intent was to underscore that we have not advanced that far since the savage days when the original was set up. Mind you, this new version was a) built with concrete as opposed to individual stones, b) was set up to be what they thought the original "fixed" original arrangement of the henge was, and c) not oriented to the stars like the first one, because at the time they did not know about that feature. But the thought is good.

The end result of all this was about three weeks of extremely upbeat work, almost to a manic point. I was hopelessly aware that I was MUCH too much in a good mood upon my return, and had to back it off a few notches lest I frighten friends and co-workers. But it was so good to take a real vacation. I really should do it more often.

More later,

Muppet Link

2011-10-01T10:12:00.001-07:00

Busy this weekend. Have some Muppets.

More later,

Play: Julia Caesar

2011-09-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, directed by Amanda Dehnert, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, through November 6.

So, back to the Bard. And that makes it a return to the New Theater at the OSF in Ashland. This time out, the theater has been reconfigured into the truly theater-in-the-round that showed off both venue and the performance better. Adding back one side of audience removed much of the problematic blocking experienced earlier in Ghost Light and replaced it with a bare bones, fully voiced, well acted style.

You know the play, or rather you think you know the play. Caesar applies for the gig of "Emperor" and gets offed after delivering the "et tu, Brute" line, and then the conspirators meet a bad end. But the tragedy of Julius Caesar is really the tragedy of Brutus. Caesar, like Henry IV, does not survive his own play, though this presentation keeps the leader onstage (Caesar appears only as a ghost to Brutus once in the official text) as mob justice is dealt out.

The gimmick that is to be had in this production is that Julius Caesar is a woman. I speak from some authority when I say that changing the gender of a character in the process changes all relationships, even if the lines remain but the same but for a twist of pronoun. An opening sequence in which Caesar talks about the touch of the racers of Lupercalia curing sterility reads as a male Caesar's weakness in the face of Fate in the original, but here has a cougarish twist to it. Later scenes that talk about Caesar's vulnerabilities are for a male Caesar indications of mortality, but for a female Caesar simpler weakness.

Caesar is not the only gender-swapper here. The huge number of players are handled by an entourage, and the players, male and female, move easily between multiple roles, underscoring that in this play of Fortune, they are replaceable parts. So this Caesar's Rome is an equal-opportunity tyranny, with the main supporting roles tacked down for a handful of players. This mutes the effect of a female Caesar, in than we have female senators, soldiers, and citizens as well.

Vilma Silva is wonderful as Julius Caesar, engaged and active when alive and icy as a ghost, but the meatier party is Jonathan Haugen's Brutus. Centuries of equating Brutus with "brute" hides the fact that Brutus is the smartest and most ethical man in Rome. He is the one who the conspirators seek out, for his good name provides them cover for their deed, and even after, he continues to pursue the ideal as opposed to settling for the realpolitik. Gregory Linington essays Cassius with a East Coast wit and acerbity, and Mark Anthony is portrayed by Danforth Comins as a trickster god, and you can see him bobbing weaving as he seeks to turn the assassination back onto the assassins.

And then there is the mob. When coming into the theater, the players are milling with the patrons (I caught this, but the LB did not). Then Silva calls the group to quiet and leads the audience in cheers. In doing casts the audience in the role of the mob, the Roman populace that turns from Pompey to Caesar to Brutus to Anthony. Showing the mob to be fickle and easily moved, this simple conceit makes the audience complicit with the crimes of the play.

It is, all in all, an excellent production, but I will pick at a nit. The play takes place not in Rome, but in a land and era I call "Shakespearea". I have seen Shakespeares set in the 1600s and Shakespeares set in the time period set by the play and modern Shakespeares and 1920s Shakespeares. Productions like this one are set in Shakespearea are a strange melding of eras that produce its own reality. The text may belong to Shakespeare's time, or try to portray the late Roman Republic, but the costuming is quasi-modern with kilts and camouflage and commando pants and black berets. The military uniforms belong to some unspecified army and era that distills down the nature of the military without belonging to any particular force. Caesar's wide-lapeled cloak (used to great effect, literally waving the blood shirt) looks like it had be looted from the wardrobe department of Dr. Who.

But that is a small nit, and one that this production is not singular in committing. It is an excellent production and my second-favorite of the trip (the first being "Pirates"). Well worth seeing.

More later.

I Haz Cover!

2011-09-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

The cover to Scourge, the Star Wars novel I occasionally talk about in this space, has been unleashed on an unsuspecting world, along with an official ship date of April 24, 2012.

It is a very dynamic pose, and step away from a traditional look. I'm kinda excited about the whole thing.

More later.

Your Strange Art Link of the Day

2011-09-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

Busy with other stuff at the moment, so enjoy this picture of William Shatner dressed up as Russian general from 1812.

And if you like it, go over to here for an entire site of celebrities as Russian Generals. The artist is Steve Payne, based on original artwork from a portraitist named George Dawe, who painted a slew of Russian generals to commemorate Napoleon's invasion.

Hmm.. This would be an interesting author photo.

More later,

Play: All That Hamlet

2011-09-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

Ghost Light by Tony Taccone, conceived and developed by Jonathan Moscone and Tony Taccone, Directed by Jonathan Moscone. Oregon Shakespeare Festival through 5 November.

Let me be quite clear: this one landed with on wrong foot with me, and were I the type of theater-goer that would cast away my seat at the intermission in exchange for some serious drinking, I would have done so. And it is fortunate I am not nourishing my nascent alcoholism, for the play redeems itself admirably in its close and forgives all manner of sins in the process.

And yes, I say this knowing this to an autobiographical play, being the story of the son of the assassinated Mayor Moscone, conceived and directed by said son. It takes large brass ones to go up against this, and for that reason I think I will choose to do so from the safety of Seattle as opposed to in the heart of Ashland itself.

But first, let me pull out my longest of daggers for the New Theater for this particular performance. Chill to the point of coldness, the intermission brought many of those with poor circulations to the lobby just to warm up. And let me bash upon the set design: The theatre in the round was closed off on one side for a backdrop, but as a result but as a result any action far in the back of that part of the stage was lost to patrons with blocked line of sight. That means that you can't stage important stuff there, and anything placed there has to be considered optional, even if it helps with the story.

Ah, but the story. Jon Moscone is a director who in the present is still dealing (or not dealing) with the loss of his father. He is directing Hamlet and obsessing over the roll of the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. Yes, it is all quite clear it is all tied up together. And the Shakespearean play works well contrasting with the modern play (as opposed to Richard III mentioned earlier).

Here's your history lesson, which the play assumes you have but, modern memory being what it is, you might not remember you remember. Mayor George Moscone was shot by former Supervisor Dan White in 1978. After shooting Moscone, Dan White then shot Supervisor Harvey Milk. Ah, him you've heard of - he got a movie with Sean Penn. And that's part of the problem, among many, for the younger Moscone.

The play runs scattershot through history, memory, and internal pyschodrama, expecting you to keep up as they go along. Boom you're in the past with the young Moscone in therapy. Boom you're inside Moscone's head as the various drives and ids are all trying to communicate. Boom you're in the modern real world in Jon's apartment. Boom the lights are up and you are part of a theater class working on, yeah, Hamlet.

It bounces about like a pinball, and about the halfway point, I realize where I have seen this before - Roy Schieder in All That Jazz. At intermission I told the Lovely Bride that if someone starts singing "Bye, Bye Love", I was out of here.

And you know what - they DO bring the final catharsis in with a song, and they PULL IT OFF. I'm impressed, because I don't know at what point the pieces finally fit, but I started caring about Jon and his need to come to terms with his father's death.

Christopher Liam Moore plays Jon as flighty, nervous, selfish, and in many points unlikeable, a meltdown waiting to happen. Tyler James Myers as the younger self was more problematic - pokey and hard to modulate in his actions. It could be direction or just the actor (the dangers of young actors), but when he seems more comfortable with the script, the play took that leap forward. Bill Geisslinger as a threatening part of Jon's psyche gets the advantage of being part of a tormented soul, as does Derrick Leed Weeden, who comes off as Carl Sagan with the God's microphone (Am I looking at the ego and the superego here, or are there other facets they are embodying?). Robynn Rodriquez exists in the real world (well, as real as a character in a play gets) as the voice of relative reason trying to get Jon to deal with the whole Hamlet's Ghost thing and getting to the rest of the damned play.

It resolves. It resolves neatly and cleanly and without cheating. The fragments of the psyche take on enough reality by the end of the play that you are really pulling for them, that you want Jon to make his breakthrough not because Jon is a wonderful person (the character isn't), but because all the stuff beneath the surface deserves to succeed. It is an internal intervention, and it works. But yes, color me surprised that it does.

More later,

Between Acts: Cornflower

2011-09-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

The Ashland theater has a Green Show in addition to the other main stages. The Green Show is out in the central plaza and is used for street acts, commedia dell'arte, and musicians. In short, it is the warmup crew on early summer evenings, a theatrical amuse-bouche before the main event .

Apparently for the performance before Pirates, the act was supposed to be a hip hop and break dancing team. However, Hurricane Irene intervened, screwing up travel plans, so when we did the will call for our tickets for all these plays, we were told that a beat boxer named Cornflower would be performing instead.

OK. I don't know if I would put beat boxing into a Shakespearean venue, but hey, its cool. For that matter, I don't know if I could define beat boxing before this evening.

What we got was a lanky young man named Cornflower with incredibly long light brown dreads, knotted in a huge bun, with most of them hanging down the back. He was there with his microphone, speakers and what I guess I would call a sampling board, operated by foot pedals. And that's it. The performer (beat boxer?) would lay down a beat with a tonal thumping, record it, let the sampler repeat the base beat and then harmonize with himself, looping new wordless lyrics. Then harmonize again, and again, changing and molding the song as he goes along. An electronic one-man-band.

It sounds odd, but it was amazingly effective. Cornflower transformed the Green Show into a mini arts festival, with people dancing and children running around and people joining in (its not as if you don't know the words). Yes, the LB wanted a CD afterwards, and I think Mr. Cornflower was surprised by the turnout. If you want more, head over to his website, where he has some performance videos and more information.

More later,

Play: That Falstaff Show

2011-09-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Henry IV, Part Two, by William Shakespeare, Directed by Lisa Peterson.

I have climbed the tower of the cathedral in Cologne. I say that because the reward for having climbed the tower of the cathedral in Cologne is that you never have to climb the tower of the cathedral in Cologne again. If someone says, "Hey, we're in Cologne, let's climb the tower of the cathedral!" You can just say, "I've already climbed the tower of the cathedral in Cologne. It is a wonderful view. Go have fun."

So, then. Henry IV, Part 2.

You'd have a hard time justifying the whole "Shakespeare is the finest writer in the English Language" based on this one. In many ways it feels like the middle book of the trilogy - you've already got the set-up in the first book and the resolution in the third, so the second is the middle child that has to struggle along, and doesn't really get to have any traction. And the Lord of London have pity on you if you missed Part 1.

OK,the Ashland performance does give you a "previously in Henry IV" (the LB's description of it) in dumbshow to help the slackers - Henry IV usurps the crown from Richard II, and carefully manipulates things in order to keep it. Meanwhile, his wastrel eldest son Hal spends a lot of time in cheap dives with his best bud, Sir John Falstaff, a knight of dubious reputation and comic reputation. At the end of Part 1, Young Hal (eventually Henry V), straightens up, flies right, and fights to defend his father's kingdom, killing young Hotspur, and saving the day.

Then we start part 2, and Hal has already backslid into hanging out and getting drunk, though not so much with Falstaff at this point. Henry IV has a new gaggle of aggressive enemy armies, which are thwarted not by Henry, nor by Hal, but by one of Henry's OTHER sons (who doesn't get much credit). In fact there seems to be an insufficient amount of King Henry in this part of King Henry - his gig is to bat away another attempt and then perish twice (once mistakenly, then once again for reals) and hand over the heavy burden of the crown to young Hal.

But even Hal is not the center of this play. The center, at least as far as getting groundlings through the gate, is John Falstaff, who drinks, whores, lies, rhapsodizes about all the above, and runs a recruiting scam in the counties far beyond the court when your more traditional history play would be talking about battles. Falstaff is the Fonzie of these plays - the breakout character that everyone loves, the lovable, larger than life cad. Perfect for a situation comedy. Indeed, Falstaff is so popular a character that he steals the play, and when, the fully-crowned Hal ... sorry, Henry V, decides to become a proper British monarch and banishes his old drinking buddy, you think that the new king is a bit of a rotter for turning on his old bud.

Henry IV, Part 2 feels like a line extension, an encore for Falstaff (blustered masterfully by Michael Winters). Hal (John Tufts) has to struggle with an inherent dislikability of his character in the play (which is interesting in that Henry V is considered one of England's great kings). And Richard Howard as Henry IV the Ever-Fading does the best with a title role that doesn't leave him much time on the stage. Oh yes, it was rendered well and Shakespearean and professional and all that, and you feel like you've been given your faithful dollop of history, but it really is Falstaff's world - the Kings just keep things tidy for him.

There's another part that's interesting - the play ends with a promise of a sequel - Henry V, featuring the return of even more Falstaff. When Henry V shows up, however, Falstaff does not. He dies offstage and his death is described by his fellow tavern-mates. Kate thinks it is because the role was connected to a particular actor, who was not available. I will go further and posit that the actor connected with Sir John Falstaff died between the plays (we're talking about a London at the time of the plagues, after all). Rather than recast a role that may have specifically been tailored to Jack's large frame, they just wrote him out. Regardless, that is one more component that leave HVP2 as a strange little bit of the cannon.

And how did it leave me? Well, I have climbed the tower of the cathedral in Cologne. And if anyone ever says "Hey, we're in Cologne, let's climb the tower of the cathedral!" I can just say, "No thanks, I've seen Henry V, Part 2."

More later,

Play: A Glorious Thing

2011-09-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

The Pirates of Penzance (or, The Slave of Duty), Music by Arthur Sullivan, Libretto by W,S.Gilbert, directed by Bill Rauch, Music Director Daniel Gary Busby, Choreographer Randy Duncan, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Through October 8.

Of course, by now you know I have a soft spot for the works of Messrs. G and S. Their brand of operetta, a perfect match for the Mother Tongue of England, traps much of what is British in its Victorian amber and preserves it for this day. The bouncy melodies of Sullivan and the twisted logic of Gilbert is a perfect music box of the age.

And twisted the logic is. Frederic, through his nanny's hearing problem, was apprenticed to a pirate as opposed to a pilot, and is on the verge of leaving his apprenticeship, at which point he must hunt down those pirates, because that is the only honorable thing to do. Of course the pirates themselves live by a code that puts them at a bit of disadvantage - they have declared to spare orphans, and have discovered that all of their new captures declare themselve orphans. The newly-freed Frederic meets Mabel, who of all her sisters chooses to help reform him. Mabel and her sisters are the daughters of the noted modern Major General. The pirates attack the gathered family, but the Major General outwits them, the daughters are freed, Mabel and Frederic may marry, and everyone, even the pirates, are happy.

Hang on, that's only the first act. When the second act commences, the Major General is concerned about failing to live up to the expectations of his recently purchased ancestors (they came with the manse) by lying to the pirates. And Frederic is called back into service of the pirates by a calendrical mischance, and so must lead the pirates against the Major General and Mabel. And he does so, because he is a slave to his duty. And all of this is resolved with thinnest gossamer of logic, with further outrageous revelations, because this is a operetta where the destination is not nearly as important as the journey, and indeed the journey is quite nice.

The romantic leads (Eddie Lopez as Frederic, Khori Dastoor as Mabel) have to carry the bulk of the burden of unrational rationality, as Frederic is the slave of duty of the subtitle, and Mabel as loving him for his sense of duty that will force him to fight her ultimately. David Kelly dispatches the Major General with aplomb, including the one Gilbert and Sullivan piece that everyone knows, even if they never saw any Gilbert and Sullivan. Michael Elich has a bit of Johnny Depp to his Pirate King, but also channels the Rat Pack (indeed, the production takes some thematic asides and detours that I find amusing but may trouble purists (to which I say - it is Gilbert and Sullivan)). But it is Robin Goodrin Nordli, as Ruth, the Pirate Nanny, who steals almost all of her scenes and escapes with most of the comedic cutlery in the process.

What struck me most of the production was the strength of voices and acting off the essemble, top to bottom. I am a fan of our local amateur G&S Society, but I have to admit, I was more than a little blown away by how good everyone was, and how they maintained a level of madcap energy through the entire proceedings. Gilbert and Sullivan has to be taken on head on, with no flinching, (but sly winks are permitted).

Production values were fantastic as well. You saw the picture of the trust stage of the Elizabethan in an earlier entry, so every bit of scenery has to be ported directly on, and quickly. Moving from pirate ship to beach to family crypt with equal ease (seabirds flying in the first act, bats in the second) was an epic job pulled together smoothly and cleanly and effectively as well. The action runs across the entire stage, up the walls, and into the seats themselves, and pulls the audience into this strange fantasy world.

All in all, Pirates was the best of the shows down in Ashland I saw, and worth the trip.

More later,

Play: Richard, Revisited

2011-09-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

The African Company Presents Richard III, by Carlyle Brown, Directed by Seret Scott, Oregon Shakespeare Festival through November 5

It is a rare thing for me to be able to watch new production of a modern play. Yes, I have seen a number of Shakespeares and even the odd Moliere multiple times, but very little of the moderns, primarily due to the raw tonnage of works available (Pinter. Pinter is the exception, but despite repeated viewings of Betrayal I'm not a fan). So it is through an odd little looking glass that I can warp back 17 years to 1994 and with it a production of The African Company Presents Richard III at the Milwaukee Rep, and compare it against the current version at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The play itself goes as follows: in the 1820s in New York City, there was a black theater company presenting Shakespeare, in particular the tragedy of Richard III (pronounced in the play as "King Richard Three"). The local mainstream (read, white) theater finds them a threat and a mockery (The African Company seats its white patrons in the BACK of the theater) and closes them down. So the African Company sets up shop right NEXT to the mainstream (read, white) theater at a local hotel, debuting during the opening night when the white theater is doing its OWN Richard, with a noted British actor, Junius Brutus Booth (yeah, the father of THAT Booth). All of this, by the way, is true.

The play brings together a variety of African-Americans - house servants and runaway slaves and free men, who are all involved with the production of Richard III for various reason. And here's the problem with the play itself - those reasons never come together. Billy Brown oversees the production and has no problem with being provocative. James Hewlett is a nervous actor aware of the roles he plays both on the stage and among the white people. Papa Shakespeare has kept his Caribbean accent and remembers old Africa and the old stories. Sarah is the older wise woman who has learned to sail the racial shoals of the new world. Ann is part of the production because she has a thing for James, and while tempted by Billy's sense of justice, nothing comes of it in the play.

And that's the trouble - they are all well-created characters that never really unite. The use of Richard is historically accurate, but the original has no function within the play beyond a point of conflict between the white and black theater companies, and actorly contention between Ann and James (Ann cannot believe any woman would be wooed by Richard over the corpse of her husband, something of lot of other people had have trouble with over the years). There are good bits of writing throughout, but the final message sort of drops out of the sky like a bust of Louis in a Moliere play (yeah, I've seen that happen) to wrap things up. It frustrated me years ago and frustrates me today.

And there are good bits, as I say. Very good bits. Charles Robinson (yes, he was in Night Court) as Papa Shakespeare captivates with tales of the old world and bit of comedy as a conversational go-between for Ann and James. Peter Macon as Billy Brown is a stormcloud, sure of his moves even as they lead the cast into peril. Kevin Kenerly as James Hewlett deals with a character that is vain, nervous, and clueless, yet delivers one of the most powerful moments of the play, where he talks about trying to do Shakespeare before a white audience that expects a minstrel show. It was uncomfortable when I saw it the first time, and even more so in Kenerly's hands, since he's performing a play about African Americans in front of a predominately white audience.

But it is a frustrating play, one that seems to lack a center, and that feeling continues from then to now. The current production was better for me, both because of the gifted actors and the fact that I GET the tragedy of the original Richard better now than I did almost two decades ago. It still feels, after all these years, like it needs a center, or even a choice of the available centers, to pull it all together. As it is, the characters remain apart, and though the final lesson bludgeons forward, I don't believe that this group will remain together, or that the lessons learned have a lasting effect.

And that is a pity, because as I said, the story IS true, and there needs to be that effect.

More later,

Writers Sans Borders

2011-09-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

Photo by Jessers25.

Borders is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its liquidation has been signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.

Old Borders is as dead as a door-nail.

A lot of pixels have been spilled over the demise of Borders (and Waldenbooks, its mall-friendly smaller sibling). Flat statements about how the time of the big box is now gone, and tumbleweeds will now drift through the parking lots of old Borders, Circuit Cities, and similar relics. Pointed irony about how the big boxes crushed the small independents and in turn are being kicked to the curb by the on-line purveyors. Nostalgia about how Borders was a smaller, friendly store before K-Mart bought them. Fist-shaking fury at the fickle market, including those heartless consumers who went to a store to window-shop the book and then order it online. And indignation that this would not have happened if Amazon had to pay sales tax (while ignoring that Amazon also doesn't have to pay for rent, lighting, or dedicated staff in 400 locations) (Oh, and its still a good idea for Amazon to pay sales tax - its not like they can't freaking keep track of where their books are going - they're using computers, after all).

Hmm. This seems to be wandering a bit, which is not surprising. This is a crowd-sourced coroner's inquest, and everybody seems to be involved.

I seem to be coming to all this from two viewpoints, as a consumer and as a writer. As a consumer, litttle changes. My own habits are those of the independent and used bookstore patron. Bookshopping is a destination for me, as it is for comics and games. I will haunt the halls of the monstrous Half-Prices and the tiny local shops filled with paperback swap romances. I was a fan of Elliot Bay before it moved to a land-with-less-available-parking, and even so I still feel the siren call of its wooden shelves and employee recommendations. I make the trek up to Third Place and once upon a time made the long journey to Powell's in Portland (though my stopping may more be the result of age than anything else). Borders (and B&N, don't think I don't see trying to sneak out of this discussion) were for large holiday purchases and going out for books with nieces and nephews. The online world was more for when the usual suspects were exhausted, or delivery to a third party across the country.

Of course I visited the terminal patient, and found my own easy answers for their demise. Once the popular stuff was picked over, the shelves groaned heavy with left-behind Palin biographies and Beck political screeds. That kind of shows that you were missing your market just a tad, but covering it up in raw volume - there may have been unsold Noam Chomski essays on the shelves of the Borders in Birmingham. I picked up a few books that I would probably not pay full price for - books on Salt and Cod and another collection of Anthony Bourdain's essays. And an actual find - a book on the War of 1812 that I had window-shopped on Amazon, but purchased in a physical store.

Long term, it can't be a good thing for authors to ever see a venue shut down, large or small. And the big box of Borders is a major component for the easily-sold genre books that I have made up much of my career. The D&D ghetto (a subunit of the Fantasy ghetto) had a guaranteed shelf space in a store that was looking to fill its shelves with popular consumables. And as I have said before, Border's and its ilk also serviced areas that were not being covered by independents. There was a site set up pointing out where the closest independent bookstore was to a closing Borders. In the case of my local Borders in the South Hills, it was 12 miles to the nearest independent. Or you could go up the road another mile to the Barnes & Nobles. As a writer, I will be seeing more of my work showing up as vaporous threads in the ether, but in the longest of terms, I will still be able to find a twenty year old physical book than a twenty year old file in an a now-abandoned format.

There has been also a lot of moaning about how this is going to be tough for small book dealers. I am unconvinced. One of the big dinosaurs has dropped dead right at their feet, and there will be a bump of books looking for shelf space, publishers looking for accounts, and teenagers looking for placing to read manga. Yes, the power of Amazon still threatens like a asteroid from space, but there is still a strong component of the market that lives and shops in meatspace, so it is an opportunity.

Farewell Borders. You will be missed. Now we move on.

Ashland

2011-09-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

So, the vacation.

It has been more than three years since I've had a real vacation. I've traveled, mind you, but it has been either for work or family-related. There has not been a hull-down, recharge the batteries, going-on-vacation vacation for some time now.

So that resulted in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Ashland is located on the FAR side of Oregon, about ten miles from the California border. Originally it was a railway town, and was the location of one (of many, apparently) "golden spikes" that bound together America. It being America, they pushed through another line elsewhere and sidelined Ashland.

The town reinvented itself. Home to Chautauquas, they transformed over time into the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Now it is a cultural destination - this is the place the English teachers go on vacation.

I've lived for many years in a vacation town (Lake Geneva), so I am aware of three populations of the town. The tourist crowd in Ashland tends to be older and wealthier. The support staff (waitstaff, retail) is much, much younger, and the gap is underlines as there is also a large component of young people using Ashland as a stopover between San Francisco and Portland. The final component are the majority - the natives who live here and are not directly incorporated into the tourist industry. They have a small town life and (using my own time in Lake Geneva as an example) avoid the downtown unless they have to.

It even has a picture in Wikipedia.

The festival is presented at three main stages, built up the hill from the city proper. The Elizabethan Stage (also called the Allen Pavilion) is the oldest, though remodeled over the years. An open-air amphitheater with a thrust stage and a period Tudor backdrop, it has a flavor of the globe with more room (and replacing the groundlings with stadium seats). The Angus Bowmer is also a thrust stage (sticks out into the audience), but is inside with a steeper pitch to the seating. And the New Theatre (naming rights apparently still available) is created as a theatre in the round.

The trip down was relatively long but uneventful. Lunch at Meriwethers, a pricy but sumptuous meal in Portland (great crab risotto), and a visit to the Japanese Garden high on the western hill overlooking the city. We arrived after dark, but the Blue Moon B&B left a light on for us.

The Blue Moon, by the way, is a fantastic little bed & breakfast - close to the theaters, away from the downtown, neat, comfortable, and homey. Its proprietor, Dean, is a wonderful cook, both providing the excellent breakfast part of the "bed and breakfast" but also taking into account the Lovely Bride's egg allergy, which makes such things problematic sometimes. It is with regrets that we just an email that he's selling the place, but were glad to have him as our host. It was a great place to recharge the internal batteries.

Oh, yeah, there were also plays involved. More on those later.

What I've Been Up To

2011-09-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

A new draft of the novel, the day job, conventions, a bit of exhaustion, and, finally, a vacation. So yeah, I've been busy.

Here are some of the details:

I did a interview about Scourge, the new Star Wars novel, with Skuldren at Roqoo Depot. I talk a bit about where I am coming from and my previous history with the Force. Yes, it is the first time I've talked about the book. (Oh, and Random House has a blurb up about the book - didn't know that was coming).

I have a much (much) longer discussion in a podcast on Guild Wars Informer. Seven and spent an evening in the lobby of the local Westin talking about my background, history of game products, and a lot about Guild Wars 2.

And speaking of Guild Wars 2, we had a humungous panel at PAX, "We" being me, Eric, Colin, Kristen, and Jon Peters. Now, WE were not humungous, but we were in a room talking to about a thousand people. That's pretty darn big. Here's a Nerd Trek page containing the entire panel, and here is the first part of that discussion (the first three minutes or so are technical problems as we try to queue up the latest trailer, but is fun because you get to watch David Campbell buck and weave as we try to get things fixed). And here it is under one file:

Plus, we have just launched Asura week, where we are talking about the diminutive geniuses of GW2. As part of that, I put forward one of our original "Concept Stories" describing a particular asura and sylvari team-up, as well as a short advise column for those who seek the wisdom of the asura. And a few more questions are answered here.

So yeah, after all this, I needed a vacation. More about that later.

[Update]: Oh, and I also appeared in a short video for Ed Healy of Gamerati promoting Fantasium, which used to be SPY Comics and is still my local comic book shop. This was the first stop of the Gamerati tour!

Ten Years Ago

2011-09-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

From the Extra Credit Projects.

More later,

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles Part V(A)

2011-08-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

The Long Reach of Evil, Terror at the Top of the World by Rick Maffei, an Age of Cthulhu Adventure from Goodman Games.

The Long Reach product is going to break into three different reviews, because we have three adventures by three different author all packed together under one title. The end result is a larger project, and should (but doesn't always) show some variety in the adventures within, and since it is being run at different times, deserves separate reviews.

Oh, and as always in these reviews, unfurl the spoilers.

The idea of The Long Reach of Evil is a globe-girding adventure, sending the investigators to Tibet, Indonesia, and Peru. This sounds good but really makes it little different than the previously published adventures that sent your supposedly New England-based band of investigators to Luxor, London, Leningrad (and an iceberg in the Arctic). Unlike that last one, this adventure could be fit into my regular group of pulp-style adventurers (Female novelist and her adventure-hero subject, mobster on the lam, personal photographer, archeologist/sidekick). The adventures in this new product are (very) loosely tied together in that all the initial contacts can be members of the International History and Archeology Society (or as my group quickly came to calling it - IHAS (cheeseburger)). My group of pulpy adventurers is based out of England, and as a result, I jostled some things, so they got an invite to Indonesia, had an initial contact for the Peru adventure before leaving, but got detoured to Tibet first. And indeed, the adventures can be played in any order, and some of them done away with entirely, without affecting the others.

The traditional Goodman Games Cthulhu story model is that you receive an invite to go somewhere by someone who already dead by the time you get the message, and when you get where you have been asked to go you find that someone else is opening a gate to someplace they shouldn't. Terror at the Top of the World (which would be tighter if it were Terror in Tibet, but that is neither here nor there) fits that model well, such that you get a letter from a explorer from Tibet, who while the letter was in the mail went mad, came back home, and committed suicide. I flipped the order here, ran the funeral first, which gave me a chance to introduce IHAS and lay some groundwork for the later adventures. When the PCs got home, our anthropologist got the note detailing strangeness in Tibet and supposedly set them off and running.

Well, sort of. There are a lot of red herrings in the note, including stuff that is not mentioned elsewhere in the adventure. A head-nod to the Mi-go, a mention of the Himalyan apes, and a mention of how the village you're supposed to visit has some prestigious physical powers (not evident once you get there). And the getting there takes about three months, which makes it a major effort, and creates a quandry as far as timing is concerned - our victim saw something that made him crazy, took three months to get back home, then it takes you three months to get back to where he went mad - so that's at least six months after the initial encounter, so it is hardly a rush. Worse, it feels like the madness has been waiting for you to show up all that time - little has happened since the explorer left town.

This strange collection of red herrings also extend to a collection of dream sequences that don't fit into the overall theme, though they are particularly ooky and creepy to keep players on their toes.

And as an aside, the journey to the remote village in Tibet suffers in comparison to the one at the conclusion of the Chaosim Adventure Tatters of the King, which also takes you into the Himalayans. While Tatters uses the trip to cut you off further and further from society, isolating the characters, Terror gives you more of an Indiana Jones style jump cut with small encounters that can be instantaneously fatal for those the miss a die roll.

The pacing also suffers because the ultimate bad guy is hidden until late in the adventure, and the Keeper has to balance between tipping his hand too early or leaving the PCs floundering as they look for the limited clue that pushes them in the right direction.

And speaking of clues, this adventure gets the award for the "World's Worst Handout" - an arrow drawn into the gravel pointing towards the ultimate cause. It shows an arrow drawn in the gravel, whichout any indication of direction. And the suicide note that started this adventure DIDN'T get rate a handout.

The maps suffer from the "Curse of Cthulhu" I've mentioned as striking many such projects. There is a good map of the local monastery, for example, except that it a) leaves out the offices of the lama you're supposed to talk to, and b) neglects to put in a door to the passages deeper into the mountain. In addition, the final battle takes place in a typical Tibetian home, but nowhere does it mention that a typical Tibetian home tends to be on an upper floor of the building (stables and workspace beneath) and that floor isnormally reached by a ladder. That would have been useful information in establishing the village in the first place.

There is a lot of that in the adventure. Parts of very detailed (Monastery life, for example, in case the players want to spend a full day there), while others not so much (had to look up the traditional Tibetan meal of tsampas that was initially mentioned without explanation (the group is heavily iPadded)). The end result is an adventure that needs a bit of research to pull it off fully, even if you're running it in an Indiana Jones, high-adventure style. The fact that the adventure is "mythos-lite" and does not deal with anything canonically Lovecraftian does not hamper it so much as being unable to deliver on what it does present.

More later,

Primary

2011-08-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

It is time to dust off the old Political Desk, piled high with yellowed pamphlets, faded yard signs, and broken dreams. This is the primary for an off -year election, and in fact is a primary an off-off-year election, and the pickings are extremely thin. If you look at the other political desks elsewhere, most of the media have determined to ignore this year entirely and proceed directly to the 2012 election (Spoiler: Incumbent Obama will defeat challenger Romney is a close election. Washington will get a Republican governor - there, that's out of the way).

Yet I am faced precious little material to work with. But I am nothing if not diligent, and armed with little more than the voter's guide, the Stranger recommendations, the Muni league, The Times and PubliCola (though you have to dig for them), I wade into this matter.

And folks, there isn't a lot of there, there. But rather the basic nuts and bolts of democracy. A lot of stuff on the Seattle ballot does not get on the list down here, and your local ballot will likely be different. Here's what is on the ballot that reached Grubb Street:

King County Proposition No. 1 Veterans and Human Services Levy - This is a renewal of an expiring levy, and while I can kvetch about the cute puppy syndrome (What, you don't want to fund Veterans? What kind of monster are you?), it is not of new tax but a re-establishment of an existing one. Yeah, we should do it. Vote YES.

City of Kent, Council Positions 3, 5,and 7. Hey, I'm the new kid in town here, since our neighborhood was just sucked up into Greater Kent, making it the 4th biggest city in the region. And despite my normal anarchic tendencies, I am really predisposed to the incumbents in this race because of recent events - not only the annexation of Panther Lake (done with a minimum of muss and fuss), but also the revitalization of the downtown district (I actually go down there, now!), and the ShoWare center. And most of all, biting the bullet and taking a lead last year when it looked like the Howard Hansom Dam would not hold, investing in a lot in dikes, sandbags dikes preparation. In the end, the area was spared innundation, and while I would love to get my riverside trails back, they did the right thing given nasty choices. Congrats all around.

And yet, there are problems in paradise, to there is current dissent within the council. Here's what I understand is going on, courtesy of the Kent Reporter. Last year, Kent moved from having its own fire department to joining a larger fire district. However, it was still collecting taxes as if it was still providing the service, and using those funds to help meet other needs. The Incumbent from position 3, who was in charge of the Operations Committee, proposed cutting property taxes to adjust for this. Not only was the proposal shot down, the Incumbent from Position 3 was pulled from his chairmanship and replaced by the Incumbent from Position 5. Both incumbents are now up for re-election in their own positions.

So there will be more in this, but for the moment, I'm sticking with what I said about them doing a good job, and supporting BOTH incumbents for the Primary.

Les Thomas for Position 3
Debbie Raplee for Position 5

Position 7 is open, and poses a challenge, since most of the major papers and sites don't get far enough south to bother with endorsements. Michael Sealfron may be very good but lacks a web site for further information, Suzanne Smith has determination but not as much direct experience. Dana Ralph gets the nod primarily because of endorsements from firefighters, cops, and Washington Conservation Voters.

Soos Creek Water and Sewer District Commissioner Position 1 (I told you it was a light year), has no less than six candidates for this open position. One didn't provide any information for the Voter's Guide, and the rest consist of a software tech engineer, a real estate agent, a veep with T-Mobile, a geotech engineer, and a retired manager for Cascade Natural Gas. Talk about an embarassment of riches. And by the time you get this far down-ballot, your ONLY clue is what is in the Voter's Guide. Darold Stroud has very strong credentials and is a current commissioner (Position 2), but my natural engineering tendencies takes me to Larry West for the gig.

Public Hospital District No. 1 Commissioner District No. 1. Last time I checked in here, we had a dust-up about the hospital board. This time, the big question this season is what to do now that Valley has merged/alligned.associated with UW Medical Center. Paul Joos is a doctor who claims not political agendas or financial conflicts. Mary Alice Heuschel is heavily awarded, endorsed, and funded (she's the one I have seen mailers from), and comes from a strong public service background (school board, advisory committee to the hospital, advocate for the alliance). Jim Grossnickle says the hospital needs a Commissioner needs someone independent of the political establishment, and then mentions that he is endorsed by Reagan Dunn and Brian Sonntag, members of, well, the political establishment. So I'm going with Mary Alice Heuschel.

And that is it. Really small-time, local politics, which is a good thing sometimes. Enjoy it, because it will not last. Vote by Tuesday, folks.

More later,

Riches update

2011-08-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

NPR has posted its voted list of best SF/Fantasy books here. Buckle down as the Internet shouts in mass "I can't believe you chose THIS and not THAT".

[Update: Further Thoughts]

- I've read just over half of the books on the list. Did not count stuff I bailed on or just saw the movie.
- I am struck by how much of the list is "Old Stuff" - things I first read as a child. Their placement may reflect the shared experience that comes from so many people reading Wells and Verne and Tolkien in their youth.
- I am delighted to see shared world/media tie-in books on the list (Forgotten Realms and Star Wars series). Usually these books are shunted off to one side as being "not REAL books."
- That said - no Dragonlance? And for that matter no Harry Potter?
- The topmost Book I've Never Heard Of is the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. Hidden gem or Spamming the vote?
- Would love to have been at the ethereal version of The Eagle & Child where Tolkien breezes in and points out to Lewis that his Space trilogy (which is a bad name, to be honest) only pegged in at 100.

More later,

DOW breaks 11,000!

2011-08-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Well, that's impressive. And by impressive I mean as scary as hell.

For those of you tuning in late, over the course of these pages, I've been tracking the rise and fall of the American stock market. In general, it compares to the real health of the economy in a similar fashion to holding the back of your hand to your forehead to see if you have a fever. It is not a subtle measurement, and will not indicate if you have anything else but a fever. But the ups and downs usually give you an snapshot of general economic anxiety, particularly of the moneyed classes (that is, those with money to invest in the stock market).

Right now, there is a lot of anxiety. After rising relentlessly upwards over the past couple years, despite other sluggish economic signs, the investors are suddenly spooked, which makes for uncertain markets, diving stock prices, and therefore good newspaper articles. It seems to me that there are two things driving this, both with a common root - austerity in Europe and the self-inflicted debt crisis here in the States.

That common root for both is a sudden decision that Something Must Be Done about debt. Actually, that's not a bad idea - we've been on a roll for the last decade or so, piling up a lot of expenses from the previous administration, and a little fiscal sanity is a good thing. And, if truth be told, despite reports to the contrary Democrats actually LIKE balanced budgets and holding down spending. Which may be why you tend to see it in Democratic administrations and not so much in Republican ones.

Now I call the current debt crisis self-inflicted as opposed to manufactured. The amount of debt we're lugging around is a long-term challenge, but attempting to deal with it at a time of economic uncertainty makes a bad situation worse, and is one driven by political manipulation as opposed to economic rigor.

There is a pungency that wafts off this as many of those demanding drastic austerity are the same bad actors that had no problem busting those budgets in the past decade in the name of security, war, and tax breaks for the wealthy. And all of the above are off limits for further discussion. "All must suffer" is the byword for this, where "all" is meant to be interpreted as "you".

I think we will see a yo-yoing of the market over the next few weeks, until the stock market gets another cookie (like, say, telling them that interest rates will remain at next-to-nothing) or three,stabilize around 11,300 and then the slow pressure will drive the prices up again. Unless we do something else this dumb (and what's the chance of THAT happening?).

More later,

About That Star Wars Novel

2011-08-04T09:16:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned on and off in these pages I've been working on a Star Wars novel. Now I can reveal that the Book-With-No-Name has a name.

Scourge.

And yes, it features Hutts. Expect additional teasing in the future.

More later,

Embarrassment of Riches

2011-08-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

OK, go here and pick your top ten SF/Fantasy books from this list.

Not as easy as it sounds.

No, really. This is a surprising relevant list, more so than most I have encountered. If anything, it shows the strength of SF/Fant, both of its current incarnation and its backlist. My first list ran to 27 titles, of which I had to pare down to 10. Ten! Any one of the top 27 are books that I would recommend to others. And in doing so, I found my Fantasy side pitted against my SF side, and my modern reader sensibilities with those of the young man discovering Galaxy magazine for the first time.

Here are the top ten: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Chronicles of Amber, Deathbird Stories, Dune, The Forever War, the Illuminatus Trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Perdido Street Station, Stand on Zanzibar, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. If you don't recognize some of these, go read them.

Yet there were others that it killed me to leave off the list - Anathem, Mote in God's Eye, Pattern Recognition, Riverworld, The Wind-Up Girl, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. And THEN there were those that I would still recommend to others as worth reading and discussing - The Anubis Gates, Childhood's End, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Fahrenheit 451, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Neuromancer, Ringworld, The Sparrow, and The War of the Worlds.

We always seem to be bashing on the decline of the genre, but this list, and the choices it forces, suggests otherwise.

More later,

Scribe Awards

2011-07-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Scribe Awards from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers were presented last night. Ghosts of Ascalon did not win (alas), but congratulations to the winners:

Best Novel, General Fiction: Saving Grace: Tough Love, by Nancy Holder
Best Novel, Speculative Fiction: Warhammer: Bloodborn: Ulrika the Vampire, by Nathan Long
Best Adaptation/Novelization: The Wolfman, by Jonathan Maberry
Best Novel, Original or Adapted, Young Adult: Dungeons and Dragons: Aldwyns Academy: Nathan Meyer.

Here's the press release:

The winners of the Scribe Awards, honoring excellence in media tie-in writing, were awarded Friday at a ceremony at Comic-Con in San Diego by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers Author Peter David was honored as this year's Grandmaster, and engaged in a lively discussion about his career, and tie-in writing, at the ceremony, which was hosted by Max Allan Colins and drew a packed house.

Nancy Holder won the award for best original novel in the general fiction category for Saving Grace: Tough Love. The honors for best original novel in speculative fiction went to Nathan Long for Warhammer: Bloodborn: Ulrika the Vampire. This is the second time Long has won a Scribe for his work in the Warhammer franchise.

The Wolfman by Jonathan Maberry snagged the Best Adaptation/Novelization award while Nathan Meyer won for Best Novel, Original or Adapted, in the Young Adult category with Dungeons and Dragons: Aldwyns Academy.

Congratulations!

More later,

And Furthermore ...

2011-07-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Kobold Quarterly is presenting the top ten finalists for the Relics of Power contest that I helped pick out. Didn't expect it to go live so soon.

More later,

What I've Been Up To

2011-07-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

Things have been fairly quiet up on Grubb Street, but mostly because I've been busy with a number of other things. But I do want to call out a few items of public interest involving Guild Wars:

Ghosts of Ascalon, by Matt Forbeck and myself, has been nominated for a Scribe Award from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) in the Best Speculative Original Work category. I mentioned it here before, but the awards will be presented at the San Diego Comics Con this Friday. In addition, there's a round-table discussion from all the nominees here.

Second, the gang ArenaNet has moved into new digs, and brought in some of the press for a tour. Here's the one from The MMO Report which features yours truly and Colin Johanson talking about the game. WARNING: The Lovely Bride watched this, and made the comment "White is not a forgiving color for you."

Also in the Guild Wars department, our head honcho Mike O'Brien got a major writeup in this morning's Seattle Times business section, talking about working for a larger organization like NCSoft.

And finally, this has been bouncing around for a while, but I have hesitated from sharing it. Two years ago, at Cologne, there was a great photo of Randy Price, Chris Lye, Martin Kerstein, Daniel Dociu and myself. Someone took the characters from that shot and converted them into ... into .... well, you'll just have to watch it.

I find it ... mesmerizing.

More later,

The Bubble, Revisited

2011-07-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Last time out I mentioned the Travel Bubble, this hermetically sealed chain of events which moves you through a series of intricate processes to deliver Traveler A to Place B with a minimum of impact on either the traveler or the outside world. And indeed the service industry at the far end of the portal seeks to sustain that process, such that our travelers, whether they be in Hamburg or Seattle, are operating is a swaddled wrapping and kept apart from the rest of the population.

However, you still are in another place, far from home, and things are different there.

We hit this on the Hamburg trip. There were some of us who had never been abroad, or never been the Germany before. And I had a number of "ah-hah" moments when I encountered something that I found out on one of my previous trips, and had forgotten to tell the others. So since we are sending a large swath of the company to Cologne for GamesCom in a few weeks, I thought it best to note a few of them here.

- First thing no one tells you - you turn the lights in your room with your room key. There's a slot above the light switch that the key fits into. You can put any card in there, but I find it is easier to use your room card. This is the first thing that many American travelers, weary from a 10 hour flight, trip over. As one of our group admitted later "My room is smarter than I am".

- Tying the lights to your room card saves electricity, but the TV will be on when you come in. Go figure.

- Yes, you're going to be confused by the taps in the shower. Don't worry, it happens to everyone. No, there's no universal methodology.

- Oh yeah, the first floor of a building is the Ground Floor. What Americans call the second floor is the First Floor. No, they didn't move the lobby in the time that it took you to go up to your room and back.

- And when traveling 9 time zones away from your home, don't do the math to figure out what time it is back home. Just don't. It will depress the hell out of you and just make you more tired.

- Germans find the American fascination with refrigeration amusing and a little bit creepy. If you want ice with your coke, you need to ask for it, and they might bring you a bowl, much like sugar. Want iced tea? Good luck with that. One of our number succeeded in his quest only by hitting a Starbucks, ordering a hot tea, and cooling it down with ice (provided in a separate cup).

- The German Hotel breakfast is a thing of beauty. Whereas American Continental Breakfasts are a table with coffee and donuts, on the REAL Continent it is a spread of hot sausages, eggs, cold meats, cheeses, breads, rolls, and other sundries. I have yet to find a hotel breakfast in Germany that did not have smoked salmon. For a business traveler, always have a good breakfast, because you don't know when lunch and dinner are going to happen.

- Germany also has great bread - heavy, stoneground bread. Bakeries are important features.

- Try to get some street food. Curry wurst is a big thing - a grilled sausage, chopped up, with a thick, mildly spicy curry sauce. Imagine pork and beans without the beans. Also worth hunting down: doner kebab - the Turkish version of the Greek gyro in the states.

- Yes, that's mayo that comes with your fries. Just deal with it, OK?

- And then there is dinner. Make time for it. The Germans have a reputation for efficiency, and that efficiency exists so you can get to dinner and spend four hours at it. Socialize.

- Finally, the Delta Airlines cabin may be cashless, but in general the Germans don't do credit or debit cards to the extent the Americans do. Bring Euros for the small meals, taxis, and sundries.

More later,

Farewell, Hamburg

2011-06-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

So I have spent the past four days in Hamburg, Germany helping to present Guild Wars 2 to the European press. We have a new build that we have been springing on people here and abroad, showing one of our racial areas, our underwater adventures, and our dungeons (multiplayer instances).

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'd rather talk about the Bubble, and being a stranger in a strange land.

The Bubble I have mentioned before in these pages. It is the Travel Bubble which surround the modern voyager, at best a frictionless surface that carries the journeyer from one point to another as humane cargo with a minimum of fuss. The Later 20th has perfected the model, such that for the vast bulk of travel happens with very little fuss, and idea of jetting to Europe for two days of business presentation is not only feasible, but suitable.

Hence, I am in Germany with the ease that one could previously go to Ohio. The entire modernity of it all leaves me completely gob-smacked.

(It is not to say the entire process is not without perils - My luggage was delayed coming through Amsterdam while some of my fellows will never see their possessions again, due to a baggage handlers' strike in Paris. When the Bubble collapses, it collapses catastrophically. Still, it is hardly on the same level as having to fight mountain lions to reach your destination).

So, Hamburg. I would like to speak about the coolness of the museums and the bustle of life, but my time was not my own, and I am now being whisked back to the states having completed my mission. However, we have been staying at the Radisson Blu downtown, and extremely upscale operation in the Dag Hammarskjold Paza overlooking the Planten un Blomen, or rather, the botanical gardens. As a result, I have managed to slip out several times to walk the grounds and mix with the locals.

I pass like a mute ghost, smiling but saying little. My German is at the "Ein bier, bitte", level, which leaves me functionally illiterate and a possible danger to myself and others if left unsupervised. However, I am German by genetics, though heavier than most of the population (The locals I have encountered have been fit and have a huge number of bicycles). In effect, I blend, such that I often get hit up by American tourists, also speaking halting German and asking directions.

The weather here has blossomed into a beautiful summer, and the gardens are luscious and green. It is akin to Seattle on those few nice summer weekends when people visit and marvel at the innate beauty of the land, and say how nice it would be to live there, and us locals holding our sides to prevent ourselves from busting a gut in laughter. Hamburg has all the signs of a cold and bitter place in winter - very steeply pitched residential roofs to handle heavy snows, a populace that is stunned by the change of weather (a lot of long sleeves among those lounging on the grass and in the numerous lawn chairs in the area), and heavy and amazingly effective curtains in the hotel. On the last, I was surprised to discover that Hamburg was even further north than Seattle, and since I tend to wake with the sun, that meant a lightening sky at 4:00 AM.

My view, by the way, is southern into the city itself, overlooking the green expanse of the garden and the various surrounding government buildings and capturing a skyline of steeples, office buildings, loading AT-ATs, and wind turbines. Hamburg is mostly flat, which adds to the omnipresent nature of the bicycles as a chief mode of transportation. To that end, the local population are masters of utilitarian bike skills, and handle them with an ability that Americans have trouble matching (drive through crowds is always a challenge in the States, due to the nature of our sidewalks and pedestrians).

But most of my time has been in the Bubble - making presentations in a conference room at the hotel in the international language of Computer Games, English. Our handlers and contacts have been highly competent and friendly, and one has lived in Hamburg for many years (apparently, one is only a Hamburger if one is born here. Also, they don't think being a Hamburger is silly, though they think being from Vienna/Wien, and therefore being a Wiener, is hilarious). Short walks into town to see the Rathaus (City Hall) and the monuments. And a sense that everything moves without any problem right up until 8, when the city center rolls up its sidewalks even though there is another three hours of sunlight.

But Hamburg has been very pretty and very kind, even if I have engaged it only on the most superficial of levels. And now I re-enter the Travel Bubble and am whisked back to my daily life with an ease that would leave my grandfather scratching his head, as if I had suddenly mastered teleportation and blinked from continent to continent with ease.

More later

My PaizoCon Schedule

2011-06-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

I will be helicoptering in on PaizoCon at the Coast hotel in Bellevue this weekend, helping out with some panels for Wolfgang Baur and Open Design. Here's where I'll be:

Building a Shared World: Midgard Hemlock Room

Friday, 09:00 AM – Friday, 10:00 AM

Speakers: Brandon Hodge, Jeff Grubb, Wolfgang Baur
The second great Pathfinder campaign setting is Midgard, and Baur, Grubb, and Hodge are leading the effort with patron brainstorm, critique, and contributions. Interested in doing some worldbuilding, writing a bestiary, or playing in a new world? What does Midgard have to offer? What have been the challenges and surprises of the worldbuilding so far? Tips and tricks to improve your own setting, and an introduction to Open Design's style of collaborative design. We'll generate a monster or mini-adventure as part of the panel.

Publishing in Kobold Quarterly
Hemlock Room

Saturday, 05:00 PM – 06:00 PM

Speakers: Wolfgang Baur, Christopher Bodan, Jeff Grubb
A magazine article or illustration has always been a good way to break into the RPG business, and that hasn't changed. Learn how to submit a winning query, how to rise to the top of the slush pile, and how to keep yourself in front of 30,000 readers every issue. Plus, the secrets of how to keep a freelance career going *after* your first publication.

Improvisation and Game Mastering
Hemlock Room

Saturday, 06:00 PM – 07:00 PM

Speakers: Wolfgang Baur, Jeff Grubb, Adam Roy
Haven't prepped your game this week? Willing to just completely wing it? Improvisational games can be a lot of fun, but they require at least a couple ingredients to work well. Panelists provide some techniques to make your game soar and shine rather than crash and burn.

I regret that I will not be making it to the "Secrets of TSR" panel due to a conflicting commitment. Although, of course, I can usually be found in nearby bars :)

More later,

Film: Whisperer

2011-06-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

The Whisperer in Darkness, Directed by Sean Branney, Written by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman from an original story by H.P. Lovecraft.

So last night I went to a SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival) midnight showing of "The Whisperer in Darkness" up at the Egyptian on Cap Hill. I didn't know that I would make it because it was MIDNIGHT after all and I would have to drive all the way up from Kent and, oh yeah, it was at MIDNIGHT. But I ordered the tickets online (effective, smart, and easy on the SIFF website) and so I headed north, a bloody fingernail of a moon hanging low over the Olympic Range to the East.

Of course, I live on the ragged edge of suburbia, near the growth boundary, where farms are still in the process of being churned into subdivisions, so I forgot there were actually places where people HAD a night life, who could be found out on the streets at midnight. We tend to roll up the sidewalks at nightfall around here (if not before), so a strong population of students and clubbers was a reminder that I live in a civilized city (on the other hand, parking was a pain, but I was effectively a tourist, so I rolled with it).

Oh, the movie? Right. "The Whisperer in Darkness" is based on the Lovecraft short story of the same name (more on that in a moment), and this film version was produced by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS), who did "The Call of Cthulhu" movie a few years back. "The Call of Cthulhu" was an adaptation of the classic Lovecraft short story, and was filmed as a silent movie, as befitted the technology of the time. This time, they filmed "Whisperer" as a black and white movie of the thirties.

The plot of the original story is as follows (spoilers): Folklorist and researcher Albert Wilmarth exchanges letters with George Akeley, a Vermont farmer. Akeley tells him of strange goings-on around his farm involving flying spirits from another world. Wilmarth initially disbelieves, but Akeley brings him over to his side, growing more frantic as time goes by. Then suddenly, Akeley sends a note to that everything is cool, and would Wilmarth personally bring back all the evidence he sent Wilmarth to his farm? Wilmarth, having not seen enough horror movies, does so, and finds an ailing Akeley who tells him about how wonderful these alien Mi-go are and downloads a bunch of Lovecraftian mythos into Wilmarth's brain. This does not clue him in to the fact that things are wrong, but upon discovering that it is NOT Akeley he's been talking to, Wilmarth runs off into the night. The end.

Now, I have been thinking about "The Whisperer in Darkness" for many years, since I have been working intermittently on a play version (I take it out about once every two months, advance it by a scene, then put it back in the vault). So I know the story has, to be kind, weaknesses. Wilmarth and Akeley never really meet. Wilmarth's behavior is a little rocky, in that he is all too trusting of Akeley and that, after getting a big SAN-loss worth of Cthulhu Mythos, it is something (relatively) minor that sets him fleeing into the dark hills of Vermont. And it is another of those Lovecraftian tales where nothing really HAPPENS to the protagonist.

But until I saw the film, I realized that there was another problem, and addressing it was if it were going to be a thirties Hollywood production hits the nail on the head:

STUDIO BOSS: What's the story on the rewrites for that Lovecraft project?
WRITER: There's a problem, JB!
STUDIO BOSS: What's the problem?
WRITER: There's no third act!
STUDIO BOSS: What do you mean there's no third act?
WRITER: In act one you present the problem. In act two, the protagonist works against the problem, and in act three, the protagonist resolves, or fails to resolve, the problem.
STUDIO BOSS: So what happens in the short story?
WRITER: The protagonist runs away.
STUDIO BOSS: Runs away? That doesn't put butts into the theater seats! Give it a third act, pronto!
WRITER: Yes, JB!

And so they do, and do so admirably. The cast swells as well, and grows to include historical figure Charles Fort and a lot of Miskatonic colleagues and a female character lacking from the book. Matt Foyer plays Wilmarth with a continual sense of dread and loathing, and it is his movie, George Akley (Joe Sofranko) kicked down to a supporting role (or rather, roles, as George and Albert do get a chance to talk). And it has a third act that gives more action to the protagonist, more grounding to the entire operation, and a sense of resolution.

However, it does jump the rails just a bit as far as a "thirties-movie", in that it feels like a William Castle movie of the fifties or early sixties than one of the thirties. And while the "Shadow of the Knife" is used to great advantage in the early parts of the film, it show the monsters eventually, and the final sequence is a memorable closeup that is crafty computer animation as opposed to the stop-motion of 1933's "King Kong".

Yet in the end, it is a responsible adaptation, taking the heart and soul of Lovecraft's original and transplanting it, still beating and leaking vital fluids, over into a different media. The movie made its debut at SIFF (at MIDNIGHT) but is being shown again Sunday Night at the Neptune (7 PM). Definitely worth checking out.

More later,

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles IV

2011-06-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

Horrors from Yuggoth by Adrian M. Pommier, an Age of Cthulhu Adventure from Goodman Games.

I’ve mentioned my Call of Cthulhu group before, though I only review stuff in this space that I’ve personally GMed. Our group has multiple GMs, and we all have different areas that we concentrate on. One handles Arkham in the 20’s, another does Trail of Cthulhu, we have the occasional Delta Greenish playtest, and somebody sends out for Tekumel. Anyway, I’ve been rolling through the Goodman Games’ Age of Cthulhu series, with a group of pulp-based heroes, and the previous reviews are here, here, and here. As noted in the reviews, they have a similar pacing, an assuming overarching arc, and are suitable for a standard group of "investigators".

But now we shift dramatically with Horrors from Yuggoth. Gone is the spider-silk thin metaplot involving two creepy kids. Gone also is the familiar pacing for the first three (You go to a distant land at the request of someone who is either dead before you get there or has the life expectancy of a ripe banana, you uncover a conspiracy involving dark gods and you get on the scene at the very last moment to spoil the ceremony bringing some nasty in from an eldritch dimension). Gone also is a more pulp-driven feel, replaced with a historical event that takes a left turn into the mythos (and we have Mild Spoilers from here on in).

And it was such a difference in tone and approach that I couldn’t bring the regular PCs along – there was no way to justify the semi-retired mobster, the art historian, and the authoress with her adventurer boyfriend, in an adventure that spilled them out on the polar ice like so many abandoned pets. Nope, it didn't fit at all.

OK, here’s the short form. In 1928 the Airship Italia went down on a polar floe (true). A massive multi-national rescue effort was stage (true). Roald Admunson lost his life trying to mount a rescue effort (true). The survivors on the ice floe were five Italian airmen who survived in a red tent and were eventually rescued (true, and as noted in the movie “The Red Tent”).

Now we take a Cthulhian twist – the Italia was in the region investigating Lovecraftian activity, and was brought down by a elderitch threat. The massive multi-national effort is in many ways a cover for a race between rival nations to find what is buried beneath the ice. The PC’s rescue team, pulled together by the American Foreign Office (with overtones of the early CIA) is one of those groups, though they are not aware of this at the outset.

Given the size of our gaming group (6 players), there was the challenge of justifying risking 8 people (including two NPCs) for five, but that was glossed over. This felt very much like a tournament module, where the action should have been covered in about 4 hours. I decided to run it in one sitting, and it went six hours, as there was no real good place to stop and let people into/out of the adventure.

This marathon run resulted in some silliness around hour 5, where the heroes were confronted with an intestine-like set of hallways and a particular sphincter-like door. Intended to be spooky and unsettling, it instead turned into snickering and guffaws, which was not the feel anyone was looking for (but sometimes you just can't help it). Similarly, as we were running long, the ending felt a little more hectic than it otherwise might be. On reflection, I would have broken it into two sessions and hand-waved off the sudden appearance and disappearance of PCs.

Troublesome also were some of the text to be read was not for the faint of heart and the heavy of tongue ("One the bubble-pods has a peristaltic muscle sealing it mostly shut", or "Longyearbyen, the largest city in the Svalbard archipelago, has taken on the atmosphere of a macabre carnival ..."). And verging back into the silliness, the presence of the walrus men (shown on the cover), were more amusing than terrifying, calling out Lewis Carrol and John Lennon jokes.

All in all, this felt like a tournament module re-purposed for publication as opposed to part of a larger series. It functions within a limited set-up and resolves itself in such a way that it is unlikely that the characters therein will ever see play again. There is enough "sudden death" elements to sideline a character permanently, and only limited ways to bring up backup characters to continue the adventure. It feels like it SHOULD be played in a single sitting, though it has too much stuff for just a short session (and indeed, the group never found a couple plot points on the ice itself).

The title itself underscores one of the problems of CoC modules. The original apparently bore the title Rescue at Svalbard (mentioned at the very end), which was accurate, does not tip the hand of the DM, and is as exciting as mud. Horrors from Yuggoth is cooler, but gives away the ultimate bad guy to anyone who knows the mythos. And putting a walrus-man on the cover does nothing to make them horrifying later on. So this feels like a fight between play experience and marketing, and marketing won.

In the end,this is one of the weaker entries, treading some new ground but ultimately failing to follow through on the promise of the earlier modules. This may be a mid-course correction for the line or an attempt to spread out the potential of the series, but it was just OK.

More later,

A Message from Steven Schend

2011-05-23T10:22:00.001-07:00

Kickstarting a Publishing House,

or, “How are Secrets like Dragons Anyways?”

I’m Steven Schend, a former coworker of Jeff's from TSR and Wizards of the Coast, and I'll admit that Jeff taught me a lot over the years as a game designer, editor, writer, and publishing professional. I owe Jeff enough already as a mentor and friend that I need large trucks in which to haul all the beer with which I repay favors and kindnesses. Today, Jeff’s been kind enough to invite me in and grant me his blog space to talk to you about something a block or two off of Grubb Street.

I’m launching a new publishing house—Vistag Media—and the new world of Kharndam via an initial fiction collection entitled Secrets, like Dragons... In a nutshell, Ed Greenwood, Jaleigh Johnson, Rosemary Jones, Joe Martin, and I are co-authoring a fantasy novella collection that’s quite a departure from our usual Forgotten Realms novels or other shared world fantasy works. Clicking on the book title above takes you to the Kickstarter pitch page with a short video of me talking about the book followed by the initial book trailer for Secrets, like Dragons...

Why fantasy?
I wanted to publish a fantasy work first as that’s where I cut my teeth as a writer and storyteller. Also, my approach to this world is darker than my usual work. Kharndam’s stories won’t provide obvious moral compasses for readers; hat or flag colors won’t reveal who’s a hero or villain, though actions will…as will magic. Fantasy tropes allow us ways to get at the real truths too often inaccessible in our mundane world. Magic even exposes hidden secrets a character or narrator might choose to keep hidden, and secrets lie at the heart of this world and this work.

I’ve planned Secrets, like Dragons… to encompass 350 to 400 pages of fiction and side matter from five different authors, and it’s available as a PDF, trade paperback, or hardcover book. I want as many folks as possible in on the ground floor of this new world and new company... There are a number of benefits to donating early at Kickstarter, and we'll be revealing a few more over the last week of our project, so please check back as often as you can.

On May 29, 2011, our Kickstarter fund-raising drive ends, and I truly hope we can meet its financial goals. The funds allow me to pay authors and artists (and others behind the scenes) solid professional rates for their work. That’s a no-brainer for me, as both a creative and as a publishing professional, even if it makes the start-up more costly. The start-up budget also accounts for producing the physical books and mailing them to early patrons and benefactors (and a few reviewers, to be honest).

Whatever the outcome of this project and drive, please know that I appreciate any and all attention and time you can spare over at Kickstarter.com or at my own site where there’s a few more posts about the project.

Thanks again to Jeff for allowing me the space and time to speak with you all here; I hope some or many of you take a look at the project and join us in support of new creative endeavors,

Steven

PS: Only now did I realize that I never answered the sub-titled question. Here goes….

Secrets, like dragons, grow more powerful when hidden…at least in fearful minds.
Secrets, like dragons, can sleep for decades before wreaking havoc with their revelation.
Secrets, like dragons, are at least as deadly as those what spawned them.
Secrets, like dragons, may mitigate the damage they unleash if treated with respect.
And, at one of our author’s suggestions….Secrets, like dragons, are more noisy in taffeta.

Ceding the Floor

2011-05-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Nope, not Raptured. Just very busy at the moment, with the day job, the not day job, and a trip back to visit family.

However, I want to cede the floor to a long-time friend and fellow writer, Steven Schend, who is trying to Kickstart a project. Kickstarting is an old thing made new by the Internet, where people pledge funds to get a project off the ground, and only have to kick in if the project is becomes fully vested. Steven's project has less than a week to go and needs the support. Go check it out.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Steven Schend.

More later,

On Beyond Zebra

2011-05-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

And furthermore ...

Aces & Eights, AD&D, Aeon, Aftermath!, Agone, Alma Mater, Alternity, Amazing Engine, Amber, Arcanum, Aria (Canticle of the Monomyth), Ars Magica, Avengers of Justice, Battlelords of the 23^rd Century, Big Eyes, Small Mouth, Blue Planet, Blue Rose, Brave New World, Buck Rogers High Adventure, Buck Rogers XXVC, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bunnies and Burrows, Bureau 13, Burning Empire, Burning Wheel, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Call of Cthulhu, Castle Falkenstein, Castles & Crusades, Chainmail, Champions, Chill, Conan, Continuum, Crimefighters, Cyberpunk (all incarnations), Cyborg Commando, D&D (all incarnations), D20 Modern, Dallas, Dangerous Journeys, Dark Conspiracy, Dark Matter, Darksword Adventures, Darkurthe Legends, DC Heroes, DC Universe, Deadlands, Delta Green, Diaspora, Doctor Who, Dogs in the Vinyard, Dragonquest, Dragonstrike, Dream Park, Dune, Dying Earth, Dyvil.

(Takes deep breath)

Earthdawn, Elric!, Encounter Critical, Empire of the Petal Throne, (including Swords & Glory, Gardasiyal, and Tekumel), Engel, Exalted, Fantasy Hero, Fantasy Trip, Feng Shui, Fifth Cycle, Flashing Blades, Fringeworthy, FUDGE, Gamma World (all incarnations), Gear Krieg, Gemini, Ghostbusters, Godlike, Golden Heroes, GURPS, Hackmaster, HARP, Heavy Gear, Hero Wars, HeroQuest, Hollow Earth Expedition, Houses of the Blooded, Human Occupied Landfill, Humanspace Empires, Indiana Jones, Iron Kingdoms, Ironclaw, Ironhedge, It Came From the Late, Late, Show, James Bond 007, Justifiers, Kult, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Legacy: War of Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Legionnaire, Leverage, Lord of the Rings, Lords of Creation, Macho Women with Guns, Mage: The Ascension or Awakening, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Universe, Masterbook, Mecha, Mechanoid Invasion, Megatraveller, Mekton, Men In Black, Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, MERPs, Metascape, Monsters! Monsters!, Mouse Guard, Mummy, Murphy’s World, Mutant Chronicles, Mutants & Masterminds.

(Takes ANOTHER deep breath)

Nephilim, Ninja Burger, Nobilis, Noir, Orkworld, OSRIC, Pandemonium, Pathfinder, Pelicar, Pendragon, Pokemon the RPG, Powers and Perils, Price of Freedom, Primal Order, Prince Valiant, Privateers and Gentlemen, Rifts, Rise of Aester, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Rolemaster, Run Out The Guns!, Rune, RuneQuest, Rus, Sandman, Savage Worlds, Serenity, Seventh Sea (yeah, its 7^th Sea, but I’m not doing numbers), Shadowrun, Shatterzone, SLA Industries, Smallville, Sovereign Stone, Space 1889, Space Opera, Spirt of the Century, Spycraft, Star Ace, Star Frontiers, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate SG-1, Stormbringer, Super Squadron, Superhero 2044, Supernatural, Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies.

(Turning blue now)

Tales from the Floating Vagabond, Tales of Gargentihr, Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, Teenagers from Outer Space, The End, Thieves’ World, Thousand Suns, Timemaster, Toon, Top Secret, Top Secret/SI, TORG (The Other Roleplaying Game), Trail of Cthulhu, Transhuman Space, Traveller (Many incarnations),Twilight 2000, Underground, Unknown Armies. Vampire (Masquerade, Requiem, Dark Ages, et. al.) Victoriana, Warcraft, Warhammer FRP, Weapons of the Gods, Weird Wars, Werewolf, Wheel of Time, World of Darkness (in all incarnations), World Tree, Wraith, Wyrd is Bond, X is STILL available at very reasonable rates.

On the other hand, I COULD just do Monsters, or Novels, or Comic Book Characters next time.

More later,

Play: iEat Meat

2011-05-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs created and performed by Mike Daisey, Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, Seattle REP through May 22

I'll explain the blog title later on, but it is going take a bit to get there. Because this is a tough show to review. It is also the most passionate and dramatic performance on the Seattle REP stage this year (and this year included Of Mice and Men).

First off, Mike Daisey is my favorite monologist (why yes, there is competition). I first caught him doing 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, a show about his experiences at the online giant, and have made it a point to catch him ever since, which has gotten me to the bulk of his other shows (including three out of the four of his Great Men series he did up on Cap Hill).

Mike Daisey is the spokeman of Generation Geek. Heavy-set, sweating, with a delivery style that echoes Sam Kinison and John Goodman, armed with a neatly-folded kerchief to dab his forehead and a glass of water, seated at a table, notes in front of him, he talks. He tells a story. He embodies his story and he makes it your story as well. He's very good at that.

And Mike Daisey's story is about technology - the cult of Apple and Steve Jobs. And he is telling two stories, from two different ends of the supply chain.

The first story is the history of Apple (in general) and Steve Jobs (in particular) and how Apple almost collapsed and then returned in iGlory, and very much about our consumer mindspace about the new shiny item on the shelves and how we take a Gollum-like possessiveness to it all. We don't think about the way the paradigm has shifted (example - Who owns the song on your iPod?) and how the future has changed. And here Daisey is riding the crest of the wave in a friendly audience of tech geeks and Seattle Rep regulars, who know the stories of tech support and have read their Bill Gibson and turned off a plethora of phones before the show started (One of the audience, before the show began, was taking multiple pictures with his iPhone of the nearly-bare stage, to be stitched together later on his computer). Daisey does this well - he comes from out of the tech trenches. We understand and laugh.

The second story is about someplace we haven't been. It starts in the cyberpunk Disneyland of Kowloon, and descends into Shenzhen, an instant metropolis larger than New York City, and its Special Economic Zone. The Special Economic Zone is a fief of huge Foxconn factories where all of our high tech toys are assembled by hand by workers reduced to component parts.It is a Kafka-esque domain that combines the worst features of communism and corporatism to produce a gulag of lives monitored, regulated, and burned out. And by burned out I'm not talking about that Friday afternoon when you stare at the screen and you're looking forward to the weekend. I'm talking the burned out that happens when you have to do the same task repeatedly, standing for up to 18 hours a day to make a quota until your spine fuses, and at the first sign that you are unable to do so, you are tossed out. Or, in the case of Foxconn, you jump off the roof of the four story factory because it is easier than living (Foxconn's solution to this fatal disobedience? Install nets on the roofs).

These, then, are the true slaves to our machines.

Daisey weaves the two stories back and forth, and the second tale soon takes precedence over the relative comfort of the first, as we get the stories, as we get his story of getting those stories that come out of the Special Economic Zone. And it creeps up you, that fact that everything has a price, and forces you to recognize that price and who is paying it.

So should I be consumed by recognition? Confronted by it, yes, but not consumed. You see, a while back I had to come to terms with my carnivorous lifestyle (or rather the carnivorous portion of my omnivorous lifestyle). I eat meat. To be more clear, I consume the muscle tissue and flesh of living things slaughtered expressly for that purpose. That recognition, and the pain that the animals suffer in life and on that trip to my dinner table, is enough to make a lot of good people swear off meat entirely. Good for them. I instead choose to reduce but not eliminate, to seek out more cruelty-free options when available, and recognize and honor the animals whose lives my life has ended. (I owe this analogy in part, by the way, to the fact that the REP was staging an "iBBQ" the evening of our attendance. I did not partake, but saw the irony).

Similarly, here, People are suffering under inhuman conditions for my toys. Not just for the computers and iStuff. When I was working for WizKids, I was very aware where those plastic, pre-painted miniatures came from. The disks that install the computer games I've worked on were not created by pixies. The Port of Seattle's largest importer for many years has been Hasbro. There is a price, and we must both be willing to face up to that there is a price (not talking dollars, here) and to work to improve the lives of those who pay that price.

And it is not just China here. It was Korea and India before that and Japan before that and Mexico and the American South before that and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory before that. The delivery chain has gotten longer, and the people who are paying for this are further away. No one you know. But they are still there and if we can simply get people to be as concerned about their well-being as we would be about free-range beef and cruelty-free veal, then we've made a needed step forward. Which, I think, is the place where Daisey is going to.

The audience was shaken. We had sat down as geeks, listening to Jonathan Coulton sing "Welcome to my Secret Lair on Skullcrusher Mountain" and got up a little more humbled, a little more chastened, a little more aware, as theater volunteers passed out lists of action points as we quietly exited (Item one - drop Steve Jobs a line). We had come expecting Martin Luther to tear the Catholic church a new one and ended up finding our own sins examined.

This is Mike Daisey's most political monologue, and his darkest. He opened a door that most would not even think of as a door, and found what was beyond it. He has rattled a few cages, and in doing do, has wrapped up one of the strongest Seattle REP seasons in years.

And excuse me, I have to write to Steve Jobs, now.

More later,

[Addendum: Other Mike Daisey notes on Grubb Street]:

21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com
Great Men of Genius: Bertholt Brecht
Great Men of Genius: Nikola Tesla
Great Men of Genius: L. Ron Hubbard
Mike Daisey Deals with a Critic
How Theater Failed America

Z is for ...

2011-04-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Zero.

Zero is a dark dystopian SF game where you play former members of a hive mind living in a contained, post-apocalyptic society, who are suddenly cast loose from the collective, and hunted by the mad ruler of that society, Queen Zero. If it sounds like Paranoia run straight, you're not the first to come to that conclusion.

But that's not why Zero is on the list. Instead there's a story involving the game:

One year, about the time that WotC purchased TSR (I'm guessing August of '98), Peter Adkison and Richard Garfield hosted a Game Designers' Conference a couple days right before the GenCon in Milwaukee., It was pretty cool - a small group of hobby game and computer game folk gathered together for some roundtables. Over the course of the event, several of those present admitted that they had never played an RPG.

Lester volunteered to run one, in particular a new game he had written (with artist Steve Stone) for Archangel - Zero. I was commuting to the convention from Lake Geneva at that point, so I didn't stay for the session.

But when I showed up the next morning, everyone was talking about the game. Lester's a good GM, and it was his game, so it should have been a good experience. But the guys that were MOST excited about the game, and insisted on sharing the story of what happened, were the designers who had not played RPGs before. It was an epiphany, and pretty cool one, for them.

And that's the power of RPGs. If you can get people to play them, the chances are they will enjoy them. And with that we draw to a close this challenge. There will be a couple afterwords, but that the bulk of it all. Hope you enjoyed it.

More later,

Y is for ...

2011-04-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

Ysgarth.

This is one that tests the limits of memory. We had a copy at TSR. and I remember a few things about it, but this is from years ago:

1) It was texturally dense. A lot of type of the page without a lot of white space in the form of margins or leading. If the type wasn't just a courier font, it was darned close.

2) It was mechanically dense. It was part of that "fix D&D by adding more stuff" school that was common at that stage.

3) It was one of the early games to ask for a "character concept" before you start finding out your stats. And here's the part that drive me crazy about character concept. You don't really know what kind of character you really want to create until you understand something about the world and your character's role in it. That works for some genres (You're an investigator who will find out about the Mythos), less well for others. Generic fantasy is one of those where you need a little more information on what your world is like before you decide how you fit into it. So while character concept works as a player retention strategy, it is not so hot as an acquisition strategy.

Other than that, I don't have a lot. From later digging, it has resurfaced a couple times, but has always been a favorite of a small but devoted group. And that may be the fate of a lot of Old School Revival games, but that's not the worst thing in the world.

More later,

X is for ...

2011-04-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

Xerxes.

Xerxes is an interesting animal, an Indy domain game set in 480 BC. You are one of the leaders of the city states along the fertile crescent under Xerxes I, also known as King Ahasuerus in the Book of Ester. Like your king, you are a Zoroastran, and your city's divine ahuras appear to you with a warning - a new power is rising in the west, and unless you bind together and launch a major invasion, a boy-king from that land will rip your empire to pieces and its barbarian gods will destroy your pantheons.So you have to work together but still maintain your position in court, dodging your allies assassins while trying to get their forces killed on the battlefield (without letting the Greeks win the war).

And, um....

Um ....

OK, I'll fess up. I've got nothing. I have no "X" RPG to cover. I could have done XCrawl, but I was horribly unimpressed with it when I first saw it - not horrible enough to mock, but not good enough to give it its own entry. And I could have done something like the X-men boxed set for MSH or An X-cellent Death pick-a-path book, but that was bending the rules a bit too much. I suppose I could bemoan the lack of an X-Files license.

I was going to say that "X is available for a low monthly fee". The Lovely Bride suggested "Xerxes" as a name, but thought it was about Egyptian gods (which was wrong). I said it was about Greek gods (which was also wrong), but then came up with a story by which it WAS about Greek Gods, and how you could mobilize your city-state against the onslaught of a more vibrant culture.

But just to be clear, there IS no Xerxes. But if you create one, be sure to thank me in the credits, and send me some copies.

More later,

W is for ...

2011-04-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Whispering Vault.

I normally hate games which start out asking me what my "character concept" is, but I really like Whispering Vault. Part of the reason this escapes my wrath is that Lester Smith was GMing the session, but also because WV does an excellent job of portraying its setting, and of telling me what my character's role is in the world.

Why yes, I am going to tell you about my character, but let's talk about the game first.

The Whispering Vault has a high and limited concept. You are a Stalker. In life, you fought against the dark parts of the universe. Now, for all eternity, you are charged with keeping reality (The Realm of the Flesh - yeah, it has a lot of Significant Capitals in the game) intact, seeking out Enigmas that don't belong in the sane world and sending them back to where they came. It's where your Call of Cthulhu investigator is recruited to become an arcane superhero to fight the mythos. And you get super powers, a true (often inhuman) form, and the chance to create your own demiplane or domain. It is a horror game, but one where you get to play the Spectre, the Phantom Stranger, or the Neil Gaiman version of Sandman.

So my character was Angel Ball, a 60s burnout that turned into a spherical smile button with a rainbow mohawk. My domain was San Francisco as drawn by Bob Crumb, and populated by grey corporate minions in grey suits with TVs for heads. Her character when she manifested in the real world was a tough biker. She was a lot fun, and the rules funneled in nicely to let me run with her.

Now what made Whispering Vault cool (Indy game fans may find this familiar) was that it had a definitive format to its story. It was a method of play as stylized and as ritual as an episode of Iron Chef. You would become aware of something wrong in the Realm of Flesh, you would gather the other stalkers, you would summon the Navigator and face the Guardian between the Realms of Flesh and Essence, you would identify and confront the Unbidden and remove the Enigma. You would heal reality. That was a structure right off the bat. No "Well, you hang around in the cyberbar until someone offers you a job" thing. You know your place in the world, you find the threat, you neutralize it. There is a goodly (but not limitless) amount of wiggle room within this plotline. And the fact that it is enjoyable shows that limitless is sometimes overrated.

The game mechanic is a nice tweak on the "roll to hit a target number" mechanic. In this case, you roll a number of dice, and add together the duplicated dice to get your result (if you roll five dice to get a 5,5,4,3,3, you would have a result of 10 from the two fives). You can reroll certain dice. I've called this Yahtzee-style task resolution, and it actually works pretty well.

The version I still have was a single small ringbound booklet, marked only by the symbol, and noted as a "convention advance copy" but what we would call today a Beta version. Later drafts were more in the standard squareback shown in the illo here, but it retained its heart as a beautiful niche product. It could be run for long campaigns, but it excelled at one story at a time, with a group of creative players.

More later,

V is for ...

2011-04-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

Villains and Vigilantes.

V&V is one of those "Ampersand and Alliteration" games of the early RPG era - Tunnels and Trolls, Bunnies and Burrows, Powers and Perils. On a list of game titles, it tells you right off the bat from whence it takes its gaming DNA. V&V was an early super hero RPG where you had a wide variety of powers culled from the comics.

And I love this game, if for nothing else a single super-power -

Mollusk Control.

It could be also Control Mollusk or Command Mollusk (I don't have the books at hand), but that one little grace note to fit in with Animal Control and Fish Control is just one of the things about the game that makes me smile, and sets the game up as a more light-hearted and adventure-oriented of the early super-hero games.

There were two big guns back in those pre-MSH days - V&V and Champions. Champions was very much about defining superheroics - their min/maxed character points put a lot more emphasis on character creation and tweaking it to just right. V&V was much more swingy - you could "play yourself" if you so chose (converting you into a baseline hero) and then adding super powers. Random super powers. You were given a bag of stuff, and challenged to come up with your own superhero as you emerge from the irradiated burst that created you. Including Mollusk Control.

Most genres get one big initial success and the others following. The fact that Champions and V&V were contemporaneous was, I think, due to distribution. Champions was a west coast thing, while V&V belonged to the east coast and midwest. So long before rap there was a coastal rivalry going on. But while Champions wen through numerous revisions over the year (plunging into MMOs most recently), V&V fell into that ethereal plane was Fantasy Games Unlimited, neither living nor dead. Only recently did the original designers regain control and will be launching a new version.

And I really hope it has Mollusk Control.

More later,

U is for ...

2011-04-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

Universe.

[1.0] Game Description
[2.0] Character Creation
[3.0] Character Role
[4.0] Recognition of Cool Things in the Game
      [4.1] Cool Map
      [4.2] Delta Vee
[5.0] Where it all went wrong
      [5.1] Traveller Comparison
      [5.2] Changing Nature of SF
      [5.3] Modified Case Format
[5.4] How SPI didn't GET it
[6.0] More Later statement

[1.0] Game Description:
Universe was an attempt by wargamer publisher SPI (Simulations Publications Inc) to get into the increasingly dominant role-playing wing of the hobby industry. It came out the year after the more successful Dragonquest, and shortly before the company was purchased by TSR. While Universe did not kill SPI, it did little to provide the much-needed rescue, and it remains one of the worst games I've ever played (yes, I called out Synnibarr and Spawn earlier, but I can cheerfully admit that I never played them, their awfulness being clear to all at the first blush).

[2.0] Character Creation
I think the big reason for this failure is a character creation system that reads like a tax form and takes about as long to fill out. I think I spent a couple afternoons putting together a character, as I had to deal with matters like the gravitational force on my home planet in order to determine my abilities (sorry, potentials). It was big on formulae, and had more granularity than a beach in Hawaii.

[3.0] Character Role
The greater problem is what did you do once you had your character. The universe of Universe was a very small place. I don't remember any obvious theme or metaplot or even long-term history that gave me factions or opposition or sense of purpose. There was a lot of low-level combat (ship-to-ship or personal melee level) but nothing that seemed to pull everything together. After a few rounds of combat, everything went back into the box and eventually passed out of my life.

[4.0] Recognition of Cool Things in the Game.
But the game did have some cool things to it.

[4.1] Cool Map
It had a cool map, showing real-space around our the Sol System, and should have been a great launching point for earth-centered campaigns.

[4.2] Delta Vee
Its space combat game was also pretty nice, and was inserted into an issue of Ares magazine. It tried to deal with the reality of space combat and setting vectors and thrust as opposed to transposing WWI dogfights into space. I think it still had, as Spock would say, "two-dimensional thinking", but it was playing to SPI's strengths there.

[5.0] Where it All Went Wrong
So what went wrong?

[5.1] Traveller comparison
If Chivalry & Sorcery was an attempt to "Fix" D&D and make it more historically accurate, Universe was an attempt to bring more hard science to bear against Traveller, which was the SF roleplaying paradigm. Unfortunately, most people would put Traveller on the harder end of a spectrum that includes both Star Frontiers and Star Wars, so flanking on that the science end made it appear even dryer than it was.

[5.2] Changing nature of SF.
The game also came out post-Star Wars and post-Empire Strikes Back, and with it we saw the popularization of more "space fantasy" than the harder popular SF of, say, 2001. The New Wave had opened up another front on the old "Rivets and blasters" school of SF, and Cyberpunk was just about to break loose. Not a place for a "traditional" SF game, especially one that was also avoiding that old-school "Buck Rogers" stuff as well.

[5.3] Modified Case Format
Most damaging to the case, I think, was the way the rules were presented in a structure called case format (or to be more accurate- modified case format). This was an outline form that you could summarize easily at the start, and made it easy to find complex rules relatively quickly. However, it bled the life out of the game itself, stood in the way of people getting to play the game, and occupied a lot of space (particularly as all headings are repeated, and master headings need text underneath them), so that the rules got longer and more intimidating.

[5.4] How SPI didn't GET it.
Universe is used as an example of how SPI, a wargaming company, just didn't GET RPGs and somehow deserved its fate as TSR took command of the gaming hobby. Yet Dragonquest was actually pretty good, and where the company was comfortable with its subject matter it did quite well - its War of the Rings was a good simulation of the LOTR Trilogy, and Freedom in the Galaxy had that goofy Star Wars feel of Empire versus Rebels (plus the greatest bad-girl name in histroy -Thysa Kimbo). Ultimately, Universe's format, presentation, and lack of purpose created a joyless game. With a little work, it could produce something interesting and rewarding, but I could say the same of a bookcase from IKEA. That's why I put it down as one of the worst games I've ever truly played.

[5.5] More later statement

More later,

ERRATA: [5.5] More later statement should be [6.0] More later statement.

Play: How I Slept With Your Mother

2011-04-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

this. by Melissa James Gibson, Directed by Braden Abraham. Seattle Repertory Theatre, through May 15th.

I've said it before, but the good thing about season tickets is that you end up going to plays that you would normally never go to. Billed as an "unromantic comedy", this. (note the period) is more of a sit-com, and by that I want to get back to the full use of the word situational comedy. Humor arising from familiar characters in situations. It is funny in places, touching in others, and well-acted throughout, and would not be out of place on NBC's Thursday night lineup, except for the fact that there is real character development.

The core is the group of friends in their late thirties. Marrell (April Yvette Thompson) and Tom (Hans Altwies) are the brittle, exhausted couple who haven't slept more than fifteen minutes since the birth of their child. Jane (Cheyenne Casebier) and Alan (Nick Garrison) are the old friends from college. Jane's husband died a year ago and she is struggling as a single mom. Alan is the gay jewish wacky friend - in sitcom language, he fills the role of Barney or Phoebe. He gets to be broader and larger than life. Here, his character has perfect memory (making it the second play I've seen at the Rep with such a character, the first being the 39 Stairs). Ryan Shams is the guest star, as Jean-Pierre, the doctor without borders that Marrell and Tom are trying to set up with Jane

That's where it starts, with a party game that goes wrong (Edward Albee is stalking this entire season), and then moves in fits and starts through emotional baggage, hidden secrets, and the nature of relationships. This is New York and these are Urbanites who see plays and do the crossword puzzle in the Times and so there is a lot of wordplay and language and arguing about punctuation and how you pronounce things like a Brita water filter. But the thing is, there is character advancement, and while some of the endings have the traditional feel to them (I have no doubt Alan will be back to normal by next week), there is the feeling of character challenge and growth here.

Contributing the comfortable feel of the play is that there are a lot of Rep regulars here. And that is one of the great things about a Repertory theater - you get do actors in many roles. Han Altwies does the frustrated husband well that we've seen earlier. Cheyenne Casebier digs in a bit deeper with Jane, and the play is ultimately about her. Nick Garrison gets to be more snippy and sniper-like with Alan. Ryan Shams I want to believe is actually French, since his accent and mannerisms line up so well with some of my French friends. And April Yvette Thompson holds her own with the others, and yes, you believe that they have been friends for years even though the discussions veer into race, gender, and morality.

And the set. OK, I'm trying not to hit the "sitcom" hotkey too many times, but the well-furbished set does well as Tom and Marrell's apartment, with the second act scene change as the club Marrell sings in and with various doors for spot scenes. Yes, the components are all there, and the play strives to rise above it all.

One bit of pedantry, from the fact that so much of the play is about words and usage. The cover of the playbill calls the play this (lower case, no punctuation). But title page calls it this. (all lower case, but with a period at the end. And the website gives him This (capped, but no punctuation). So what's the deal with this?

I liked this. Not every play deals with deeper issues, and this. occupies a space higher a tad higher than traditional TV fair and Romantic comedies. It is a good "date play". More later,

T is for ...

2011-04-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

Talislanta.

I know Talislanta first and foremost as a world, not a game system. It came into my life with The Chronicles of Talislanta, and as a collection of squarebound books known as the Cyclopedia Talislanta (not to be confused the Cyclopedia Harnica).

These volumes, collectively unified by the incredible art of P.D.Breeding, created a very different world than either the traditional D&D-crafted universes or the more medieval creations of C&S or Harn. Talislanta's world is set in a culturally and genetically diverse realm with non-standard races. As the ad copy said - "No Elves", at a time when Elves were part and parcel of what fantasy was.

Talislanta, more importantly, had no humans. Or rather, no race that one could point at as a human analogue. Each nation had its own divergent culture, some working with its neighbors, some warring against them. And while you could create a spectrum with the Arimites and the Mandalans at the more human end, and the bestial Mogroth and the scale-plated Vajra at the other, there is no "typical" universal human race that is everywhere. Skin hues move through blue and green, we have scales, feathers, and rainbow tattoos. There is no dominant culture, and while you can say that this race is "Asian fantasy" and that race is "Melnibonean" or "Drowish" in apparent origin, there is precious little that you put down as default. In modern SF terms, it is less like the bridge of the original Enterprise and more like Quark's Bar - a place where bipedal, laterally symmetrical races thrive.

Vance gets invoked when talking about Talislanta, but I would also add Edgar Rice Burroughs, in particular Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. The latter in particular was a world filled with a huge number of different diverse peoples that had their own cultures apart from one another. The "Lost World" trope of racially distinct tribes comes down to us through a number of sources, and is going great guns in Talistanta.

The fantasy itself was tuned up a few notches as well. We have traders in dream essence and ice schooners and dune ships. It evokes a lot of old Yes covers by Roger Dean. It delighted in its off-beat strangeness, or the fact that it was a world that snubbed grandfather Tolkien and the western traditional fantasy to find its own path.

I found the rules for the original game later, but they seemed unnecessary for the core of the world, which was the diversity and interaction of the races. I will admit that I have a particular fondness for the WotC edition as far as codifying and putting everything together, but the play experience was not what I got out of the game. Rather, it was the fantasy world itself, and the reading experience of Talistanta that was its own reward.

More later

S is for ...

2011-04-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

two of the worst games in the history of gaming: Spawn of Fashan and Synnibarr (actually The World of Synnibarr).

The thing to remember with both of these creations is that they were quite obviously labors of love, created, much like Chivalry & Sorcery or Quest of the Ancients, with an eye to "Fixing" D&D, or at least to providing alternatives to it. Yet both went horribly astray, and now are legends in their own time - they are the gaming equivalents of "Manos: the Hands of Fate".

Of Spawn of Fashan, its very rarity has added to its legend. I've seen a copy, though do not own one. The mechanics were complex and as twisted as a web spun by a spider on LSD. I remember is a map that said "North, where Melvin once stood", a highpoint that might once have meant something in an original campaign but merely seems like something out of Bored of the Rings (and became a battle cry among designers for years afterwards).

Oddly, it was a tiny print run, and only attained it true goofy awfulness by way of a review in DRAGON magazine which the reviewer ultimately determined that it was all a cruel joke. Alas, it was not, and the designer tells his tale of woe and intrigue here, many years after the event. Given all the embarrassment suffered, I have a tendency to give Spawn a break - to beat on it is like a merciless review of a straw-hat theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Synnibarr I am less sympathetic towards, as Spawn at least had the virtue of conciseness in its poor showing. Synnibarr was a massive tome created by DTP software and cheap paper rates (I am starting to think that 1991 was a watershed year in game design - a number of games on this list were out that year). It was everything and the kitchen sink, plus several alternate kitchen sinks and a futuristic kitchen sink which is powered by a cloned mammoth from the Flintstones.

The rules were deep and convoluted, but it was the setting that truly set Synnibarr apart in awfulness. The campaign setting was the hollowed-out interior of Mars turned into a starship populated by fantasy creatures, but it went through more changes and dark ages than even Tekumel could stand. And it had the glory of a seventeen-page "example of play" in which the heroes meet in a bar after school, then go off to fight a paradrake, only to be pulled over at the end by the cops, who wish them on their way. (Lemme actually dig this out to double-check -Yep, that's right - makes you want to wash out your mind with lye). The end result was a 494 page testament to excess - it is easy to bad for a couple signatures - such marathon awfulness must be recognized.

But this thing to remember is that these clumsy children were the creations of an act of love, spawned in an era where no one knew what was right and wrong. Nah, we knew, but in Spawn's case there wasn't enough of a support network to warn them off. Synnibarr lacks that excuse.

Good luck finding the old classic Spawn, which lives better as mythology. Synnibarr can be still found at the Half-Price Books, and there may well be still people playing it (we were looking at buying a car from a guy in Bellevue who claimed to be one of the original playtest crew - we bought the car somewhere else). Every genre has its fandom, and every game is someone's first and/or favorite.

More later,

R is for ...

2011-04-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

Ringworld. And maybe a little Runequest as a cameo.

Ringworld was an RPG based on the Larry Niven novels set his his Known Space universe on a huge ribbon-like structure orbiting a star. Halo old-school. At the time of its publishing, two of the four Ringworld novels were out, and I don't know if the information here would jive with what Niven eventually did. I remember this game primarily from it being in the TSR Library, along with Elfquest, which is a related game.

Ringworld is a good representative of a product for a universal game system. This was a holy grail for a while, and I suppose still is. The big practitioner has been GURPS, but the Basic Roleplaying System (BRP) from Chaosium has been another contender. Other games related through the BRP include the indominable Call of Cthulhu, the aforementioned Runequest, Superworld, Elric, Hawkmoon, and Pendragon. It is a pretty impressive family tree, and, looking at them over the years, you can see that they shared the same earthy loam. While GURPs presented itself a GURPS (name of genre or license), BRP presented itself as Name of Genre or Licence (using BRP).

The trouble with universal games is a basic challenge - which is more important, the mechanics or the world? A world (or license) has different virtues, strengths, and requirements, so bending the world to fit the Procrustean bed of set mechanics is a bad fit. However, a universal system has the advantage that, once someone understands product A, it is a shorter leap to product B, which has a similar system. And the ultimate goal of such systems, in theory, is the ability to take characters from World X and put them in World Y.

BRP, a creature of its age, creates entire systems which are glued on or jettisoned as appropriate for the game. A pretty smart move. Call of Cthulhu has its insanity, Superworld its super powers, and I think Pendragon pulled up everything but the floorboards. Its game family is so diverse that it makes world-hopping a little more problematic, but you can see the connecting tissue.

As for the Ringworld game product, only the cover and a few memories remain. I don't remember a whole lot of additional mechanics, or if those mechanics served the purpose of supporting the world it was supposed to portray. I do remember that the the data on the universe felt a little light - not a lot of parallel support (as opposed to West End's Star Wars, which practically ran lateral development and continuity for LucasFilm for many years), and I don't remember any mysteries being resolved. Further, the scope of the Ringwold was so big (the planet Earth in the novels was portrayed as a map on an island at a 1:1 scale, that the place ultimately had the problem of many "super-dungeons" there was so much there that it was hard to embrace it all.

But it and similar universal systems were a major step in RPG development. In trying to create a system that could be plugged into several genres, it helped push the entire concept of licensing, where turnaround time was vital and striking while the iron/movie/book was hot was ideal. And that's good enough for R.

More later,

Q is for ...

2011-04-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Quest of the Ancients.

OK, there's not a lot of competition for "Q", but this is actually worth examining.

Quest for the Ancients shows up relatively late in the RPG timeline, but is a great example of the games which feel like they evolve out of house rules and attempts to "fix" D&D. The fixing continues until enough of the genetics are changed that it feels like a related species, like those pygmy elephants you find on Mediterranean islands (well, you USED to find). There are nine stats, and they are generated by various combinations of dice but still in the area where a character created by 3d6 could be among them. The classes are a grab-bag of Fighter classes (Cossack, Gladiator, Knight, Legionnaire, Rouge, Saracen, Viking, and Woodsman), Tricksters (Assassin, Bard, Cutpurse, and Gypsy), and Spellcasters (Druid, Earth Prist, Necromancer, Sorcerer, and Witch). A core combat system that uses a d30 (other options are, mercifully, presented as well).

And, in the true tradition of D&D-derived RPGs, it has halflings, though not as a main race, but an example (the "furfoots") of a race that the DM can create. It also has a dedication to Stevie Nicks (the inspiration of the Witch class) and a thank you to yours truly (apparently, from a note I found in the book, for the Sigiltry spell, which sounds like a parallel evolution to the tattoos from Azure Bonds).

It is big, squarebound and a labor of love. As I said, it shows up late in the evolutionary tree, contemporaneous with Nightlife, at time when showing up with a big book full of classes and spells was what you needed to establish yourself with a market tired of the same old D&D.

And looking at it 20 years later, it does not feel horribly dated. Rather, it evokes the spirit of of the current Old School Renaissance that is sweeping through the fields of blogs, DTP and self-publishing. In the wake of the OGL, old predecessors like this one have been forgotten, but this is one of the destinations possible for those games that are currently trying to "re-think" D&D.

Look upon this, old-schoolers, and know that this path has been tread before.

More later.

[Update:] Fellow A to Z blogger Tim Branan ALSO wrote about Quest of the Ancients (told you that it was a tough letter). Check out his writeup!

P is for ...

2011-04-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

Paranoia.

It is the future. You are a living in an underground civilization after something horrible happened outside. You are a Troubleshooter, working for the Computer that controls all parts of your life. The Computer is your Friend.

The Computer, however, is also nutso bananas. You hunt down mutants (oh, by the way, you're a mutant). You hunt down secret societies (oh, by the way, you're in a secret society). You hunt down traitors (everything you do can be considered traitorous). You deal with a color-coded bureaucracy where everyone is desperately, desperately trying to avoid being the next victim of the nutso bananas Computer. You are continually setting up your allies for the fall (and they are measuring you up as a scapegoat as well).

Did I mention this was a comedy?

It's a comedy. An INTENTIONALLY funny RPG that goes after the madness of top-down, nutso banana bureaucracy and conspiracy. Over the Edge deals with some similar issues, but with a more ironic and educated take. A wry smile. They play it straight. Paranoia does it with a cream pie. An exploding cream pie. An exploding cream MUTANT pie. Provided by the Computer. Who hates pie. Pie is treason, citizen.

The mechanics are pretty straightforward, as befits a game where your life expectancy can be measured in hours. Oh, and you get some clones that can sub in for you when you die (and you will). It is pleasantly lethal in its combat resolution, and a simple matter of finding the correct form or opening a door can lead to casualties. The Holloway art is just a big fat bonus, and sets the mood of the game. Also bonus points to the spot illos, which are simply a computer screen with different jokes written for it ("Screaming? I don't hear any screaming.").

This is funny game and a fun game, which is both playable and enjoyable to read. In play, there is often a strange moment with first-time players when it all sinks in. In Call of Cthulhu, it's that moment when you suddenly realize that the old stories about creatures coming down from the stars are real. Here, it is the discovery that your boss IS nutso bananas, and your co-workers ARE willing to throw you under the hoverbus at any moment. And when that moment comes, and the players realize that they're NOT in D&D anymore, they aren't expected to work together to a common goal, and the alignment governors have been removed, THEN the fun begins. I've had a couple sessions that didn't get out of the mission briefing without a TPK (Why yes, you do have clones).

It is an office comedy. With lasers. If it was redone today, they could get the Better Off Ted license for cheap. It was a brilliant take of what you could do with RPGs that wasn't being done with ten-foot-poles and paladins.

More later,

[Update:] One of the authors of a later edition of the game sent me a note to the effect that Paranoia remains a on-going concern, and that Mongoose publishing has released a 25th Anniversary edition based on the 2004 edition of the rules. Yeah, it was a surprise to me as well. When I am going through these, I am not usually dealing with reprints, revisions, expansion, extensions or new editions, and tend to concentrate only on the original versions because, well, they were the ones I played (though the entire subject of such revised versions would be great grist for the blog mill).

Still think if you revise it again, you could get the Better Off Ted license for cheap. I see synergies here.

O is for...

2011-04-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

Over The Edge.

Imagine, if you will that the ur-text of FRPGs is not Tolkien's Lord of the Rings but instead is The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Instead of the traditional multi-racial quest tale sprung out of European folklore you instead get a swirling mass of free association, rival agendas, conspiracies and general philosophical debauchery. That's what you have here.

Over the Edge feels like two parts experiment and two parts gaming manifesto. It has a lot of cool bits and mechanics (particularly for its publishing age) and how they are intended to use them, presented in an accessible, almost conversational format. My favorite is a small one - if you do the same thing round after round in combat, your chances of success diminish. This strongly reduces the "I hit him with my sword" repetition nature of most combat and breathes life into what is otherwise (and oddly) one of the most sterile mechanics in the game.

But the bulk of the book is a presentation of the island of Al Amarja, off the coast of North Africa - you can see Albert Camus' house from there. It is Bill Burrough's Interzone turned into Waterdeep, a gumbo of factions, counterfactions, revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries, agents, double agents, and triple agents, all with a healthy admixture of aliens, mutants, demons, drugs, mind-controllers, and a quasi-fascist government (who, among other things, have their own "Language Police" who are heavily armed).

The game is worth playing, if only to see how it unspools with dedicated players. The book itself is worth consuming, and it is of a class of RPG product that is meant to be read and enjoyed as work itself as much as translated onto the gaming table.

More later,

Norwescon Schedule

2011-04-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

So I'll take advantage of the Sunday-off feature of this A to Z challenge to mention that next weekend is Norwescon, at the Doubletree in Seatac. I've been asked to contribute to a few panels this year, and hope to break free of my deadlines to see people!

Friday 10am Cascade 9 How Game Mechanics Cross Platforms

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games have revolutionized computer gaming, and become the dominant mode for computer role-playing games. They certainly learned a thing or two from pen-and-paper (PnP) RPGs. Now many PnP games today are “borrowing” a concept or two from video games. Board games and RPGs even incorporate elements from card games. Join our panel in a discussion of the increasingly blurry lines of game development.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Rodney Thompson, Jeff Grubb, Andy Megowan

Friday 4pm Evergreen 1&2 Writing and Story Development for Computer Games

This panel of writers of both fiction and games will explore the overwhelming appeal of computer games and the importance of writing and story development in world building and player immersion. From pitch to production, from pen-and-paper and live-action to multi-player worlds, the panelists discuss the process of fantasy world building for original concepts or licensed properties. They elaborate on how story development can affect game system design, character design, and environments.

Marc Laidlaw, Wayfarer's Moon, Ted Kosmatka, Kate Marshall, Jeff Grubb

[New Addition!] Friday 7pm Evergreen 3&4 The Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy

How has Epic Fantasy evolved in the 50-plus years since Tolkien hit it big? What are the archetypal elements that keep people reading epic fantasy? What's new and fresh in this arena?

M.H. (Maggie) Bonham, Spencer Ellsworth, Jeff Grubb

Saturday 10am Cascade 4 Freelancing 101

One of the best, sure-fire ways of writing for the gaming industry is by doing freelance work. Great! But how does one do that? What are the benefits and drawbacks to freelancing? Our panel of freelancers and the people who hire them, will share their stories and give advice on how to be a successful freelancer for the gaming industry.

Jeff Combos, Liz Courts, Randall N. Bills, Jeff Grubb

Saturday Noon Evergreen 3&4 Crunch vs. Fluff: FIGHT!

Gaming, especially roleplaying games, have essentially two elements. The “crunch” is the rules that define the game system, and dictate how to simulate real-world actions. The fluff is the fiction that gives the game its setting, and aids in the players roleplaying within that setting. Not surprisingly, gamers are often divided as to which element is most important to a game, and those divisions can be strong! Our gaming panelists engage in a civil discussion on realism vs. roleplaying, rules-heavy wargames vs. rules-light/theater-based games.

Bruce R. Cordell, Jonathan Tweet, Jason Bulmahn, Erik Mona, Jeff Grubb, Stan!

Saturday 4pm Cascade 9 Table-top gaming is DEAD....or is it?

With the continued impact of electronic gaming against traditional gaming, do people still want to play our games? It seems that young kids today are playing more video games than tabletop games, right? Yet, despite the annual doom-and-gloom bloggers, the hobby seems to be flourishing. Why?

Erik Mona, Jeff Grubb, Jeff Combos, Sean K Reynolds

More later,

N is for ...

2011-04-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

Nightlife.

Here's a game where you play monsters but you have to keep your humanity. You can play any of a number of diverse, nigh-immortal "Kin" in a modern urban setting who prey on the "herd" and engage in their own inter-group politics. You have a large number of superpowers but also compulsions and feeding habits that force you to create your own subculture. You hang out at night clubs. Your world is one of darkness.

Oddly enough, I am NOT talking about Vampire: the Masquerade, which showed up a year after Nightlife hit the streets and bodychecked it into the boards like an SUV driving a SMART car off the road. Nightlife feels closer to the games of the 80s, and is pretty much what VTM would have been if it had followed a more traditional route.

The game itself is ability and skill-based, with your breed of kin determining your early super-powers (sorry, edges). Vampyres (with a Y), Werewolves, Ghosts, Daemons, Wyghts (also with a Y), Inuits (so we get that West Coast vibe) and Animates (Frankenstien). Yeah, that seems like the marketing plan for White Wolf, but it is also the casting call for horror movies from the 1950s on. Both games are mining the same rich vein of lore, out on the old Annie Rice claim. But VTM was taking drama classes while Nightlife was watching a lot more cheezey movies on USA Up All Night.

Yet for declaring itself a horror game, in fact dedicating itself to splatterpunk, the game is relatively bloodless. Save for a couple paragraphs on how deep the knife sticks in and mild-R-rated art that flirts with the borders (all but now erased) of good taste, its mechanics are as tame as regular D&D, and that puts a wall between the player and the horror. The opponents are reduced to a bag of hit points to remove, the powers to a group of toggles to throw. Mind you, this is pure D&D adventuring from the old school, where the color and the gore is brought to the table by the DM and imagined in the minds of the players. But its more detailed mechanics put it at a disadvantage to the more visceral and dramatic (though lest precise) mechanics of its World of Darkness follower.

In the end, the game stayed true to its roots, doing a musical version that would make the Vampire Lestdt happy, and a couple post-apocalyptic expansions that felt like Gamma World as presented by Troma films. If an Old School Revival hits the Vampires (and it is only a matter of time), then this is one of the foundation stones they should look at for how they got where they are.

More later,

Self-Portrait

2011-04-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't really expect to come back to talking about the Tacoma Art Museum so soon, particularly after going on at length about the Norman Rockwell show, but such is the nature of life.

In addition to the Rockwell show, the museum had in one of its smaller galleries a show called "Mighty Tacoma" (through 24 April) which had art (photos and original art) about Tacoma as well. And part of the presentation involved taking pictures in the gallery, the subject seated (and unified) by a pair of oversized red chairs.

OK, it a little cheesy and a little boosterish for the town and the museum and most of the pictures were of smiling, happy people delighted to have their pictures taken at the museum. Nothing wrong with that. Families on a day out, clustered in typical portraiture as taught by innumerable family reunions and Christmas card shots. And there were those who would sit upside down in the chairs, or turn them around and peek over them, but they were in the minority (and the whole bloody lot of them can be seen online here.

And I thought about it for a moment, and realized that in a lot of pictures I have taken of me, I have little control of my own image. Candid shots are taken at conventions all the time, along with posed photos for others, but usually I am with others, and am just moving where I am told. There are exceptions, like the "Iron chef" shot that I use at the start of the current Grubb Street blog, but that's an indulgence of the cameraman who was supposed to take "real" shots of me for the website.

So I asked the cameraperson at the TAM for something particular, and she accommodated me. I asked for a specific shot, and we did it, and we cropped it to make it exact. And when I got it on the Flickr site, it was uncropped and less effective, so I recropped it for here.

And I have to say, it is a new favorite picture. A picture is worth a thousand words, but only tells half a story (so the average story length should be 2000 words). I like the negative space and the encompassing of the ubiquitous red chair to provide unity. The logo wear and message shirt are not part of the discussion. And I am not smiling for the camera. I am being.

So I made a little art, where a lot of people were just taking pictures.

TAM is also important at the moment since they want to bring the Hide/Seek exhibit to the PNW. This exhibit caused a dust-up when it was shown at the Smithsonian, when a conservative agitated and got one of the pieces pulled, and liberals in turn elevated it to a cause celebre, which raised more awareness on both sides than the show would have gotten if it had simply been presented. So yeah, I'm curious, and would go if they decide to put it one here (and the Keith Haring piece is excellent).

More later,

M is for ...

2011-04-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

Not Marvel Super Heroes or Mekton or Mouse Guard or Mutants & Masterminds or Mechanoid Invasion or Mage: The Ascension or Metaverse or even Macho Women with Guns but for …

Metamorphosis Alpha, that great predecessor to Gamma World and one of the handful of "foundation RPGs".

As far as I can determine (and I would delight at an earlier sighting), this came is the first RPG product to call itself a Role-Playing Game on the cover (as opposed to, say, a fantasy game of miniatures combat or a miniatures game of fantasy combat or whatever). It was also the first SF Campaign Setting, depending on your definition of SF (you could argue that EPT was SF given its futuristic origins, or that MA was not SF because radiation causes you to have superpowers, as opposed to killing you). It was an early self-contained setting, constraining itself to the many levels of the Warden, a starship where something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The game part of it is a direct D&D descendant, but casts aside the traditional statistics for ones that are applicable for the campaign, like Radiation Resistance and Leadership. Also add a horde of mutations and a heaping helping of technology, plus overall maps of the levels of the Warden. All in 32 tightly-packed pages.

This is one of those foundation RPGs, that you can track others back to. It is a great early example not only of RPGs, but what you can DO with an RPG. It had all the lethality of early RPGs,but with it an expectation that your character might be around for the next session. And it stresses the idea that you can have a campaign without having to design an entire world, and that campaign design is a valid and worthwhile component of RPG play.

And it is proof positive that James Ward is one of the leading lights of early RPGs.

L is for ...

2011-04-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Lace and Steel.

Oh, what a great game. Swashbuckling and High Court! Satyrs, harpies and centaurs as PC races! Donna Barr! Totally unwieldy box! Australian designer! Combat resolved by card play!

OK, let me take a deep breath and get started again.

Lace and Steel is probably the best RPG I’ve never played. Even looking at it, sitting on the shelf next to a later reprint, makes me smile. It is oversized, a white destructo box in a paper sleeve, horribly impractical for just about every market I can think of from Bill & Walt’s Hobby Store to Border’s. It has four funny-sized books with black and white illos, all by the same artist. It has a card-based resolution system. Actually, several card-based resolution systems. Yet is an ugly duckling that turns out to be a swan.

It is swashbuckling roleplaying in a 17^th century fantasy world. But it is not a typical fantasy world given guns. Instead it is the Donner Three Musketeers transplanted into fantasy terms. Elves and dwarves, no, but rather harpies and centaurs, with a blissful disregard for how the logistics and play balance would work.

It uses dice for its skill system, dice and tarot cards for its character generation, a different set of cards for sword dueling (and biting repartee at parties) and a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT set of cards for magical combat. The universal game system, the holy grail of most of 80’s design? It was pretty much the opposite of that. And it is joyful and delightful in its driving for the far end of the field.

The art is by the indominable Donna Barr, and is her trademarkable loopy, dynamic, detailed pen and ink. It’s a style that doesn’t normally work for me but it works here perfectly. Her command of character and action is perfect for the style and the world. She can handle a quiet seduction and full-scale military battle with equal aplomb. I can’t imagine it being any other way.

The art style is lusty and busty, and the world presented has an earthy knowingness that evokes those parts of the Forgotten Realms we normally keep under wraps. When your main character races include centaurs and satyrs, the whole question of romance and seduction comes up with amazing regularity. Plus the fact that Dumas’ original had a, shall we say, continental attitude often missing from fantasies bred in more scholarly settings. The end result is more of the feel that En Garde wanted but couldn’t pull off.

It remains a novelty, a side path not taken by the industry. Perhaps because of genre, perhaps because it went in too many ways at once. And perhaps because simply at the time, it required using card in a roleplaying game. And who could afford to make playing card quality cards in that age?

More later,

Family Games 100 Nominated for an Origins Award

2011-04-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

Family Games: The 100 Best, a great collection of essays to which I contributed, has been nominated for an Origins Award under the "Best Game-Related Publication" category. The category is at the bottom of the list, but take your time perusing the other nominees on your way there, as many of them by talented friends.

Congrats to all!

More later,

K is for ...

2011-04-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

Killer. Also called The Assassination Game.

This is the game that guaranteed that TSR would never do LARPs. TSR did not publish it, but the metric crap-ton of grief that it brought down on the company was enough to make it permanently gunshy of anything even slightly north of cosplay.

The game concept was pretty simple – you have a group of people, you give everyone someone else’s name. That’s their target. You “kill” the target and you get the target’s target’s name, and work your way up the daisy chain of death while trying to avoid getting eliminated yourself. Most of the rules beyond that point were what was and was not permissible (witnesses, play space, useless paens to safety that fall on deaf ears, etc…).

But even in the antedevulian times before the towers fell, there were a lot of people who found people running around public spaces with squirt guns and violating personal space as being sketchy. And when someone got shot …

Here’s a side note. I remember there was an incident, at least one, but now years later can’t tell you what it was. Perhaps it even descends into urban legend, but I don’t think so. Someone (security guard, campus cop?) shot a player who engaged in the game, thinking them dangerous. The wiki page is relatively quiet on this, which is odd.

Mind you, this was a time when TSR, the leading voice in RPGs, was trying to convince people that D&D was not actually played in steam tunnels. Something like this just ratcheted up the volume, and the fact that TSR never had anything to do with the game and never wanted to do anything like it (OK, we did a set of Party games, but that was IT), was of no matter – cue the angry moms from heck and bring on the onslaught.

Suprisingly, I have played TAG (or AN assassination game, anyway) at a friends’ house on Lake Geneva for a long gaming weekend. Within two hours, one player was blown up in the bathroom (bomb rigged to the light switch), every surviving player had been reduced to paranoid madness, and the winner took out her own husband with poisoned lipstick. And a good time was had by all.

More later,

J is for ...

2011-04-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Jorune.

OK, officially, it is Skyrealms of Jorune, but I have too many games in the S category.

This is a game I should love. Alien world where high-tech humans invade and then are cut off from their home planet. Lost technology. Alien races. Good art. Sounds like Empire of the Petal Throne, right?

Well, wrong. It leaves me cold. The game system is nuanced to the point of opacity. There is a lot of white space and beautiful full page B/W art that is repeated through the books and makes it feel lighter and less effective than it really is. But where the game fails to reach out for me is the overuse of world-specific terms, dumping a huge data load onto you and expecting you to dig your way out.

The game writing renames a lot of gaming terms with in-world terms. Your GM is a Sholari. Your player is a Tauther who is applying for Drennship (Citizenship). It is actually a case where the names get in the way of explaining the game world. Plus they use terminology in the definitions of other terminology, which does not help. An entry for the players, sorry, Tauther, defines the Pibber is “Furry and forgettable, except when thisting”. But the definition of thisting in another booklet is: “Pibbers [do?] this when in danger”.

Well, that makes everything clear.

It is actually a good example of where names work and where they don’t in worldbuilding. Defining something by a name that in turn requires a definition strains the patience of the reader, and an overload of such terms becomes a wall. Working it into the text on the assumption that the reader will eventually “get it” through context creates the problem that many will not, and lessons supposedly learned early in the text reduces comprehension further deeper in.

In the end, though, EPT succeeds were Jorune does not in that the final world of Tekumel is first and foremost of world of adventure. EPT definitely has its ancestors in among the pulp worlds of Barsoom and Clark Ashton Smith. Jorune feels drier, almost bloodless and never seems to settle if it is motivated by action or investigation, nor how much the PCs truly know about their world.

This one always makes me feel a little regret. It feels close to the mark, but just misses. Great art, though.

More later,

I is for ...

2011-04-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

In Nomine.

Looking at my gaming shelves, I seem to have accumulated a lot of these quasi-religious reality-is-not-what-you-think, conflict-in-the-shadows-away-from-the-muggles games during the 80s and 90s. The type where there is a hidden global gnostic war going on and you’re about to be drafted. Kult, Unknown Armies, Noir, and In Nomine. Not to mention the bulk of the Vampire: The Masquerade/World of Darkness oeuvre.

So how does In Nomine rate as an example of this genre? One thing makes it stand out over the others.

The demon of stale bong water. That’s what you really need to know.

That sort of thing (which is part of the reward system in the game – you do better, you don’t get crap areas of responsibility) that takes all the starch out of this type of secret-sacred war. The nature of the war itself has the various members dealing with their own bureaucracies and rules as much as with each other. All in all, it is one of the more real-world takes on celestial combat.

It is one of those "good read" RPGs. The story text plays reinforces the style of gaming, the mechanics are solid but not overblown, and the illos are stylish and a great use of the four-color press.

Fun Bonus Fact: This is a translation of a French game with the family-friendly name In Nomine Satanus. Yeah, that’s a blue-light special at Walmart. And while Steve Jackson Games does mention this in the book, it is on the very last page of text, right before the index. Talk about burying your lede.

More later,

Norman American Rockwell

2011-04-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took the day off and went to the Tacoma Art Museum for an exhibit of Norman Rockwell's art. It required a little side street negotiation, because the main drag was occupied by the Daffodil Festival Parade. In other news, Tacoma has a Daffodil Festival Parade, which is actually four parades in four towns (Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, and Oorting) which results in marching bands bundling onto school buses and daffodil-covered floats engaged in high-speed chases. Or so I imagine. The end result a Saturday morning in a museum surprisingly light in traffic.

The Tacoma Art Museum is a small operation up the hill from the Museum of Glass (Museum of Glass + Earthquake Zone = Momento Mori). The floor plan is like an angular letter "p", with the counter (hole) in the letter consisting of bowl-shaped, tiled, mirrored interior court, which, in the modern style is titled, "Untitled", but everyone apparently calls "The Wave". The area surrounding "The Wave" are a series of small galleries. I don't know if they have a permanent collection, though they did have a gallery dedicated to Chihuly (because an entire museum dedicated to glass a half-mile away was obviously not enough).

Anyway, Norman Rockwell. America's best-known painter and illustrator, but still, after all these years, is still pushing against the wall of being called a true Artist-with-a-capital-A. Which is a pity, because he obviously is a Great American Artist to all but the most blinkered of academics. But I think this is because of his artistic strengths, his background, his subject matter, and his longevity.

Rockwell was a master technician and portraitist in a world that went non-representational in his lifetime. His ability to imbue emotions into the human face and body and to add depth, is as legendary as it is obvious.He could make Bob Hope look creepy and Dick Nixon look wise. He was direct in his goals - there is little wondering what the artist was trying to say here. He told stories in his work, pure and simple, refining the moment to single image. And I think denying the puzzle to the critics reduces his charm to them.

His background also rankles the movers and shakers of big-A Art. He was an illustrator by trade and training, a common craftsman who toiled for mere compensation to a deadline and an art order, as opposed to garret-starved wretch who wrests deeper truths from a patron or gallery system. He belongs to a mighty heritage that gets tarred with the small-a brush. Lautrec, Parrish, and Mucha were antecedents in this tradition. In the fantasy of the 80s we have Elmore, Easley, and Parkinson. And currently I have had the pleasure of working with the new generation - Dociu, Kotaki, and Anderson. I am not going to deny to any them that they are doing Art. The same goes for Rockwell himself.

Rockwell's subject matter was very American, in particular its virtues. That made him a patriotic comfort food, his work suitable to grace the end table, the school room, and the phone book cover. He belonged to the small town America where he painted, recruiting his neighbors as models. And he seemed to have an inherent niceness about him, and it is hard not to conflate him with Mister Rogers in his grounded, positive nature. He apparently could not "paint angry" and in the exhibit, you can see his rawer emotions for "A Murder in Mississippi" get refined and crafted to the point that the magazine used a color study instead of the final work.

The Problem We All Live With/ Detroit Institute of Arts

His work has become iconic, and in taking on that iconic nature, makes itself the establishment to play against. He has been equated with the nostalgic, and with it the conservative. Yet once he moved from the more stodgy Saturday Evening Post to the more liberal Look, he unleashed a deep multiculturalism that was part and parcel of the struggles of the '60s. He was probably the only artist in America who could scrawl a racial epithet in the background "The Problem We All Live With" and have it published nationwide. He was like the original Star Trek - quaint now, but for the time radical and on the front lines.

His career spanned from the 20's to the 70s, and consisted of him breaking out of boxes into bigger boxes. He started with Boy's Life, and was labeled as a children's artist, then moved into the well-known Post gig where he defined the genre to a great degree. Casting loose from the Post, he moved into a New England Progressiveness that has been diminished as the more liberal arts cede the past to its more conservative brethren. Rockwell's America is an active verb, moving forward, doing things, and encountering life.

Uneasy Christmas in the Birthplace of Christ/Detroit Institute of Arts

The sum total of the criticism reflects more badly on his critics than on his art. To say his work is old-fashioned, or too realistic, or too American is to admit that modern art has no place in its galleries for such things, and the big tent shrinks. Yet to dismiss his work as mere craft is to do the artist, and all art, a disservice. His "Uneasy Christmas in the Birthplace of Christ" holds more emotional tonnage than Picasso's "Massacre in Korea"

You should go see this exhibit. It runs until the end of May, and may be one of the PNW's best kept art secrets. Yes, you should get yourself down to Tacoma (time does NOT pass slower there - it's just the way they time their traffic lights) and see it. There is something deeper and more meaningful in seeing the texture of this original art as opposed to a high gloss artbook or on a screen. Or on the cover of Saturday Evening Post.

More later,

A to Z in progress

2011-04-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

So, how is that all A to Z challenge thing working out?

Pretty good, so far. I'd say the biggest problem is keeping the promise to keep it short. Yeah, we both knew that wouldn't happen.

It has been pretty good, though, in that it works against the nature of the net itself. You know the drill. You find a bunch of website/blogs/journals that you like. You make them your regulars. And because they're your regulars you don't look for other blogs. It can become an echo chamber after a while.

So the A to Z challenge gets around that a bit. Opens it up to other voices. It didn't start in gaming blogs, or fiction blogs, but it has been picked up by a lot of them. And so I've been finding a lot of other blogs outside my normal sphere (and sometimes out of my comfort zone). And this is a good thing.

I'm not the only one that is doing this. I've seen a trending upwards of hits, minions, and Facebook friends since I've started this little experiment (I rebroadcast on Facebook, which allows comments with some level of personal responsibility). And, I've just gotten a couple nice awards from Deirdre Eden Coppel at her blog, which I am setting on the mantle piece and recommending that you check out her list her list as a starting point for looking at blogs and authors that you might enjoy that normally you might not sit next to on the bus (take THAT, genre!)

And while I'm promoting other folk, I've also been experimenting with cross-linking in the blog for the illos. And one of the crossposts takes umbrage to the practice, and sent out a note that the stuff was boosted from their site. That's cool, though for covers of books it reminds me of the hobby store owner that shrink-wrapped all his hardback books and then complained that the kids weren't buying them. However, apropos of nothing, if you are looking for old game material, and want to avoid various Internet Toads, you might want to check out Wayne's Books for all your esoteric gaming needs. That's Wayne's Books, whom I like so much that I won't even mock them if I have to take the links down.

More later,

H is for ...

2011-04-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, there was something else here earlier.

Harn (or if you are diacritally inclined - Hârn)

Not Harnmaster, which is pretty good, but not the reason for this entry. Harnmaster, the rules set for Harn, is C&S after a good twelve-step program and showing off its 2-year chip. Probably the most effective portrayal of real medieval life in an RPG, it was the epitome of the realistic low level campaign that a lot of players claim they want and no one really plays.

No, we’re talking about Harn, the world. And love Harn, the world. In particular, its maps. Harn had great maps. They rethought a basic concept of mapping and decided to go with realistic looking buildings in a realistic looking world. The area maps are topos of the quality you would get from the USGS. The city maps look greatly functional and look like they evolved over time as opposed to having been drawn in a boring math class. And their castle maps (also very lootable for your campaign) where the rooms were crammed with detail, including the difficulty of opening doors, the materials everything was map of, and the height of the ceiling (DMs, you know of which I speak – someone asks how high the ceiling is, in preparation for some player-generated hijinx).

But here’s the problem with Harn’s castles - you couldn’t ever DESCRIBE the room you came into (“It is a lopsided trapezoid with an alcove in the west. The alcove has a 6 foot domed ceiling, which the main room is 17 feet tall and ends in a flat ceiling. Oh, and along the east wall is a gallery made of wood 12 feet off the ground where they put the minstrels”). It as detailed to the point that it needed to be displayed in order to be used, and with such small and realistic rooms that it kills the 5’ foot square of D&D. For the cities and larger regions, they usually provided player versions in B/W to allow them to scribble over, the castle maps were always a pain.

And the world broke down nicely into small, easily-lootable chunks, which they presented as part of the Encyclopedia Harnica and Harnlore. Nice and portable, and suitable both for insertion into your campaign or a inspiration for your own developments.

More later,

GRUBB STREET

23 Questions

A World Lit By Fire

White Out

Top Ten List

Meanwhile, back on Cap Hill ...

Pouring A Horse From A Bottle

A Game Divided Against Itself

The Magic Realm of the Talisman

Politics: Reps as Dems

The Voter on the Borderlands

Christmas Evening

Happy (D&D) Holidays!

Svengoolie and the New Digital Revolution

Back Among the Deck Chairs

The Titanic Had A Band

Company Picture

Meanwhile, in the early 1600s

Meanwhile, on Cap Hill ...

Play: Shaggy Dog Story

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles Part V (C)

Play: Group Therapy

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles Part V (B)

After Action Report

DOW Breaks 12,000!

Election

Play: Send in the Clown

Under Kandorian Skies

Muppet Link

Play: Julia Caesar

I Haz Cover!

Your Strange Art Link of the Day

Play: All That Hamlet

Between Acts: Cornflower

Play: That Falstaff Show

Play: A Glorious Thing

Play: Richard, Revisited

Writers Sans Borders

Ashland

What I've Been Up To

Ten Years Ago

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles Part V(A)

Primary

Riches update

DOW breaks 11,000!

About That Star Wars Novel

Embarrassment of Riches

Scribe Awards

And Furthermore ...

What I've Been Up To

The Bubble, Revisited

Farewell, Hamburg

My PaizoCon Schedule

Building a Shared World: Midgard Hemlock Room

Publishing in Kobold Quarterly Hemlock Room

Improvisation and Game Mastering Hemlock Room

Film: Whisperer

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles IV

A Message from Steven Schend

Ceding the Floor

On Beyond Zebra

Play: iEat Meat

Z is for ...

Y is for ...

X is for ...

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Play: How I Slept With Your Mother

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Norwescon Schedule

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Publishing in Kobold Quarterly
Hemlock Room

Improvisation and Game Mastering
Hemlock Room