Beyond the Mountains of Bigotry

Here’s my problem.

I like the stories. I really want to see the movie. But the original writer of the stories is a stone-cold bigot, and I detest many of the ideas he endorses and espouses.

Oddly, I am not talking about Orson Card Scott and Ender’s Game. I am talking about HPLovecraft and the oft-proposed Mountains of Madness.

[OK, talking about OSC for a moment. I never read Ender’s Game – it came out in the mid-80s, when I was busy with a lot of other stuff, and I never caught the wave. I did read some of his Worthing Saga from the 70s and found that its central conceit (skipping through time by recorded memory) to be interesting but the delivery to be heavy-handed in its moralizing. That’s about it for me.]

Back to Lovecraft. I enjoy the sense of despair he evokes with an uncaring universe, his “Cosmicism” – that not only we are not the center of the universe; we don’t even matter to it. I also love his “Yog-Sothery” – his created world of strange gods that he hangs on his best tales, a universe which has expanded through other creatives into a greater creation – one of the first modern shared worlds.

But let’s face it – the man was a racist. Not just a creature of his times. Not a youthful indiscretion. Not just viewed with a modern lens. Not just misinformed. A barking mad racist. To him, pretty much all peoples who are not rock-ribbed white New Englanders were inferior, and the less you resembled Lovecraft, the worse you looked to him. His dark mutterings of subhumans and mongrel races permeates his text, and once he gets rolling, his is a most odious and repellent form of bigotry.

I like the man’s work (the parts where he not being barking mad), and I deeply love what he created, but to be honest, after five minutes in his presence, I would likely come across the table at him. He is petty and venal and a bigot.

And others have had to deal with this bigotry on a deeper level than I – talented writers of color who have been recognized for their work by awards with the Noted Racist’s head on it. The stalwart representative of Weird Tales, of that curious creation that is American Fantasy as a separate entity from its European forebears, is a poster boy for intolerance. What can be done?

Ignoring it is a mistake, a white-washing of the past, a denialism that does nothing for confronting the racism of its age and its metamorphed descendants in the present. Bowdlerizing his more offensive statements and pushing them to the back of the closest is dishonest to both him and ourselves. But how to accommodate the talent of the work with the failings of the author?

I think we simply say no. We tell him that this is not yours anymore.

This comes to me via the Call of Cthulhu RPG, where I have told numerous stories set in the Lovecraftian universe, a universe of the '20s, when overt racism (sexism, and any number of other isms) was more acceptable. So I have run adventures that have a strong racial or gender or nationalist component. Which means I and my players can choose what we want to talk about regarding those matters in the adventures.

[Indeed, this is something that CoC, with its limited Player Character empowerment and its deadly combat system does well. In CoC, you CAN bully the character around with hostile NPCs or a hateful universe. In D&D, you can have an Elf Warrior being refused service in a tavern, but if the Elf is 14^th level, the tavern will likely not last long].

Many years ago, I ran the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign from Chaosium, a huge and recommended campaign that is a sequel to the story by Lovecraft. And one player wanted to run and African-American polar explorer.

OK, how to handle it? Saying no didn't work for me – there is a history of African American Arctic Explorers, and besides, player agency, the ability to do as they see fit within the parameters of the story, is part of the game. Instead I did the research and tried to treat the character accurately, but without frustrating the hell out of the player (it is a game, and he is a protagonist).

As a result, the institutional racism of the time kept hitting him with a thousand small cuts and the occasional two-by-four to the forehead, particularly in the “civilized” world. When the funders of the expedition first meet him, they are taken aback by his presence. Indeed, his character is interviewed last, left in the waiting room while the rest of the team gets the story pitch. One of the leaders of the expedition was an obvious racist, and barely concealed his disdain.  In NYC, the character is asked to used the service entrance, is initially denied access to the expedition’s hotel, and suffers from suspicion and latent hostility.

And when they get clear of New York, when the expedition heads south, that drops away, as the coherence of the team overwhelms the societal roles. I was actually pretty happy with the result (though in the adventure, they later meet Nazis (spoilers) and while I wanted to include an overly earnest German officer who “Really, really admires your Jesse Owens”, I never had the chance).  The comparison between the mores of larger society and the smaller expedition was marked. It was a good story, remained true to the era, and none of the challenges were squamous or tentacled.

In this I and the players have taken it all away from Lovecraft. We have said. “No. This is not solely yours anymore. We recognize your creation, but all like creations, it has gone beyond you.”

This should not be a surprise, I suppose. Creations, once they leave their originators, often evolve into new forms, forms that those originators would hardly recognize. Moving to a new media, be it games or movies, changes the substance of  the creation, and allows reinvention, for better or for worse.  O course, this is based on the assumption that the movie will be an exact representation of the book and the author’s original intentions. I mean, hasn't every new media adaption treated the works of, say, Frank Herbert (the David Lynch version of Dune), Ursula K. LeGuin (the Syfy Earthsea) or Alan Moore (just about everything) with respect and an eye towards the author's original intent? No. It is beyond the original creator when it gets to that stage.

And it is more than just a corporate control issue. Look at Star Wars. Lucas may have controlled the IP for many years, and his original three movies hold a deep place in the hearts of many of us, but his return to the universe for three more films elicited strong pushback from the very people who embraced his earlier work so dearly. The fans, in effect said “No. This is not yours anymore. Not yours alone.”

I think that is where I stand on Lovecraft. I want to haul out into the light of day his inherent and detestable racism, and to take this creation from him and make anew. Let us not sugar coat it. Let us take the ideas and press forward. The author, the artist, the original creator controls his or her vision, but as that vision passes through others (particularly in a large operation as a motion picture, or a shared universe as created with other creatives, or in RPGs), then the provenance is both weakened and broadened. It becomes part and parcel of our larger universe.

In effect, the same process that allowed OSC to re-imagine Hamlet as a hateful homophobic screed in turn allows others to influence, develop, and evolve his work. And will be the same process that will turn At the Mountains of Madness: The Movie, should it ever happen, into something that reflects other sensibilities than those of the author.

And I think I will go see that movie. And I will leave poor Howard, impoverished and barking mad, at the door, letting him howl and moon and wet himself publicly in whatever afterlife that would admit him. Let him rage against the presumption of those who work to get beyond his odious attitudes. I’m good with that.

More later, 

Performance: A Bit of Gilbert and Sullivan

The Gondoliers (or, The King of Barataria) performed by the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Seattle Rep, until July 27th

Even if you've only grazed Gilbert & Sullivan in popular culture (Linda Ronstadt, Groucho Marx, Sideshow Bob), you know about the big guns in their canon - Mikado, Penzanze, and Pinafore. Then there is the second tier not so well known - Utopia, Limited, Iolanthe, and here, The Gondoliers is godood G&S, but not one where everyone is aware of the plot. So let's call it minor canon, lesser Gilbert, reduced Sullivan.

And this is a performance of the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society, which each year in the summer does about three weeks of Messrs G&S, rolling out the big guns and also paying attention to the second tier of the canon - the ones that won't get a major motion picture.

So, the Gondoliers, set in Venice and Spain - a light, sunny, breezy comic opera with just a bit of the Spanish Inquisition. No, that comes later. Let me fill you in on the plot, which is a simply tangled as a Gilbert plot can be: Two brothers who are gondoliers in Venice get married. Except it turns out they aren't really brothers, as one was brought to the city as an infant to escape the influence of his father, the King of Barataria, who became a Wesleyan Methodist and was later killed with the rest of the royal family, leaving the son the singular heir. But no one is particularly sure of which brother is the king, and which remains the gondolier. Oh, and the one that is the king was also married by proxy as an infant to Casilda, the daughter of the Duke of Plaza-Toro an impoverished noble (whose suite consists of a single drummer, who Casilda loves). No one is pleased with the situation, as the unknown king is also an unknown bigamist, and who is truly married to whom drives the play (though with several diversions).

The gondolier semi-brothers decamp to Spain, where they enact a Monarchy with Republican principles where they end up doing most of the work and living like less-than-kings. Their brides follow them and all discover the situation with Casilda. The nurse, mother to the drummer, who brought the infant king to exile is produced  to reveal who is the rightful ruler, and who remains married to whom. And then it is all wrapped up with a neat little bow.

And yeah, it doesn't make much sense than what I described, but it was light and appealing, and every single character is not the sharpest halberd in the guard. Except the ensemble. Someone has probably done a doctorate on this, but in Gilbert's work there is a tendency that the chorus does the best of the characters on-stage - and they seem to be at least a half-step ahead of the primaries and more than willing to take advantage.

There are light jabs at the monarchy and republicanism and corporatism, the last with the Duke, who escapes his impoverishment by turning himself into a Limited Liability Corporation. However, the singing good and the performances are top-notch and the chorus, as always, is solid and inventive. And it is hard to say whose story is the center - Casilda, whose marriage is in question, or the Palmieri brothers and their brides. All are good, though one Palmieri is a stronger singer while the other has better comedic moves, but they are both played by actors named Derek so I have a bit of a challenge determining who is who.

And there is a through-line with Grand Inquisitor, Don Alhambra, who is the closest thing that you get to a villain in a G&S production, who moves the action along, lays out the challenge of the unknown brothers, summons the resolution, and still has some time for a bit of torture on the rack. It is light and breezy bit of torture, but doesn't seem to be in my copy of the libretto, so I wonder if it a stage tradition or was part of the original play. I mean, one of the stop-the-presses the moment in the production was a Spanish Dance, which is merely noted in my print version as "(Cachucha)" inserted between the lines. Perhaps the torture is in the same mode.

In any event, it is a little gem of a operetta, put together in a sharp and enthusiastic production. If you are a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan, it is well worth your time. If not, you might want to hang out with the wiki entry before you go, just to get an idea of what's driving the play.

More later,

Pacific Rim and Star Wars

The gang at the office went out yesterday for an early viewing of the Guillermo del Toro movie Pacific Rim. I liked it a lot, and it reminded me of the original Star Wars from back in 1977.

OK, bear with me. I know a lot of you weren't even alive in 1977, and the thirty-five years since deposited an accretion of sequels, prequels, expanded universes, tech manuals, and a holiday-special-no-one-may-speak of on the film that obscures the heart of the franchise. But watching Pacific Rim, I got that smiling-despite-myself vibe of something new and exciting, and being there at the near-start.

Back in 1977, Star Wars was not expected to do much. The studio had banked on a much more traditional movie, a film with Jackie Gleason called Mr. Billion, to carry it through the summer, and Star Wars was a genre film, a space opera, that Sci-Fi stuff. There were radio ads, and Time Magazine ran an article talking about the special effects (because that was the only reason to go to a Sci-Fi picture), but there were no great expectations, and the film opened in all of 32 cinemas. In Pittsburgh, it was way the heck out in Monroeville in one of those new-fangled multiplexes.

Yeah, I couldn't resist

There are similarities and differences between the environments that the two films emerged into. Feuding between the distributors for Pacific Rim has resulted in leaked predictions of a horrible opening weekend. But to those paying attention, the trailers had a sense of wonder that hit an particular audience. And in this Internet world, those relinked, passed-along, peer-to-peer recommendations carry weight.

[As an aside, I first heard about Star Wars at the Pizza Keg in Purdue, where another member of the SCA, John M. Ford, was talking about this new SF movie that was coming out, where the BAD guys wear white space armor.]

The comparisons between the two films go deeper. Pacific Rim, like the original Star Wars, is a very straight-forward story. Very much the hero's journey. Luke Skywalker and Raleigh Becket are cousins. Here are the fun droids, and over here are the whacky scientists, one of which evokes C3P0 in his fussy mannerisms. Here's the hot-shot pilot with the funky name - am I talking about Han Solo or Hercules Hansen?  Princess Leia and Mako Mori both had their worlds destroyed, and yeah, you could see Carrie Fisher in a jaeger. Gipsy Danger, meet Millenium Falcon. The characters are not deep, but have that feeling that there is more to them than what we are being shown.

Ditto the universe. Original Star Wars did not name the aliens in the cantina - that would come later with the lateral development in the West End game. The kaiju are no more the stars of this film than the Death Star. The center of the film is with the humans, not their tools. Yeah, we have the desktop backdrops of the jaegers and the monster posters and someone HAS to have the RPG rights (or maybe not - they didn't think of that for Star Wars), so all the filling-in of the universe is already engaged. And it is all set dressing, assuring us there is a world behind this movie. But for right now, before the universe expands, we are standing at the first few moments of creation.

There is more than enough room for criticism and analysis, and it will come. It paces through a three-act structure - Act 1 (Chase the Hero up a tree) resolves before the opening credits, Act 2 (Throw rocks at him) is the bulk of the picture, and Act 3 (Get him down) kicks in with a St. Crispin's Day speech. This film fails the Bechdel test spectacularly. Mori demonstrates her fighting prowess early, but Becket has to fight for her honor. Threatening Hong Kong is aimed at the Chinese market, echoing such other films like Looper. Despite the diverse population of pilots, this ends up an American show. Plot holes will yawn wide over time with continual examination.  And I probably am already late to party comparing kaiju to terrorist attacks. But that is yet in the future - for the moment it is shiny and new and as yet unspoiled.

I think that's what made me smile. It was an original thing, a new universe. Yeah, I can see all the antecedents in Godzilla films and anime (and really, Ron Perlman is pretty much an anime character to start with). It is a beautifully-shot film that misses all the visual chaff we see with a lot of CGI - it actually has focus and continuity in almost all its shots. Hearing that most of the battle sequences were to be at night, in the rain gave me fears of the American Godzilla of 1998, but here it creates a feeling of menace and super-powered threat. It is not some road-tested and comfortable Intellectual Property of the past that is sold with the idea of a guaranteed audience, an audience they then cheese off by ignoring its previous core ethos. This is a good thing, and like the original Star Wars, feels complete in and of itself. I don't doubt that as I write this someone is threading the continuity needles to gin up a sequel, but for the moment, it stands alone. Enjoy that moment. And go see the film.

More later,

Theatre: Occupy Marx

Frank Ferrante in An Evening With Groucho,  Directed by Dreya Webb, ACT - A Contemporary Theatre, Bullit Cabaret, through 30 June.

This afternoon, as opposed to my self-determined task of reorganizing some bookshelves and getting some more boxes ready for my Ebay Mistress, Anne, I snuck out to catch An Evening with Groucho at the ACT (yeah, it should be An Afternoon with Groucho, but if you're going to pick nits, you're reading the wrong blog).

Now, I knew where the ACT was - it was on the lower floor of the convention center, so parking was fairly easy (always an important thing for theater-going downtown), and it would be a quick park, then down a couple escalators through the heart of the convention center to get there. What I did not expect was corridor from the convention center, followed by corridor, followed by a twenty-square room with multiple exits, followed by more stairs, followed by another corridor/lobby, followed by MORE stairs followed by another lobby followed by STILL MORE stairs to reach the depths of the Bullit Cabaret. I think there was another flight of stairs down beyond this but Dante was coming up the other way.

Anyway, the Cabaret was a open space with general seating and a perimeter balcony and a low stage along one side. The room was about half-filled with chairs, and the chairs were half-filled by customers. A nice house, but not a sell-out, which is kind of a pity, since this is a very good show, and worth more attention that it has gotten.

[And to be honest, I knew about this show from an ad in the Stranger, which I had only picked up in physical space because in had the SIFF film list in it. And THEN it only stuck because Mark Evanier (who can be found on the blogroll to the side) is a faithful and relentless promoter of Mr. Ferrante and mentions him fairly regularly.]

Anyway, this is a one-man show about Groucho, and there are songs and stories, and joking with the audience and nostalgia in droves. But to say Frank Ferrante is a Groucho impersonator is to misrepresent what is happening here. He actually seems to embody Groucho. The transformation is amazing. He takes the stage and speaks as himself, telling a story of himself seeing Groucho as a child. His accent is Southern California, one that I've heard in the wild before. Yet as he tells the story, he fluffs out his hair, applies the greasepaint mustache and eyebrows, dons the glasses and with the last plucking of a cigar from the table suddenly embodies the comedian. Uncanny is the word. Not to back up over the Oregon Shakespeare Festivals' presentation of Animal Crackers, but in that version I never lost the fact that I was watching an actor playing Groucho. Here the transition was complete.

I have also never seen an actor fight so hard to engage the audience (and win). This was a Sunday matinee, Seattle-polite audience where the average age was higher than my current recording of years. Yet Mr. Ferrante engaged at full tilt, using the ability that Groucho had to insult without being insulting. He flirted with the three ladies with canes in the front row. He made doe-eyes at a middle-aged woman sitting with her husband. He sent one of the ushers out for coffee for said husband. He plunked a young man from the audience and decked him out with the trademarked mustache and eyebrows. The tech crew running the house lights had trouble keeping up with him as he leapt off the stage and back. It was a matinee crowd in the depths of a theater complex in downtown Seattle, but by jingo, this was HIS crowd!

And it worked. By the end of the first act everyone was charmed, by the end of the second everyone was enthralled. And I felt like I was falling through time as well, as the stories moved from the vaudeville Groucho to the movie Groucho to the television Groucho, and with it the way Ferrante portrayed the man.  And, just as Groucho needed Zeppo and Margaret Dumont as his straight-men, Ferrante is ably supported by his accompanist, Mark Rabe, who not only delivered a spritely score on the piano but also served as foil for Ferrante/Groucho.

This was an impressive show, and I was glad to have caught it. And seriously, if you are any sort of a Groucho fan, you should check it out yourself.

More later,

Flag Day

FLAG, Jasper Johns, 1954, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

“One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag,” Johns has said of this work, “and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.” Those materials included three canvases that he mounted on plywood, strips of newspaper, and encaustic paint—a mixture of pigment and molten wax that has formed a surface of lumps and smears. The newspaper scraps visible beneath the stripes and forty-eight stars lend this icon historical specificity. The American flag is something “the mind already knows,” Johns has said, but its execution complicates the representation and invites close inspection. A critic of the time encapsulated this painting’s ambivalence, asking, “Is this a flag or a painting?” (MOMA Gallery text)

More later,

About that Bridge

So, last week, you may have heard, part of a bridge fell down north of here. Bridges fall down all the time here in these United States, but this one held some import, since it was on the main and only big highway along the West Coast leading to Canada. Here's some fallout:

- The great news is that no one died. The guy in the truck that clipped the bridge pulled over immediately. Two cars went in, and three people were rescued, one briefly hospitalized. Part of the reason for the lack of fatalities is that the Skagit river is very shallow at this point  (though bitter cold, coming directly off the snowpack).

The bridge (lower left) in ancient, more intact times.

- The bridge worked the way it was supposed to. I know that sounds weird, looking at the fact that its southernmost chunk of it is resting comfortably on the river bed. But the idea was that when it failed, it was supposed to fail in that fashion, Further study may reveal additional problems, but the idea is that one span falls down and leave the others intact. The big danger when this went up was not so much oversized trucks, but earthquakes in the soft earth of the floodplain.

- The bridge was completed in 1955, which makes it only slightly older than I am. Some days, it feels like the bridge is in better shape, but I haven't been hit by as many trucks.

- One thing that I've noticed here, and earlier in the Boston bombing attack, is that we, as a people, are good with having cameras running all the time. About ten years ago a friend and I went to lunch and got into the subject of surveillance society, and I pointed out that we had been on camera about five times since we had left my office. That same route would probably be twice that now. In the wake of any event, people want the primary evidence that a running camera provides.

- Probably because no one was seriously injured, The Washington State Department of Traffic shows a bit of the Pacific Northwest sense of humor in their Facebook page:

As you may have noticed the detour route near the Skagit River keeps changing as we try to make sure people can get past this bridge on roads that weren't meant for as much traffic as we are seeing now. Be sure to check our website before you head out. Expect to add at least an hour to your trip time if you are going that way, or even better plan to stop by one of the local businesses and have lunch on your way through. Don't forget that Amtrak Cascades is also a fantastic option to get through the area and around the detour.

There might be another possibility of a detour route, we are still working to adjust the ramp to just the right height (and just try to get that song out of your head). 
There might be another possibility of a detour route, we are still working to adjust the ramp to just the right height (and just try to get that song out of your head). 

Yes. WSDOT did post this.

 Credit to Mark Nesteroff, twitter user @proudestmonkey3 for the source of this photo.

- Unfortunately, despite WSDOT's recommendation, people are not stopping at the local businesses. It will impact the rest of the state as well. I-5 North is one of three major highway routes into Seattle - the others being I-5 South to Portland and I-90 over the Cascades (which gets closed when we have heavy snowfall). I-5 South crosses the Columbia at the Columbia River Interstate Bridge, which if anything is in worse shape than the Skagit bridget. Now we have rail and a deep port, but it would be easy to seal off Seattle from car traffic fairly easily (as opposed to, say, Gotham City in Dark Knight Rises).

Mean meme. Accurate, but mean.

- Despite the vulnerability to our economy, our austerity-prone conservatives are quickly out in force, arguing that, just because our bridges are falling down, that's no reason to actually spend money to FIX them (unless, apparently, that money comes out of the pockets of mass transit or other things they don't like). Tim Eyman, known to locals for his industrious initiatives intent on keeping government from actually doing anything, sees it as one more way to support his own hobby horse:

"Is the Democrats' first priority to investigate to learn what actually happened so they can initiate a fact-based, measured response? Of course not. Instead, they're ghoulishly, crassly, exploitatively, and predictably demanding the Legislature unilaterally raise taxes $8.4 billion -- without a vote of the people"

- Of course, a functioning government can do both, and it seems that WSDOT is well on its way with its investigation. Not that it will stop Mr. Eyman from thumbing through his thesaurus to find for epithets to hurl at people who actually want to fix the problem.

- And finally, and most importantly - Skagit rhymes with Badge-it, not Bag-it. 

More later,

What I Did On A Saturday

Tai Chi: Fighting Slow Invisible Ninjas

So I had a full Saturday, this Saturday last. Tai Chi demonstrations, glasswork of the elder gods, Seattle traffic raised to its ultimate level, drinking at a gamer's bar, and a children's Cthulhu book.

First things first. I practice Tai Chi under Master Yijiao Hong at the Chinese Wushu And Tai Chi Accademy. About once a year or so, we're asked to make a public demonstration, usually at the Armory of the Seattle Center, and usually for a cultural festival (The one was "A Glimpse of China: Chinese Culture and Arts Festival"). This year, we performed four demonstrations - two Tai Chi forms, and two Tai Chi Sword forms (I performed in the two Tai Chi forms, while the Lovely Bride did those and one of the sword forms as well). It was enjoyable, and the other presentations over the afternoon included other martial artists, dance troupes, musicians and about thirty small children dressed up as ducklings (who were very, very cute).

This, year, in addition, we were asked to perform at the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum next to the armory. The garden/museum is a new thing, and just celebrating its first anniversary. The entire complex is built on the site of the former Fun Forest, a small, weathered amusement complex that needed renovation, but not elimination. The museum turned this Fun Forest into an enclosed glass garden with a price tag enough to keep one at bay, unless one was a Chihuly fan, which I was not.

Yes, I know. I look like a snowball.

Dale Chihuly is a Seattle Artist made legendary by his colorful and flowing glasswork. Most of his work I have seen has been in terms of single pieces, which are often colorful, half-melted bowls. I wondered what the big deal was, and how this would rate removing a tilt-a-whirl. However, the museum itself is a marvel of installation and presentation. Large darkened rooms with focused lighting turn the colors of the glasswork magic, their rich colors glowing under the illumination. The adjacent garden is a combination of plants with the layered spheres and organic glass seedpods and glowing spikes of the artist's works. A single Chihuly is a interesting item - a forest of his glass forms is overwhelming.

The garden is built around a glass structure used for private functions (every museum needs at least one of these in these multi-tasked, fundraising days), and it was within this oversized greenhouse, dominated by crystaline flowers overhead, that we did the second performance of the day. And we actually did pretty well at that (my personal fear is always that I will stand on one leg and, topheavy, go sprawling over backwards - much of my style can be described as "staying upright"). It was well-received (we drew a crowd) and it was in one of the places where you could swing a sword without worrying about taking out any valuable, valuable, artwork.

Who ordered the Flying Polyp?

In doing the second demo, we were given the chance to walk the grounds and check out the art. As I said, a small piece of Chihuly is an interesting bit, but combined into large, flowing forms twenty feet high, the end result looks like something that has escaped from an elemental dimension into ours. His works among the garden are like the flesh organic plants described by Clark Aston Smith in his short stories, and his fiery oranges and reds seem to contain eldritch radiation leaking into our world. Chihuly, in this moment for me, becomes C'thulhi, glassblower of ancient, now-sunken lands, his work a testament to forgotten gods.

Two performances in one day were a bit much for me, particularly since I overdid myself and tried to get lower for moves like "Snake Creeps Down". It left me limping back to the car, and I began a long sojourn north to celebrate another version of Cthulhu - this time in a children's book.

But let me whine a bit about traffic. To native Seattlites, the "Mercer Mess", which stretches from the I-5 to the Seattle Center, is a legendary chunk of road, famous for its congestion, renowned for its utter badness. And any attempt to fix the damned thing is going to involve some additional heartache. But to close it where Mercer meets the north-south I-99 is the equivalent of delivering a Vulcan Nerve Pitch to the city. In my case, rather than face the traffic, I tried secondary routes up Queen Anne, found the secondary routes equally clotted, and spent about 45 minutes limping back to the highway, as if my vehicle had down two sets of demos and crouched too much for "Snake Creeps Down".

North was my goal, for the AFK Tavern. The AFK is a gamer bar, board games at the ready, food items names after pop cult fantasy and science fiction, video screens showing Starcraft games in process. It is up in Everett, because apparently King County adds Bar+Games and gets Casino, and after getting lost around the Alderwood Mall, got there.

Sort of like La Belle Epoque, but with more d20s.

The reason for celebration as "The Littlest Shoggoth", the creation of Stan! Brown. Stan! is a nifty cartoonist and a societal hub of many universes, and ran a kickstarter to get his book in colored, hard-covered form. The result is one of those perfect Christmas gifts for the cultist that has everything. Stan! took a break from continually mailing out the tome to his Kickstarter supporters to come celebrate, and it was a gathering of nerdom. Touched base with a lot of the people that I haven't seen in a while. discovered new jobs, engagements, secret projects, and the general chatter that keeps nerds in communication. I also met someone I had been playing games with online for near on a year, but had never met In Real Life.

We feasted on Shoggoth's Eyes (scotch eggs) and drank local beers (a very pale beer called White 'N Nerdy"). It was a long, long drive back, and today I am paying for my city-trotting socializing with aching knees. But still, one of those Saturdays that makes me appreciate living out here in the Pacific NW, even if it means I have to deal with the Mercer Mess.

More later,

(Tai Chi pictures by Yijiao Hong, AFK picture by Rodney Thompson, Flying polyp picture by Unamit Ahazredit. Remember to make you SAN checks).

Pittsburgh: The Movie

OK, if  you're a Pittsburgh native (and even if you aren't), you really should watch this - a collection of movies filmed in Pittsburgh, with a lot of attention to Batman and Inspector Gadget. I think Dogma is missing, along with The Bread My Sweet (which features my Mom-In-Law as a meter maid). Just enjoy.



More later,

The (Totally Expected) Return of No Quarter (Part IV)

Ah, spring is in the air, the rhododendrons are blooming, and  it becomes once more, time to review this year's crop of National Park Quarters. Long ago and far away, I started examining the State Quarter series, and once that was laid to rest, a NEW series, called the "America the Beautiful" series, launched. The rules were similar - each state (and a handful of colonial properties) gets a coin to push one of their scenic national parks, forests, memorials,  or what-not. For some states this is a bigger challenge than others, but all have showed up with something.

As is usual, we rate this year's crop of National Park coins on design - Here's the rating system.
Cool = A
Not Bad = B
Kinda Lame = C
Very Lame = D
The Wyoming State Quarter = E
Bonus points given for scenes that make sense, are easily recognizable, and have a good feel to the touch.This year's crop is OK, but not really spectacular. Let's dig in.

White Mountain National Forest  - New Hampshire

Yeah, it's a mountain. And it IS white (well the drawing is - I suppose the coin would be silver. So we at least have truth in advertisting going on.

And the carving is not particularly BAD - in fact, the bracketing birch trees could give the coin a good feel against the thumb, a ridge for the center white space of the view of the mountain. But the subject matter? I mean there feels like there are a bunch of states that do the forested-view-with-large-landform thing both in the previous series and in this one. All that is missing is some form of native wildlife in the foreground to give it a feel of animation.

And New Hampshire is probably hedging its bets. Its state quarter had the Old Man On the Mountain, which then COLLAPSED. I think they're just taunting the mountain here to fold in on itself.

Rating: B (Not Bad).

Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial - Ohio


Did anyone think of Lord Nelson when they saw this one? I know I did. Guy in naval uniform. Tall Doric column. I mean, if this was a contest of Pictionary, the answer would be - Nelson's Column.

But no, this is Admiral (well, Master Commandant) Perry, who is OUR admiral for the age of sail, whose middle name literally WAS Hazard, and who gave us a victory on Lake Erie during the War of 1812, facing off against the mightiest navy in the world, primarily because a) the mightiest navy in the world was busy fighting Napoleon  and b) the mightiest navy in the world couldn't GET to Lake Erie because NIAGARA FALLS was in the way.

But hey, a win's a win.

And though we are in the bicentennial period for that war (and the bicentennial of the Battle of Lake Erie is September 10th, so get you Battle of Lake Erie card orders in NOW). We aren't talking a lot of about the war. which sort of indicates who we really thought won it. Canada on the other hand is excited about it, and they weren't even a nation yet. I'm kind of interested to see next year if anyone even mentions the burning of the White House (except FOX, of course, which will blame Obama for not keeping us safe).

And the coin is celebrating mixed messages - Perry's Victory AND the Peace Memorial. Military Victory AND the fact we've had a long, relatively peaceful border ever since. And it is ironic to note that this is set in Ohio, which doesn't HAVE a land border at the present with Canada.

So it is a coin dripping with irony, right down the fact that the visitor center for this island-based park (reachable by ferry or airplane, when Jet Blue is flying) is delayed to open because of the sequester. But quarters they can afford.

Rating: C  (Kinda Lame).

Great Basin National Park - Nevada

OK, Nevada doesn't have a lot to work with here. I would have thought that Hoover Dam would be in contention, since it IS a National Historic Landmark, but then maybe they would have had to share it with Arizona if they did. So they have the Great Basin, which is notable for being miles and miles of miles and miles.

And yet, they've done very nicely. The choice of the bristlecone pine looks a bit like it is going with Treebeard to take on Saruman at Isengard, but the use of different textures is going to be nice for the feel of the coin, and pushing it one side makes the static object more dynamic. 

So yeah, in a modest year, this is one of the better ones.

Rating: A (Way Cool).

Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine - Maryland

Another entry in the War of 1812 theme of this year, this one commemorating the crystal entity from Star Trek attacking the Fort, before being scared off by the Omega Glory (double geek points for getting that one). 

OK, it really the shelling of Fort McHenry by the British, though its not. From the notes it REALLY is showing traditional fireworks going off during the "Defender's Day" celebration of the fort. So you get the flashiness, when really the fort and the British Ships were shelling each other at long range.

So this is another win from the Wo12 - the British, fresh from burning Washington (Thanks, Obama!) moved onto Baltimore, sailing up the Chesapeake. They were foiled by land batteries, a line of sunken ships, and the fort. Neither side got close enough to do significant damage to each other, but the British were foiled, and in the process we got a poem that was later welded to an earlier drinking song to become the Star Spangled Banner. 

The coin itself, despite the fireworks, feels a little flat at first blush. The explosions work from an eyes-half-closed sort of look, and while the flag is good (indeed, when was the last time you saw a flag on the coin - some old bicentennial quarters?) the buildings are just sort of squatting there. 

Rating: C (Kinda Lame)

Mount Rushmore National Memorial - South Dakota

So here's a challenge - what do you do when the state quarter bogarts the killer view of your most memorable feature? Arizona pulled things off nicely by shifting the view of the Grand Canyon entirely delivering a superior coin. South Dakota, on the other hand, gave us this.

Jefferson's nose. 

They gave us a close-up of Jefferson's Nose. Actually, it is an in-process shot of carving Jefferson's face (working on those baggy eyelids) while the scaffolding behind supports the almost unrecognizable face of Washington. The carving of the monument is a cool thing, but the series is America the Beautiful, not Nostrils of the Founding Father.

This one is honestly WORSE than the State Quarter, with its giant pheasant flying over the classic view of the memorial, and that takes some doing. It takes a recognizable icon and hides it entirely. That takes work.

Rating: D (Very Lame)

That wraps this year's batch, and next year has a whole heaping helping of natural features. I predict we will see trees, mountains, and the occasional local wildlife. 

More later,

DOW Breaks 14000! No, wait! I mean 15000!

It has been a while since the last "DOW Breaks" write-up - over a year, so here are the rules. For the purposes of this blog, it simply means ratcheting past a milepost - since the last write-up occurred at 13000, the stock market would have to sink to 12000 or rise to 14000 before it merited another note. It has to end the day at the milestone or above. And it is a good chance to take a look at the economy in general..

The DOW actually crossed 14000 back in February, but I didn't mention it then because, you know, Hawaii. And despite the common thoughts about how the current administration hates Big Business, and liberals in Washington are so gung ho to dismantle Wall Street, the market continues to surge upwards. Indeed, it seems that this is the best part of the economy right now. If there are truly socialists in charge, they are doing a horrible, horrible job at it.

And the rest of the economy is decidedly "Meh". Not for the bigs - they seem to be doing pretty good. But for most of us shmoes, the job providers don't seem to be providing much, despite their supposed good fortune. Employment continues its slow, incremental recovery. Seattle, with its regressive taxes and progressive stance, seems to be doing pretty well, but for a large swath in the country, most notably in the redder sections, life is still kinda sketchy.

And I have to look at why, and I think I have a reason that hasn't shown up what passes for wisdom among the pundit class. It is because government and its attendant deficits are not growing. In fact, they are shrinking. Government is smaller now than when we started this current recession, and the deficits are currently reducing (the overall debt is another matter - there is a difference).

This is important because government spending has in the past led the way out of recessions. Yeah, yeah, you supposedly can't spend your way out of a recession, but that's exactly what we've done previously. Government steps in and starts placing some orders, be it roads, tanks, or new weapons systems, and the private sector takes the hint and things get moving again.

This time, not so much. While I don't think the current administration are austerity hawks (and while I am amused by the reports that the research that austerity being a good thing is wrong because of a cut-and-paste error, it sounds really too perfect to be true), they are serious about making government smaller and more efficient. Which means it costs less. Which means that there is less money thrown around to get things going again. And no one wants that when their particular fiscal ox is offered for the BBQ.

This is a common problem with the current system - everyone hates government spending, but the moment that the big factory that makes warning stickers for OSHA reports is closing, or the local military base is being shuttered because we haven't had a war with Canada for 200 years, then everyone is indignant that the government is not paying attention to the needs of its people. The idea that the government is completely independent from the economy is a polite fiction, at best.

And yet in the midst of this no one seems to own up that government is getting smaller, and that as a result we aren't spending money to get the economy rolling again. I can see why the Republicans are all-fired quiet about it - here's a president who is doing what they have been claiming needs to be done (yet never seem to get around to doing). If it doesn't work, then that sort of undercuts their entire rational. On the Dem side, you'd think they would be glad to shed a tax and spend image tossed them by their Distinguished Competition, yet they don't want to be shown holding the bag for the attendant economic misery.

The thing is, a smaller government is a good thing - long term. It shows we can get out of these messes without ratcheting up the system one more notch. It backs us away from the cliff. But it is a slower, more painful process, and will still have economic suffering going forward, as everyone tightens their belts.

Except for the guys at the DOW, of course. For them, things are just ducky.

More later,

Wrap-up For the Rep.

Pullman Porter Blues by Cheryl L. West, Directed by Lisa Peterson.
Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Directed by Braden Abraham.
Inspecting Carol by Daniel Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Theatre Resident company, Directed by Jerry Manning.
American Buffalo by David Mamet, Directed by Wilson Milam.
Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler, Directed by Braden Abraham.
War Horse based on the book "War Horse" by Michael Morpugo, adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford in association with Handspring Puppet Company, Originally directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, US Tour Director Bijan Shebani.
Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire, Directed by David Saint.
Boeing, Boeing by Marc Camoletti, translated by Beverly Cross and Francis Cross, Directed by Allison Narver.
All of the above, Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Normally play reviews, particularly those for the Seattle Repertory Theatre, where the Lovely Bride and I have season tickets, carry this blog through the cold dark months of the winter. This year, I got behind with a bunch of reviews from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and just let things slide from there. So now I'm at the end of the season, and really need to sum up, for my own internal housekeeping if nothing else (plus the fact that I will probably have to come back to this some time in the future and figure out what the heck I was thinking).

This, the Seattle Rep's 50th Season, was OK. Not great or stellar, but OK. More wins than losses. The things that bothered me about it rarely had anything to do with the work, or the actors (both of which tend to be superior), and more with the larger issues of putting plays onto the stage.

The first out the door was Pullman Porter Blues, which falls into the category of being the annual "play with music" - not a musical, but a play built around extant songs - a revue with more narrative thread. There is one every year.  The year is 1937, the night of the Joe Louis/ Braddock fight, the place is the Panama Express, a train running from Chicago to New Orleans. Three generations of Pullman Porters are on the train, for various reasons, and the three men espouse different methods operating with a white-dominated world. The race relations are front and center here, but so are the generational problems, and indeed every member of the family is keeping secrets from the others. It trundles along nicely, though the ending is a little neat. The best parts were strong performances from Larry Marshall and Cleavant Derricks (Yeah, he was in Sliders - deal with it). In general, it felt like a show running through its paces en route to New York. Who knows, it could be another Light in the Piazza, where it does well and everyone remembers when it was here in Seattle.

Glass Menagerie could have been very good, but for this one I bailed. Having done enough straw hat theater and having a Mom-in-Law who directed same, I have had more Tennessee Williams than the normal human lifetime allowance. However, it is "Classic Play You've Heard Of Which Is Not Shakespeare" entry into the year.

Inspecting Carol should get a pass from me. It is another good go-to-play for small theaters (again, I have run lines with the Mom-In-Law when she was in a local performance), but it was created here at the Rep, so it makes sense for it to show up for its 50th. Local play makes good. But this performance left me a bit flat. I think backstage comedies work best when you are already comfortable with the actors as actors and not as roles. The cast for Inspecting had a lot of strangers to it, so that linkage was lost to me. The name Repertory carries with it the idea of a permanent company. This is weakened by plays that are another company just using the stage (Pullman, for all its goodness) and actors "who are pleased to be appearing at the Rep for the first time". That latter is not a crime, and often we'd like to see more of them in the future at the Rep.

[Oh, and when you're going through the program booklet at Intermission, count the number of actors with credits in Law & Order and CSI. Those are the modern actor equivalents of the FDR's WPA.]

American Buffalo was my least-favorite play. Deeply loved the language and rhythm of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Rose, but this play, about a junk-shop operator and his friends planning the heist of an expensive nickle,was just missing it for me. Possibly it is the limited number of characters - Mamet's abusive, self-righteous characters go better when they are bouncing off multiple targets when then they are bound in a tight, whining loop. The production subverts the dark message of the play as well, culminating an action-heavy sequence of shop destruction with a cascade of pillows, pulling the rug out of the entire scene. It really didn't work for me.

Photography 51, on the other hand, was the best play of the season, combining a good script with effective direction and excellent acting. It is the story of Rosalind Franklin and her role in the discovery of DNA. Kirsten Potter, who previously showed up in Or (and, being honest, is one of the voices in Guild Wars 2), was excellent in the role of Franklin, equally sympathetic and off-putting. Crick and Watson were laid out in broader, more cartoony strokes, but it was an excellent presentation. More of this, please (do I need to add that almost the entire cast had previous experience on the Rep's boards?)

Forgive me while I continue flogging a deceased equine in War Horse. The idea of a Rep is to have a common pool of performers. And I can go with (and enjoy) seeing different actors, as at least there is a continuity of direction, management and even things like lighting and stagecraft. A sensibility should permeate a theater company's production, and to some degree does with the REP, even when guests from out of town come to visit.  However, War Horse is a completely different production operation, a touring company for a nationally-known show, and performed in a completely different building than usual (the spotty old Paramount, a theater that makes you appreciate the sight lines of the Bagley-Wright). There is no continuity here, and it feels like a field trip than part of the regular theater experience. I would have preferred another performance in the Leo K to this.

Yeah, but what about the play? Well, its a Broadway performance - heavy on spectacle, light on character, direct and simple on plot. Plot is boy meets horse, boy loses horse, WWI arrives (which, we establish clearly, was a bad idea for everyone involved), and finally (spoiler) boy finds horse. The spectacle is great, and the puppeteers handing the horses are brilliant and subtle and the tech spectacular. But it really isn't a Rep production.

Good People gets back into the line with a play about American class distinctions, and makes a good pairing with Pullman Porter Blues in the idea of separate worlds. Margie from South Boston (Ellen McLaughlin) re-encounters an old boyfriend who has "made good" and left the neighborhood. The characters are sharp, the acting good, and the accents (I am so told by a Bostonian who was sitting next to me) were good enough for army work. But what I liked about the play is that it is missing something that bothers me with other plays, like God of Carnage or much of Edward Albee. In this other plays, one party or another talks about leaving, no one ever really leaves, because you need to have them all present. This particular play minimized that feature, and where it raised its ugly head, you got the feeling there was a natural reason to set down the coat and return to the discussion. A good play.

And finally, Boeing, Boeing, which is, according to Wikipedia, the French equivalent of The Mousetrap, being performed relentlessly there. It is a farce set in 1962 (later a movie with Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis) where a man in Paris (a slick Richard Nguyen Sloniker) is juggling three stewardess girlfriends on a tight timetable. Then there are some snags and all three women show up at once. Whackiness ensues.

And it is whackiness finds its epicenter with Mark Bedard, who is the best friend from Wisconsin who stumbles into this shambles. I didn't find his Groucho is OSF's Animal Crackers particularly engaged or engaging, but his sheer joy of slapstick works wonders within the smaller and more intimate house of the Bagley-Wright. He pulls off fully that comedian's craft of making you believe that what he is doing and saying is the first time he has ever done or said anything like that. Combine that with the three stunning stewardesses (Rep Vets Bhama Roget and Cheyenne Casebier, with newcomer Angela DiMarco, who should also come back), a long-suffering maid (Anne Allgood) and a extremely technical set, and you have an animated Playboy cartoon from the early 60s. The humor is as broad as the accents and the result is a little truffle of silliness, a good way of closing out the season on an up note.

So to recapitulate - Broadway Hopeful, Old Master, Local Favorite, Lesser Work by a Name Playwright, Excellent Play About Something You Haven't Heard About, Broadway Field Trip, Good Solid Play, Giggly Farce. And that's a good summing up for the Rep at 50.

More later, but in smaller bits.

In Which I Read Quietly

So the other night I attended a silent reading party. It is a regular thing up on First Hill, in the Fireside Room of the Sorrento Hotel, and runs the first Wednesday of the month. Usually my Wednesdays are booked with other things, but my tai chi classes don't start until next week. The Stranger always pushes it, talking about soft chairs, soft music, and soft lighting.

My purpose, in part, was to jumpstart a book I've been reading - Playing at the World, by Jon Peterson. It is the story of the birth of D&D and all the games that preceded it, and should I ever finish the tome, will provide a review. It is a good book, but like a lot of books, I have set it down at one point and not picked it up again (I have a number of such orphaned books on my bedside bookshelf, and they merit an article on their own). Playing at the World is a doorstop of a book, richly detailed, and I had ground out at the detailed analysis of hit points descending from the Fletcher Pratt naval rules, and wanted to pick up the book again, but other events and opportunities conspired against it. So my goal was to read without distraction.

Anyway, I got there late, because we were having a good design discussion at the office (why such discussions always break out at 5 PM is a bit of mystery). I arrived and found the Sorrento an older hotel with a smallish restaurant converted entirely to people deeply immersed in books. All seats were taken, most nooks were filled, and crannies were at a premium. Moving among the reading herds, I could feel that vibe of readers wanting to maintain their space (The literate are a kindly people, but possessive of their reading space, including the additional space they are saving for late-arriving friends). I ended up just outside the room, parked at a chess table. A kindly waitress brought me an expensive but completely serviceable glass of reisling, and I hunkered down and set to reading.

And it was OK. Lighting was typical for an older hotel, subdued, which is good for meals and problematic for reading, in particular texts with small print. Music was provided by Will Bielawski on the harp,which was excellent, though when he went into "Ashokan Farewell", also known as "That song from Ken Burns' Civil War", I suddenly was reading the text in Garrison Keilor's voice.

I stayed about an hour, pressed through the section on Fletcher Pratt and the difference between mitigation and endurance in dealing damage in miniature games (and its later effect on D&D), so I consider it to be a success. Would I go again in the future, I would:
     a) Arrive earlier
     b) Go with a larger printed text, or, better yet, use a back-lit e-reader.
     c) Look older so some young child will take pity on me and offer me a better seat.

The idea of a silent reading party looks pretty good, and should some local bar in the Renton/Kent area with a dead Tuesday night decide to pick it up, I would encourage it. As it is, I'm glad I checked it out, but don't really need to return.

Unless, of course, someone saves me a seat.

More later,

The Guild Wars 2 Super Adventure Box!

In Guild Wars, we've been known to do ... stuff for April Fools Day. Turn all the characters into stick figures. Release the Commando as a promised character class. Change all the player characters' genders, or turn them all into big-headed Gwen dolls. This year, our team has put together something kinda special, complete with its own, 80's style commercial.

Enjoy. More later. No, really.

Attaining EBay-ness

So I've been cleaning out the Archive Room downstairs. The Archive Room is where I've been stashing game product and comics that I've purchased, written, or otherwise acquired over the years. The end result was a rather ponderous pile of boxes that I could rarely organize, much less sort through, ranging from duplicate author copies to small-press games to early incarnations of classics.

As a result, I've been on a multi-year quest to ease up on some of the load and reduce the clutter. Some of the material went through Fantasium Comics (formerly Spy Comics), my local comic provider. But when fellow gamer Ann Trent started up as Ebay Mistress for the mighty Stan!, I turned to her to unload some of the older and odder stuff.

The result is here at the Stannexmart, where you can find both Stan!'s stuff and my own. She's just starting with my material, and most of what is currently up is old World of Darkness stuff. There will be more to come as she moves through the small mountain of boxes I sent her.

Now, if I can only find a good home for 90 longboxes of unsorted, unbagged comics, I would have the room cleared out.

More later

Maui

So. Vacation.

The Lovely Bride and I celebrated our 30th anniversary by fleeing Seattle for the (pleasantly) warmer and (reasonably) sunnier climes of Hawai'i.  And it was fun.

There's a lot more where this came from.

I'd show you all the photos, but to be honest, they are pretty much shots taken from our resort overlooking the ocean, with Lanai and Molokai in the distance. Here's a shot of the beautiful sea. Here's another one. Here's one with a rainbow. Here's a sunset. Oh, and see that dot? That's a whale.

We have been to Hawai'i before, and on previous occasions have rented a car, which spent the bulk of the time parked at the resort while we overdosed on sushi. So this time, no car rental, no traditional drive around the island and sudden realization that things get dark fast after that beautiful sunset. We flew out of Honolulu on a 9-person Cessna Caravan that had a ceiling of about 5000 feet (I know that because we were level with the top of Molokai), and came in on a landing field on western Maui, about four football fields long. We ensconced ourselves at the Napili Kai, an older resort (meaning it was closer to the waterline) and used taxis, buses, and long walks to get around.

What we did do for the bulk of the week was eat and snorkel. I have become a fan since discovering that you can get prescription snorkel masks (Thank you, Snorkel Bob's), and both Napili Bay and Kapalua Bay to the north were good snorkeling sites. A lot of fish, a goodly number of sea turtles (green and hawksbill - the former I usually found swimming, and they would immediately grass on the larger hawksbills by taking the tourists right to them). A school of tiny cuttlefish, handing head down in the waves, unfurling their tentacles to threaten interlopers. The agenda was breakfast, snorkel, lunch, snorkel, recover, sunset, dinner, sleep. Not a bad little schedule.

The local restaurant, the Sea House, was great for dinner, a little in the weeds for lunch. We also discovered a good joint, Merrimans, which was about 50 yards from where we were staying, which was the equivalent of learning that your hotel room overlooks Canlis. We had a wonderful anniversary dinner there, and then spawn-camped their patio for happy hour. Since we were on the west side of Maui, we had the islands of Lanai and Molokai in the distance, and whales in between. Humpbacks, in this case (We did get down to Lahaina for a whale watching trip, but to be honest we did well on the patio - better beer as well).

In short, it was a complete and total zoning out, which is pretty much what I wanted out of the deal. And it was a good way of celebrating thirty years.

More later,

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles VII

The Timeless Sands of India by Jon Hook, an Age of Cthulhu Adventure from Goodman Games.

I've been doing this for a while now - reviewing Call of Cthulhu adventures that I have GMed. Play always reveals things that a mere read-through does not, and while that means I may not be timely in these reviews, I feel they are a little more grounded. 

Case in point: the latest in the series from Goodman Games for its "pulp Cthulhu" adventure. I felt upon reading that they got a lot more right than wrong in presenting an adventure. The players were not as enchanted, and that makes things interesting.

And as a general note, Spoilers within, so be prepared.

Here's the outline in brief: The investigators are troubled by horrific dreams, which send them to Calcutta. There they discover that they have all be mentally hijacked at some time in their lives by an creature from the far-flung future who is seeking to avoid an Armageddon. Now there is a group of Adversaries who are seeking to foil that plan to stave off doomsday, and the investigators have been summoned for a final battle to defeat these Adversaries.

The presentation is pretty darn good, in that it takes into account that adventurers might be coming from other locations than Arkham and tries to cover a wide variety of likely but what-if scenarios. The maps for once actually match up with the text, and while there are a few places where the map key numbers are off (assigned to the wrong chapter), they work well. The text is clear, though the players did mock the number of things mentioned in the read-aloud text that were either stated to be nondescript or indescribable, but then were described. and then there's the idea that a female character in the 1920s would be referred to as "Ms." But these are generally nits. It is a good package.

And yet the players were frustrated a bit. Part of it was the linearity of the adventure (earlier entries in this series would give an initial setup, then let the players explore a number of venues before going off to fight the big bad). Another challenge was that these particular investigators have a history of going through the rest of the adventures of the series, and similarities with other adventures do crop up. Dreams are a continual trope in this series, such that they hold little peril by this point. They have previously suffered from a "lost time" episode in Indonesia, where they also encountered dimensional shamblers mentioned here. (Which are portrayed in both situations as character-ending encounters but in reality are little match for a mobster with a tommy gun). 

The group is also armed with iPads, which means that fact-checking is part of the process and this adventure and most of the rest of the line stand up to that level of counter-checking. One clue involved a blue elephant which got them into the Hindu deity Genesha (who is usually portrayed as red but has an incarnation which is presented as blue). Minor digressions included whether they would have to change trains from Calcutta to Johdpur to account for India's differing rail gauges (unresolved), and whether Bombay gin existed in the 1920s (yes, but the gimlet I used it for was two years after the stated year of the adventure - my bad). 

But the big thing that I think bothered them was the fact that the ultimately adventure was more pulp than Cthulhu. The feeling of dread and menace was missing, despite the rules reducing in-game effectiveness for the lack of sleep (a rule that was itself of limited effectiveness as many of the rolls demanded in the game were luck, idea, and ability checks). This is a rollicking solid adventure, but Mr. Lovecraft has stepped out for a smoke and his substitute is Robert E. Howard. In fact, the final great battle had more than a whiff of Zulu Dawn to it, but that may because we had some stalwart brits fighting off the hordes (and this would be the greatest challenge for a GM - 18 sand-dwellers, including 3 sorcerers, 40 Cultists, and a Grand Wizard - the adventure gives you some general suggestions on how to handle it, then pats you on the back and says "Above all else, have fun with the battle.")

But the creature that you are eventually helping is one of Lovecraft's more accomodating monsters - rational, and reasonable. The story it originally appears in is noted for its sense of wonder and dread as opposed to its threat and action, and underscores a Lovecraftian theme of man's insignificance within an uncaring universe. The idea of victory on the behalf of a squamous elder creation is a bit out of sorts for the rest of the series. In the after-battle report, the players thought it might have worked better if the benefactor had to fess up at the end that humanity was still doomed, but at least the creature's library was safe!

One last thing, which is interesting for this as part of a continuing campaign. The investigators received over the course of the adventure a small slew of new skills, which are of debatable use within the adventure (they are taught how to manage their nightmares, but the nightmares are soon banished in any event), and gain the ability to use alien artifacts (which may never appear again, and if they do appear, will be in adventures assuming the players don't have those abilities). It is a mixed bag, both under-utilized and over powers in one swell foop.

The end verdict for me is that this is a good one, but with the note that it is more Indiana Jones than Albert Wilmarth, but with a couple more tweaks could have a strong feeling of dread and foreboding that is at the heart of a CoC campaign.

More later,