Theatre: Life in Wartime

 Wish You Were Here by Sanaz Toossi, Directed by Nagmeh Samini, a co-production with Seda Iranian Theatre Company, Arts West, through 5 July.

There's a weirdness in watching a play about Iranian women during wartime at the moment in time where we're at war with Iran (or we're not at war. Or we are and its not a war. Or its a ceasefire but we're still shooting missiles at each other. Or, wait, it is a war after all, depending on what day you're reading this). 

But its a play about war as a backdrop - actually its a play about friendships, and women and how time claims all those forced to live in it. Five close female friends are together on one of their number's wedding day, making final preparations, fretting about beauty, and being intimately raunchy about their vaginas. There's the religious one, the nerdy one, the dumb one, the stylish one, and the exotic (Jewish in a mostly-Muslim state) one. And they preen, hug, insult, and argue their way through the wedding prep. They have a moment. They hug. And then the news comes in that Shah has booked out, and a little later that Iraq has invaded. 

And the world changes around them, and little by little their world collapses on them. The Jewish one disappears and may/may not have fled with her family. The nerdy one goes to school in Indiana and does not return. The religious one dies in a horrifically ironic manner. And with each loss the survivors cling to each other, break up, have more weddings and funerals, argue, drift together, drift apart and bemoan the lack of the others as connective tissue. The revise their feelings and histories in real-time as they pick their way through a now-uncertain world. 

And as a play, it is really, really good. Sanaz Toossi wrote English from a couple seasons back, which was also performed in in this space in conjuration with the Seda Iranian Theatre Company, and with the same director. The dialogue was natural and honest, though with the cross-talk you're often catching up on what they're really talking about. The five actresses (plus a sixth, who is the new one) are excellent in defining their personalities, differences, and unities. Yeah, I can see these five women coming together as force, with their future ahead of them, and what happens next. Think of the Big Chill with a more authoritarian state. 

I liked this so much I didn't lead with talking about where we ate before the show. This time, we returned to Phoenecia, an excellent Lebanese place a block over the the theater. It was a warm Friday here, and so we sat on the small patio and had too many small plates, great entrees (The Lovely Bride brought her seafood back in the doggie bag) and too many drinks (The LB experimented with mocktails, while I had to abandon my last of my second Moscow Mule in order to make the show on time). It was a good start to the evening and very good show.

More later, 

Scams

 We are awash in scams these days. Mysterious Docusign demands. Emails claiming to be from the Geek Squad or PayPal announcing that someone purchased a iPad in your name. Other emails that claim to be from the Lovely Bride, saying "Here are the pictures you wanted!" with emojis and an unknown link (and the sender has a Bulgarian email address).

In addition to the cybercrime, we recently had some physical burglary activity in the neighborhood, in an empty house across the street. Some folk in a white truck boosted a construction trailer from a site in the valley (They have videos of the theft), stashed it there overnight while they emptied the trailer of equipment, and for good measure, broke into a shed on the property and took some other, older tools. I saw the truck at the time but did not think twice, because the previous owners had a white truck and had been emptying the house, but since finding out about the break-in I've been keeping an eye out ever since (and chatting with the original owners whenever they WERE on the property).

That's all background for the new scam we encountered. The Lovely Bride got a phone call on her phone, asking for me, under my rarely-used first name (which I only use for official documents). The caller claimed to be Sgt. Jason Cooke of the King County Sheriff's office, and would I call back. She called back and after a rather suspicious phone tree, got ahold of that officer, who wanted me to call him back as soon as possible. The Lovely Bride had some very pointed questions and he was not forthcoming as to reasons.

And there were a buncha flags here, so the Lovely Bride called a friend of ours who IS a King County Sheriff, and he determined that no, there was no one on the force by that name. And he called the number in question and they hung up on him. Twice. So, yeah, it sounded extremely some scam we had not heard about yet. 

In any event, just in case it was legit, I did call the number back, got the sketchy phone tree (which identified itself as being the King's County Sheriff), went through another secretary and got ahold of Sgt. Cooke. And he said I had a federal affidavit in my name and I should have gotten a letter. I informed him I had received no such letter and pointed out that I had a colleague who was a REAL Sergeant in the King County Sheriffs, and that he would be interested in talking to him. And Sgt. Cooke explained that they were in different divisions and shifts, which sounded just barely credible to be true.

And we chatted some more and he asked if I would come downtown to provide a signature. Again, weird but just borderline credible. He gave me an address and an office number, and the address was the King County Courthouse (I checked while I talked to him). So took a long lunch and drove downtown, trying to go over in my mind any sin, crime, or misdemeanor which would require a federal affidavit and a visit to the police (and why King County was dealing with federal affidavits was yet another red flag, but there were more red flags here than May Day during the Khrushchev era). Oh, and I could come down anytime during the day - he'd be in (Ding! another red flag).

So I went downtown, paid too much for parking, and went through the metal detectors at the courthouse, and found the office, right there on the first floor by the entrance. Couldn't miss it. And rang the bell. No one answered, but one of the people on the front desk came by with lunch. And I explained the situation, and that person explained that no, there was no Sgt. Cooke there and yes, it probably was a scam. 

So I went to Pike Place Market, bought some Earl Grey tea from Market Spice and a loaf of sourdough from Three Sisters, and some hum bao from Meesum Pastries for lunch, so the trip wasn't a total loss. 

But I have to admit that Sgt. Cooke and company really committed to the bit. The fake phone tree, the waiting music, the conversation all sounded reasonable at first blush if you didn't have any interaction with the King County Sheriff's Office. And he was extremely calm and well-mannered when confronted with the fact that no one seemed to know him. Didn't spook him for a moment, and he gave himself a good escape from the conversation. 

AND after this is all said an done, I did an internet search on Sgt. Jason Cooke. And it looks like he's a very busy officer, with reports coming on all over the country of this scam, where the bogus officer named Jason Cooke calls up and says there is an arrest warrant out for you but you can avoid it by sending him a gift card. 

The only question in this case is ... why? I mean, it was a pretty elaborate setup, and nothing was ultimately asked of me other than to come downtown for a fictitious appointment. I wondered if the thieves wanted me out of the house when they came back to the empty property across the street. That sounds really Nero Wolfe, but when I returned, the shed door was open again, which I didn't notice it at the time when I left. I called the former property owners (they're local), and they found out that the NEW property owners had stopped by and left doors open. So, nope, no prob.

But still -  I'm a little nervous about the whole thing, and keeping my eyes even further open, but frustrated that this sort of thing is ongoing.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: The North Texas Report

 What, already?

Yes, I promised to go onto a game-buying fast until I bull through some of the games I have already purchased. But a large box arrived from the folks at the North Texas RPG Con down in Irving, Texas. Each year, they present the Three Castles Award. Candidates are submitted and reviewed by a committee of several wise, sage, heads. For the past few years, my colleague Steve Winter and I have been among those wise, sage heads. We read, we review, and we vote. At this point I don't know who the winner is, but if you disagree with my comments, you can yell at Steve, since he'll be down at the convention.

There are also a couple things that have come over the transom, and one that was purchased from my local shop, but first off, let's look at the nominees for the Three Castles.

Denizens of the Blood Sands, a Science Fiction Bestiary by Zac Goins, RPG Ramblings, 56-Page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is a nifty little monster manual in full-color, designed for Old School Essentials version of D&D, and packs a lot of potential for "sword-and-planet" style settings like Dark Sun or Empire of the Petal Throne, as well as post-apocalyptic settings like Gamma World (in all its variable rule sets). There are desert dwellers and host of lost technologies rolling around here, along with mutations in the desert (This year's crop of candidates has a LOT of mutations in it, for some reason). I found it charming. 

Dark Visions, ALSO by Zac Goins, RPG Ramblings, 86-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is a third-party expansion for Shadowdark. Our Monday-night RPG gang is playing Shadowdark right now and having a good old time with it. And Arcane Library, the publisher of Shadowdark, has been very accommodating in letting others use their system and trade dress (the way it looks). The Shadowdark layout is normally clean and clear, and ditto here. This volume primarily builds off the idea of cults, both to the major gods of SD, but adding seven "lesser" gods who are the centers of cult worship. Cults look like they are smaller, more zealous, and more violent than your standard-issue religions. Three new classes are introduced (one cultist, two anti-cultist), along with new spells and two adventures (a third is mentioned, but available separately). Some of the mishaps for cult-spells are career-ending (1d4 limbs melt off the bone, for example), so caution is advised.

Meet Yer Maker by Eddie Bartlett, The Long Con Press, 32-page squarebound, 2024, Three Castles Award Candidate. Early in the age of RPGs (1987), TSR published Treasure Hunt, an adventure for 0-level adventurers (the adventure you have before you decide to be an adventurer). This type of adventure as been embraced in recent years as a "gauntlet" or "funnel", where you throw potential PCs without much differentiating abilities into the maw of danger and those that survive get to go on to 1st level. Sort of expanding the character-creation minigame into a full-fledged game. Anyway, this one kicks off with a Old Western start and goes elsewhere from there, and its very difficult to say you're avoiding spoilers without sending up a flare that spoilers exist. So I'll stop there.

Forgotten Tomb of Acererak by Troy Alleman and William Henry Dvorak, Cannibaal Publishing, 72-page squarebound, 2024, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is distributed through the DM's Guild, which allows access to D&D trademarks in exchange for a healthy cut of the take. In this case, the author is presents an entry-level adventure in Greyhawk featuring the legacy of the S1 - Tomb of Horrors bad guy, the lich Acererak. This particular tomb was Acererak's starter home, which they started digging, discovered something nasty, and hied off to quieter corners of Oerth. You mission (as an entry-level individual) is to locate the tomb and find out what scared Acererak off. And its a solid adventure, very much in the old school Greyhawkian style, and brings in cavefolk and the Flan goddess of nature, Beory. The presentation is solid and clean, and gives you a excellent jumping off point for adventures. If you use the DM's Guild (this writer does not), this is the sort of thing that's really worth checking out. 

Nebulith by Zak S. with Alex Hopson. Lamentations of the Flame Princess, 298-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a weird Jekyll/Hyde nature, in that it can produce extremely high-quality, RPG-dense material as well as cringy edgelord stuff.  An example of the former from Last year it was A True Relation of the Great Virginia Diastrum. This year it is Nebulith, a beefy Asian (Okinawan) adventure setting that feeds into the weirdness that LotFP does so well. The Nebulith is a volcano magically halted mid-eruption, so it is a huge frozen stone cloud hanging over the island of Awa Nikko, and serves as the "dungeon" for this setting. The setting is rich in lore, changing the euro-centric LotFP rules to adapt to samurai, ninja, and martial arts. This is the first Asian-themed product I've read that beats out the venerable Oriental Adventures from TSR. I love the art, I love the lore, I love the game design. My big challenge is that the graphic design is pretty but often involves hand-drawn lettering and 8-point type, which is hard on these ancient eyes. Worth reading, even if the reading is slow.

The Music of Ericha Zann by James Edward Raggi IV, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, 32-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is the flip-side of LotFP - transgressive, hard-edged, and uncompromisingly bizarre. This sort of thing is much more of a descendent of such ancient and now-mostly-forgotten tomes as Arduin Grimoire, where you turn things up to 11 and don't think about what tomorrow would bring. Anyway, it's a rethinking of the Bard class, not as the high-charisma, social creatures they've evolved into in D&D, but rather as a controllers of cataclysmic cacophony and madness. Their songs rend the world. rip the dimensions, and tear the flesh, and have the potential to destroy your campaign in a single roll. The art shows bards wrecking havoc with alpine horns and triangles, and yes, that is a maiden with a trombone on the cover. And it definitely shows the personal opinions of the designer right on the surface. Music has a lot of interesting ideas within the slim volume, but I would not allow it near my table. 

And for other recent arrivals:

All the Cardinal's Men by M. Bill Heron, Nightfall Games, 128-page hardbound digest, 2025, Kickstarter.  This is a sequel to the excellent Call of Cthulhu adventure Musketeers vs. Cthulhu from a few years' back, the story continues with the Courts of Chaos seeking rule France from behind the scenes. In this case, you get to play members of the Cardinal's Guard, who are the opponents (perhaps "frenemies" is a better term) of the Musketeers in the original Dumas books. Your mission - rescue king and cardinal from the clutches of Chaos and save France! 

DIE the Roleplaying Game Quickstart Edition by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, Image/Rowan, Rook, and Decard,52-page saddle-stitched softbound, 2025, Midgard Comics. A while back, I read the first issue of the comic book (also by Gillen and Hans), and was not charged up enough about it to continue. The idea (and this may be familiar) was of a group of gamers who suddenly find themselves in the fantasy campaign they played as kids. So in the game you're playing a real-world persona who finds himself in a fantasy world. Sort of like the D&D Cartoon where the Dungeon Master is a bigger jerk. The quickstart itself feels influenced by Powered by the Apocalypse, and lays out the characters, the basics of combat, and a short scenario. I gotta say, it doesn't move me towards picking up the full game, but it was good checking it out.

The Howl of the Chimera by Albert Estrada Zambrano, Shadowland Games, Boxed  Game Set with 212-page hardbound volume plus handouts, 2025, Kickstarter. The content of this one is really tough to talk about without providing clues and spoilers. Action takes place in a country estate where ... well, spoilers. There's a lot going on here, and a lot of background information. The set is a deluxe box containing huge hardbound book in addition to a collection of handouts (which is good, since handouts tend to go to the four winds in my office. Its a lot of material for a scenario they say should run only 4 hours or so, but it is very well presented.

And the winner of the Three Castles Award is: Nebulith, which does not surprise me. It got the most points (yes, out judging had numerous subcategories which had point totals) by a larger-than-usual margin. It is worth hunting down, particularly if you are interested in Asian-themed RPGs.

More later, 

Book: Sunny Daze

 Sunward by William Alexander, Saga Press (Simon & Schuster), 2025

Provenance: I sat with the author on a panel at NorWesCon, and was impressed with what he had to say. His book was a nominee for the Phillip K, Dick award, awarded at that convention. So after the panel I went down and purchased a copy from a booth that was selling all the PKD nominees. So this is the writer's version of a three-cushion bank shot as far as selling your book.

Review: Tova Lir is a courier, running private messages and packages through the solar system. As a side gig, she adopts baby bots - AIs which need a physical housing for the first year or so to establish a sense of self. She's independent (one of her moms runs the moon), and not an achiever. She and her latest baby bot encounters another courier's ship, the courier within it dead. The bot is badly damaged. And now she's a target of assassins as she attempts to get her adopted 'bot repaired at the same time as robots as suspected of being responsible for a terrorist action on the moon. Yes, its a lot for a relatively slender book, but it moves along at a brisk clip.

One thing I like about the book is the "whys" - the worldbuilding that is underneath it. Newly-fashioned bots are housed in physical bodies because their intellects can be swept away by the huge amount of data out there (the allegory is to swimming too far out from shore). Couriers are used because all information over the net is public. Civilization is outside Earth because earth's climate is one of continual storms due to climate change. And a cult of humans sends their dead into the sun in great graveyard armadas. It is a weird future, but a well-reasoned one.

It surprises me is that, while SF has a huge number of subgenres, there is nothing for this type of adventure - the Earth off-limits for some reason, and humanity survives in space. John Varley's Eight Worlds stories, Bruce Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist wars, Charles Stross's Accelerando with its Vile Offspring. All of them moved the center of humanity out, not to stars, but to the further planets. I don't know what to call it - Post-Terran SF? Solarpunk? Human Diaspora? Somebody probably has a better name. 

Alexander's language is clear and straight-forward in this weird world. The author comes out of writing books for young people, and it shows in his plotting and presentation. Tova Lit is an engaging, motivated hero who is putting the band back together (in the form of her former adopted 'bots) to save one of their own. 

It's a good story, and no, it didn't win the PKD Award. Still worth checking out.

More later,

Recent Arrivals: Conventional Wisdom

I'm not a gaming addict! I'm an enthusiast!

 So, in the past few months I've attended not one but two conventions. That's a rarity because I don't like to travel. But I only really had to travel for one of them.

Gary Con in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is a celebration of the life and works of Gary Gygax, and is situated in the Grand Geneva Lodge on the outskirts of town (formerly the Playboy Resort). It's a great, small, old-school convention, and gives me a chance to see old friends who live in the area and/or attended. I really like it.

NorWesCon in Seatac, by the airport, just across the valley from Grubb Street, is a premiere SF convention. I don't fit as neatly into the SF community as I do into the gaming universe, but if they invite me (and provide parking) I'm happy to show up. Really good panels, good company, and good discussions.

Anyway, as a result of all this, I have another huge honking load of games that I've acquired. Some are convention purchases. Some are things that I've not found elsewhere. Some are gifts. Some are fulfillments of Kickstarters. I'm going to TRY to be brief on this, skimming over them, but here goes (spoilers: I fail in this in a major fashion, do buckle up). Here goes:

Black Flies by Jordan Dube, Goosepoop Games, 52-page saddle stitched booklet, 2026, Kickstarter. So the spouse of a co-worker worked on this one, so when it popped up, I took a chance on it. It is a non-standard format (opens vertically as opposed to horizontally, like a small calendar) and a non-standard game format in that it lacks a "GM" in the traditional sense (it does have a "Facilitator" in that someone has to know the rules). You're a group of cultists working together to immanentize the eschaton (fulfill the bidding of an Elder God) while having your own goals enhanced without letting the other players catching on. I've been in meetings like this.

Elemental Storm Free Adventure by Michael Putlack et al, Roll For Combat, 12-page digest-sized saddle stitched, 2026, Gary Con (Shadowdark booth). The folks at Shadowdark have been OGLing their game in such a fashion that other groups have been making their own materials for the game. This one is from Roll for Combat, which has been doing monster books for Pathfinder and D&D, and has a Kickstarter out with three volumes of critters. This particular pamphlet has a handful of critters from the book and a short adventure. 

Secret of the Skullhead Key by Jon Hage, Sleeping Giant Games, 56-page digest-sized softbound, 2025, Gary Con. Sleeping Giant's Woven Worlds products were wonderfully-presented products, and this is no different. It's a shortish 5E adventure where the heroes search for the aforementioned Skullhead Key. And of course others are looking for it as well. Closes up the adventure by saying it can be used as a prequel to their Hamil's House of Oddities, so think of this as a prequel. There are a couple games I call out for their elegant simplicity in their layout, and this is one of them.

Down Among The Dead by Luke Stratton, Limithron, 146-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Gary Con, and Leviathan, Christian Eichhorn, 46-page digest-sized saddle stitched, 2025 Gary Con (Limithron booth). Of the Mork Borg family of games (pronounce Murk Bori, but no one does in North America), Pirate Borg is a favorite. While both the original and this volume are descendants of the original Mork Borg, they lean more towards the informational as opposed to the artistic. It has a lot of the same graphic characteristics as MB (variety of fonts, different page layouts and colors), but does not go overboard. Anyway, Down Among the Dead delves further to the eldritch horror side of the high seas in a William Hope Hodgson way, with Deep Ones, vampire-crewed ships, and Davy Jones Locker (For what happens after you drown). Leviathan treads some of that same territory from a different designer, in a hexcrawl oozing with mythos and the rise of the Kraken God. This one will require a more patient reading, since it embraces the chaotic art graphic nature of Mork Borg (yeah, I'm going to sound like an grognard here, but black on yellow type is a pain for these old eyes). 

Cosmic Dark by Graham Walmsley, Thieves of Time, 192-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Kickstarter. Weird horror in space. This was a whim purchase, and it looks real interesting. It forgoes the traditional character creation mini-game, in which  you have to figure out who you are, what your ethos is, and and what trinket you have before moving into the first room of the dungeon. Instead, it throws us In media res, dropping down on an asteroid in a shuttle. What are your skills? Where are you from? What is your relationship to the other character? We're going to fill in over the course of the first adventure as we go along. It's an interesting approach to starting a game. The adventure itself is weird (strange stuff) and SF (other planets) and horror (think Alien exploring the ship before the xenomorph gets loose). Looks very intriguing. 

Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, Burning Wheel, 408-page digest-sized softbound, 20212, NorWesCon (Around the Table booth). So at NorWesCon I sat on a panel on Indie versus Trad games, and it was very good and gave me a lot to think about. And one of the games that came up was Dungeon World, which I then purchased from Around the Table (a Lynnwood shop) in the dealer's area. This one of the early Powered by the Apocalypse games, and it's about time I did a dig into it. The book itself is larger than most of the more recent PbtA games, but that makes sense given the larger scope it seems to entail (lotta spells and creatures).

Tower of Gygax by Diverse Hands, 44-page saddle-stitched book, Gary Con, 2026. Every year at Gary Con, Curtis Cable, Josh Popp, and their posse run a continual game at the end of one of the hallways at the Grand Geneva. Eight players at a time, rotating DMs pulled from experienced game masters and recruited old guys (that's where I come in), a grab-bag full of encounters. And they collect those encounters into a booklet for the DMs to work off of. It's a nice little collection. 

Bayt Al Azif issues 4, 5, and 6, Edited by Jared Smith, 103- to 124 page squarebound magazines, 2022-2025, Amazon. I picked up 1, 2, and 3 a while back. Time passes, and I noticed that three more issues have come out. And these are nice, thick magazines that have articles on mythos subjects (like a tour of the mythos solar system), interviews, histories of the various Cthulhoid publishers, adventures (Pirates, Madrid in the 2nd of May uprising (1808)) and a lot of updates of what the various publishers have been working on since the last issue, which is good for making folk aware of what's out there. The site for the magazine is here.

Madness at Geneva Lake by Luke Gygax and Alyssa Faden, Gygax Ink,68-page squarebound, 2025, Gary Con (Gary Con Merch). Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is a perfect place for Call of Cthulhu and other eldritch horrors. We have sanitariums, old buildings, lake monsters, a nearby observatory, rich people's mansions, sunken steam ships, a statue of a comic-page character near a gazebo, and a former quirky RPG company. I used the town as inspiration for my game of Brindlewood Bay. Gygax and Faden use the sanitariums and the fate of the Lucius Newberry (a steamship that was raised from its watery grave by TSR, but that's another tale). Looking forward to running this one. 

Full Speed Ahead by Larry Larkin, 228 page hardbound, 2020, Lake Geneva Museum. And tied into the previous entry, I picked up a book on all the big lake ships that Lake Geneva hosted over the years. The Lake Geneva Museum is based in the old electric plant at the outlet of the lake into the White River. The museum has a nice display for TSR covering its early history, and a large area of all things Lake Geneva. This sort of local history has a lot of promise for adventures. Oh, right, the book! I love this volume, which goes into detail of the various steamships that made Lake Geneva their home (including the Lucius Newberry) along with profuse illustrations and photos. It would be great source material for a Call of Cthulhu game. Oh, wait, someone has already done that. 

Mystified! by Fleur and Chelsea Sciortino, The Wanderer's Tome, 152-page hardbound, 2025, Kickstarter. This is an expansion for Flabbergasted, one of those favorite games that I may never truly play - a Wodehousian romp of societal foibles and slamming doors. Mystified! takes it in the direction of the cozy mystery, with some more applicable character classes for the genre, as well as a small town and a foreign port of entry. I really like the presentation and art on this, and want to take the mechanics itself out for a spin. 

The Faerie Ring: Along the Twisting Way Campaign Guide, Scott Gable et al, Zombie Sky Press, 334-Hardbound, 2018, NorWesCon (gift of the publisher) Many years ago I wrote a forward for this book, and while I did get a pdf copy, I never got the print copy. Ran into Scott Gable at NorWesCon and he gave me a hard copy. It has taken D&D along time to get around to the Fey Folk - we had a scattering of monsters in 1st edition, then packed them off to Arvandor in the 2nd, Then made Faerie a parallel material plane in 3rd before finally settling on the Feywild as a separate entity in 4th. In this volume we see the Preternatural Planes as a large, encompassing plane with a wide variety of creatures and lords, which are detailed within. The designer mentioned getting back into game design, and, given the strengths of this product, I hope he does. 

Wildspace Magazine Issue 5: It Came from Beyond the Moons, edited by David Shepheard, The Piazza, 80-page saddle stitched magazine, 2026, Gary Con (gift of the publisher). One of things that amazes and delights me are that games and settings I wrote half a billion years ago still have enthusiastic fans who are creating new material. Case in point: Wildspace Magazine for Spelljammer, which has had a lifespan far beyond its life as an official setting. And their creators always manage to get a copy of the latest into my hands at Gary Con (Thanks, folks!). This thick, glossy magazine  has new ships, new crystal spheres, new ways to handle situations in space, and (to my surprise) has an article by DRAGON magazine editor Roger E. Moore on dealing with Fireworlds in a universe of combustible phlogiston. Ah, this is great. 

Coriolis: The Great Dark by Kosta Kostulas, Nils Karlen, and Martin Grip, Free League, 308-page hardbound, 2025, Kickstarter fulfilled at Gary Con, 2025. So I kickstarted this, but I must have missed a memo somewhere, because I never got a copy when it fulfilled. Fortunately, when I was at Gary Con, Free League had a booth and handed over a copy of this and Flowers of Algorab, and ticked my name of the the "too be delivered" list. And let me be clear - Free League produces some of the most beautiful RPG volumes today. And this one, a descendent of an earlier Coriolis product from 200 in-game years before, has more than just a touch of Spelljammer to it, based on a central hub (Ship City instead of the Rock of Bral) and tasks the players with exploring out a hostile and unknown universe. Like I said, beautiful appearance, exciting universe. 

Coriolis: The Flowers of Algorab by Kosta Kostulas, Nils Karlen, and Martin Grip, Boxed setting: 192-page squarebound book,  40-page saddle stitched booklet, Counter shield, 9 map sheets of various types, Counter sheet, 12 dice, card deck, 2025 This is a boxed set adventure for the Coriolis game, sending the explorers out into the wild. The set include cards and customized dice, though regular dice can be used, a thick adventure book, and a summary book for the players. OK, let's see what's in there. 

Mythic Carpathia by Johan Egerkrans and diverse writers, Free League 136-page hardbound, map, Gary Con (Free League Booth), 2025 I mentioned that  Free League makes some beautiful books, right? This is one of them. The initial Vaasen was made for a Scandinavian setting, but this volume sends us across Europe to the Carpathian mountains of Central Europe. So we're talking about vampirs, golems, and Baba Yaga in a campaign based out of  Prague. It looks beautiful and fitting to the era it takes place. My only gripe is that I need a pronunciation guide to wrap my lips around some of the monster names. 

The Sutra of the Pale Leaves: Carcosa Manifest, by Demon Lang, Andrew Logan Montgomery, Jason Sheets, and Yukihiro Terada, Chaosium,192-page hardbound, 2025. This is the second of two-volume set dealing with the King in Yellow invading 1980s Japan. This summarizes the Cthulhu rules in Japan in the earlier book, then launches into 4 additional adventures that can either be run separately or as part of a larger campaign. I don't know if I going to run this one, but it looks nicely meaty (and I have a couple colleagues who spent time in Japan teaching English, so I'd be interested in seeing how their experiences line up).

The Kingdom of Keshanar: Sourcebook for the World of Orthane, Volume 1: Keshanar by David Hadden, Orthane Productions, 512-page hardbound, 2026. This is a heavyweight. I Kickstarted it but got a signed copy early at Gary Con since they had a booth there. This and the Coriolis put my luggage at a scale-tipping 49 lbs. This is a massive tome showcases the Mythical Cairo equivalent with pyramids, sphinx monuments, and floating monoliths. The setting is heavily dominated by its meddling gods, such that NPCs are identified by which god they venerate. It's a major, epic work, and may be ultimate statement on an ancient Egyptian campaign.

Tour De Lovecraft: The Destinations by Kenneth Hite, Atomic Overmind Press, 318-page hardbound, 2021. I purchased this at a booth at NorWesCon that was selling t-shirts and Cthulhian hot sauce. I had picked up the first volume (The Stories) years ago, and what sure that I still had it on my shelves at home. Of course, I no longer had it, so I resolved to pick up another copy the next day, only to discover that it had sold out. Anyway, the book is a incredibly nice journey through the Lovecraftian atlas. Lovecraft has the rep for being a friendless, lonely recluse, but actually he was fairly well-traveled, kept a lively correspondence with other writers, and had an interest in such alien landscapes as Antarctica, the Dreamlands, Ancient Egypt, and Vermont. Hite lines up Lovecraft's journeys with his publication timeline to show how his interests evolved over time. Eminently browsable. Now I have to track down the first volume.

Dice: Fanged Smileys, Gary Con, Black Oak Workshop, Gift of Lester Smith, and Official Gary Con Dice, Gary Con Merch Booth. As a guest, I got a couple tokens to spend at the Gary Con Merch Booth. But no change would be given, so after purchasing the Cthulhu adventure above, I picked up a set of logo dice with the change. The fanged smiley is a trademark of designer Lester Smith, and being Lester, of course, he included a minigame with the dice. Cool beans. 

TSR Alumni Souvenir, put together by Tim (Ollie) Calhoun, Gary Con. One of the highpoints of Gary Con is the TSR Alumni gathering, which is [redacted time] at [redacted location]. A lot of the old TSRites who live in the area show up, including ones that are not attending the convention itself. It's a great chance to connect and reflect with people I worked with 30+ years ago. Ollie had in the past had drink tokens made with poker chips, and not everyone used theirs in order to keep them as souvenirs. So he had a souvenir version made with leftovers from the previous year. Which in my case now rests over my desk, next to my Wizkids Galactus that I worked on and my "Another One of Jim Ward's Many Victims" button. Thanks, Ollie.  

Gary Con XVIII notebook and pen: Because you can always use another lined notebook. 

OK, that's it. I've spent too long going through this, and may have finally hit gaming tsundoku. I have enough books and games to spend several months just going through them and absorbing their rules, examining their potentials and maybe even running a few of them. So I don't need any more games at the mome...

Hang on, there's another delivery at the door. More later,

Theatre: Family Drama

 Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Directed by Timothy McCuen Piggee, Seattle Rep through May 10.

This one was a very split decision. The Lovely Bride really liked it. Me? Not so much. So let's discuss.

Here's what happens on the stage. Three grown children return to the ancestral manse, an Arkansas plantation that had been in the family for generations. The father, a respected judge, returned there twenty years ago with the goal of turning it into a B&B, but that never happened, and it turned into a hoarders paradise of his old stuff. Dad died, and all the kids return to the house with their families. And among the hoard they discover their father left a secret legacy - a photo album of graphic lynchings of African-Americans. 

This sort of discovery is a challenge to a family, and none of the three kids are particularly capable of handling it. Eldest son Bo (Tim Gouran), has been living in New York forever with his wife and two kids. Toni (Jen Taylor), the only daughter, was left with raising the youngest, Frank (Billy Finn), and caretaking dad in his decline - she's now divorced, unemployed, and on the outs with her teenage son. Frank fell into addiction and fled the region after a terrible crime, and has not been heard from in a decade. At the outset of the play, Frank breaks into the house with his fiancé, a young new-agey Portlandite named River (Sophie Kelly-Hedrick). Both sons have come home for their own reasons - Bo wants to settle the family fortune and move on. Frank has been twelve-stepping his recovery and seeks forgiveness from those he offended. 

But Toni is at the heart of all this - abandoned, divorced and unemployed, she's badly broken, and as a result lashes out at everyone and everything, hurting others before she can get hurt. Getting in the first punch. Relationships are to be confrontations, words are to be weaponized, and old wounds need to bleed anew. She's a very nasty piece of work, but the play gets deeply into why she's that way. Bo and Frank, regardless of their intentions, are little better. They are all, in the words of Bo's increasingly frantic wife, Rachel (Angela DiMarco), "assholes".

And, spoilers? None of them are going to get what they want. Things start bad and get worse. No redemption is offered, no lessons are learned.

This is the sort of play that I should like. All of the actors are local and have shown up in other shows. They're good. It's a full three-act play. It had a good-sized cast. The direction takes full advantage of the expansive, multi-level stage. It won awards from the learned critics. But here's the thing:

The characters are not particularly sympathetic - Toni is all thorns and elbows from the get-go, arguing about small matters (like who gets to sleep where) and throwing conversational bombs as she escalates. She starts at 11 and just goes upwards from there.  The LB has known a lot of women like Toni, and strongly engaged with the character. I was more put off. The squabbling is continual, and as a result I was spending several hours watching a dysfunctional family face a crisis and failing utterly. I can understand where all the characters are coming from, and in fact each one gets an extensive monolog where they are trying to tie their personal situation into larger issues. But I don't feel much empathy with them, nor do I take any enjoyment from their travails and failures. 

There are humous bits here to try to take the edge off. The LB laughed at a number of spots, but I found the humor to mostly cringe-worthy. Embarrassment humor is tough to pull off, and all the characters are guilty, but no one so much to have failed so badly. It feels like Tennessee Williams with cell phones, Edward Albee with the Internet, Eugene O'Neil on E-bay. Modernized but with the same core conflicts and no good way out. And I don't think it pulls it off, sadly.

The stage is impressive, piling the house with junk and old art staring down from the walls. Yet again, the denouement of the play is pure stagecraft, and feels overdone and excessive, dwarfing the human heartbreak that has come before. But on the positive side, the house feels like the remains of a life, a legacy that no one presents seems to know what to do with.

And with that half-hearted praise, this takes us to the end of the Rep's season. The Play that Goes Wrong and Come From Away were good touring companies with excellent production. Here There are Blueberries was the best and scariest of the season. Fancy Dancer and Mary Jane and The Heart Sellers were all smaller and all good for what they were saying. So I'm going to call it a good season and good collection of plays. Onwards and upwards. 

And for me? More later.

Play: Final Frontiers

 Walden by Amy Berryman, Directed by Mathew Wright

When the Lovely Bride and I attend theater at Arts West in West Seattle, we often have dinner at our favorite expensive sushi place, Mashiko. As such we've become semi-regulars, and the staff recognizes us, so much so that they know not to put a cucumber slice in the LB's waterglass. 

And I was talking to one of the staff yesterday, and he asked if we were doing a play that evening. 

"Yes," I replied.

"What's it called?" he asked.

"Walden," I responded.

"It's about Thoreau? he asked.

"I don't know," I admitted, "I go into these things blind."

I was a little embarrassed to admit that I don't usually "prep" for a play, but I'm glad I responded truthfully. Because saying "It's about astronaut sisters in an apocalyptic future" might be both a bit off-putting and misleading.

But that's what it is about. And about family, the past, choices, and the future. 

OK, here's the deal. We're in the not-too-distant-future, and the world is in the grips of an unevenly-distributed apocalypse. News reports tell of mega-tsunamis, climate collapse, millions dead and more turned into refugees. Stella (Porcha Shaw) and Cassie (Marena Kleinpeter) are astronaut/scientists. Stella washed out of the program after some brilliant initial designs. Cassie has spent the past year on the Moon, and is now heading to Mars. After she left the program, Stella retreated inland to a small self-supporting community of EAs (Earth Advocates) who reject the modern technology that is killing the planet. She fell in love with Bryan (Josh Kenji Langager), an EA going through his own pain. And, after some time of silence between the sisters, Cassie comes to visit. 

And that's where we start. Shaw's Stella is both wounded and majestic. Kleinpeter's Cassie is nervous and rational by turns. Their characters are both seeking to understand where their lives are going and what remains of their familial bond. Their past haunts them and the uncertain future yawns before them. And Langager's Bryan is goofy, good-natured, and kindhearted, trying to help but not knowing how. His character is a little bit of brilliant, in that he opposes the technology that Cassie and Stella have embodied, but does so in a positive way. This play could have been polemic, instead it is deeply personal. It's a really good play, backed by excellent performances.

And let me give a shout-out to the set design as well, as the play is set on the deck outside Bryan and Stella's scratch-built cabin, surrounded by plants, backed by stars. Very much an Edenic home. The sound design, with news reports of the collapse outside (never specific, always generalized) contrasts with this peace perfectly.

Science fiction on the stage is tough, because SF is a genre of big ideas and big actions, while the theater always seeks to exceed the edges of the stage. Yet by distilling this down to the personal level, Walden makes it all come alive. And yeah, Thoreau pops up a couple times, both from the sisters' father quoting it, the name of one of Stella's projects, and the very idea of "Living deliberately". This is one that's worth seeing.

And of course, the evening that we saw it was the evening that the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission splashed down off the coast of San Diego. So there's a bit of historical irony in the evening as well.

More later,