The Political Desk: Our Boring Local Elections

I don't have much to say about the State Senators and Representatives races, because there isn't much of a race going on here. Grubb Street is located in Legislative District No. 11. The district curls around the southern end of Lake Washington, and represents most of Renton and chunk of Kent. We're in the lower right-hand corner of this ornate, crenelated district.

And we're kinda boring this time out. Our State Senator, Bob Hasegawa, is running unopposed, as is our State Representative Position No. 1, David Hackney. Lucky for us that they're good at their jobs. For Position #2, we have two candidates who are guaranteed to go on - Incumbent Dave Berquist and Libertarian Justin Greywolf. And I favor Dave Berquist in this one, but I do note that we have 28 people running for Governor, 24 of which are not going to get more than 1% of the vote. It is almost like most of the gubernatorial candidates are about sending in their resume to the largest number of people, and fewer want the experience and responsibility of smaller job.

And for the city of Kent? Nothing. Nada. Zip. OK, I can live with that. We've got enough on our plates right now. 

More later, 

The Political Desk: The Rest of the State

 The entire State Government Executive Branch comes up for election this year. Here's what we got:

Lt. Governor: This role oversees the State Senate, breaks ties, and fills in for the Governor when he's out of town. While not overly powerful, it is probably one of the more colorful offices in the state, and its primary requirements are to not blow things up and not embarrass the voters. And we have had a spate of excellent Lt. Governors, even though the bar may seem low. The current one, Denny Heck, had an original campaign slogan ("Give Olympia Heck!") and has failed to blow things up or get himself immersed in scandal. This is job interview - he's fine. His likely competition is Dan Matthews, who is a bag of Trumpian dog-whistles. So yeah, Denny Heck.

Secretary of State is responsible for overseeing the elections, and I am very much in favor of Steve Hobbs, for no other reason that he plays table-top RPGs. He's been very supportive of D&D and the tabletop industry which is kinda a big deal out here, to the point of accompanying a trade delegation to Japan with some colleagues of mine. But that same favoritism also makes me look harder at what he's done in his time in office, and, yeah, he's actually a worthy successor to Kim Wyman in protecting our elections. Good job, Steve.

Attorney General: Nick Brown has copped endorsements from both the Times and the Stranger, and has the qualifications as a US District Attorney as well as a deep knowledge of navigating state law. Manka Dingra comes out of the criminal prosecutions, which is also excellent, and I would look forward to having the make the decision between the two in November. For the moment, go with Nick Brown. 

State Treasurer: Handles the money. Two candidates, so you'll be seeing them again. I lean towards Mike Pellicciotti. He's the incumbent, and has kept his domain scandal-free while pushing for more transparency. Not bade.

State Auditor: Keeps an eye on the folks handling the money. Again, two candidates, so you'll get Deja Vu when we hit November. I prefer the incumbent, Pat (Patrice) McCarthy. Actually, both these positions of Auditor and Treasurer are so boring (and so fore-gone) that none of the major news sources have weighed in on them. Really?

Commissioner of Public Lands: This position oversees our state forests, and concerns a lot about lumbering and wildfires. A lot of candidates here, but two stand out. Department of Natural Resources Director Patrick DePoe gets the Times' nod, while former (local) legislator Dave Upthegrove has ability dealing the legislature (plus, cool name for taking care of trees). I'd like see both of them on the ballot, but for the moment, I think Patrick DePoe will do an excellent job. 

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Chris Reydal is the incumbent. Has been doing a good job. Yeah, let's keep him.

Insurance Commissioner: Does what it says on the tin - oversees our sprawling insurance industry. Mike Kriedler has held the position for years, but is stepping down after it was revealed he wasn't particularly good to his employees. That's the thing about elections - you screw up, you lose your job. Refreshing, isn't it? Patty Kuderer comes out of the legislature, is pro-renter, pro-single-player healthcare, pro-consumer. Her chief opposition is a self-declared progressive but fundraises and votes Republican. OK, then. 

And that fills out the State Executive Positions. Yeah, I'm blowing through them at a good clip. More later. 

The Political Desk: Guv'nor

 There are 28 candidates on the ballot for Governor of Washington State. Of them, there are four that have any sense of support. Of those, it will be former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert versus Attorney General Bob Ferguson in the Finals. I'm calling it here.

Bob Ferguson has been a big noise for the past decade, an aggressive legal voice who has been fighting against corporate malfeasance and Trumpian nonsense. He's got the funding, the endorsements, and the attention. And yeah, he's got the proven competence to be Governor.

Mark Mullet, the other recognized Democrat, is frustrating. A moderate, he's got a good provenance as well (State Senator for a decade), as well as ground-level endorsements (local mayors, firefighters), but has just flamed out as far as the campaign is concerned. But, if you hate Ferguson, Mullet is a good alternative, and I would be very comfortable with a battle between the two in November. Such is unlikely, sadly.

Dave Reichert should also be doing better, though it is likely that he will be Ferguson's competition in the Big Show due to name recognition from his time as King County Sheriff a couple decades back (Yeah, I know, everyone is OLD. It's thing). But, he failed to get the endorsement of both his own party and of the Seattle Times, which has traditionally been in the tank for him. It seems that he was saying one thing to the Times in interviews, and something completely different to his supporters on the other side of the Cascades. Apparently they didn't like that much.

Semi Bird DID get the official GOP endorsement, and does embrace the Trumpian nonsense. He lost his job as a school board commissioner for opposing mask updates in a recall election, and in the GOP tradition has been failing upwards ever since. He also never mentioned he had an ancient criminal record (misdemeanor bank larceny, thirty years ago), which makes him a typical Republican candidate .

And the rest. As elsewhere, some are perennials, some are well-intentioned newcomers, some are single-issue candidates seeking to front their particular concerns/grind their proverbial axes. And there was some hijinks, in that a Republican operative went out and found some OTHER Bob Fergusons to run for office, in hopes of confusing the issue. And then bragged about it publicly. When it was pointed out that this was specifically a felony, his chosen candidates dropped out, and the GOP weasels complained about how unfair the system was that wouldn't let them cheat.

So yeah, Bob Ferguson for Governor.

More later, 

The Political Desk: National Offices

 Let's start at the top - US Senator and House of Representatives. Like the rest of the country, we get two Senators, and one is up for re-election. Our neck of the woods for the US House is District 9, a narrow district straddling Lake Washington with bits of Seattle and Bellevue, and running south to Federal Way.

Senator: Maria Cantwell has been our junior senator for 24 years now, and is still chugging away. She's one of the engines behind the CHIPS act that kept semiconductor jobs here in the US. Yeah, wonky stuff, but still effective. The other candidates on the list make it a point of pride to not have held a previously elected office, and run the gamut from the well-meaning to the regular also-rans to the ones desiring a soapbox (which is cool, since the bulk of them are underfunded, such that the Voters' Guide is the only place they can reach out). Her likely opposition is Dr. Raul Garcia who is ... not horrible in Republican terms. But yeah, Maria Cantwell for Senator.

US Representative: Adam Smith has been serving in Washington for longer than Ms. Cantwell, and has experience and incumbency on his side. Usually he emerges from these primaries with a conservative talk-show host challenging from the right and cruises to re-election. But this time, there is a viable and more liberal candidate available in Melissa Chaudry, who wowed the Stranger board with her depth and width of knowledge and proposals, and even got good marks from the Seattle Times.  Downside? She's light in elected experience. Smith, though, was one of the ones pushing for Biden step aside because of his age, a bold stance for someone approaching 60. So for the Primary, check out Melissa Chaudry.

More later, 

The Political Desk: The Primary Is Upon Us

 August 6th will be the Washington State Primary, and it will be a big one. We have a US Senator, US Rep, Various members of the State House, Governor, and the entire executive wing of the state government up for grabs. That's a lot. 

Making matters more complex, Washington State has a top-two election strategy. That depowers (somewhat) the traditional political parties, in that we have a general scrum of the position, and the top two-vote-getters, regardless of allegiance, go on to the main event in November.

It's not a bad system, but like all systems, it can be gamed. Assume you have two Republican candidates and four Democratic candidates vying for a particular office. Say that Dems and GOPs are split evenly. and each candidate gets an even share of their side. So your four Democrats get 12.5% of the vote, and the two Repubs get 25%. So you can end up with two Republican candidates on the final ballot. This sort of thing has happened in the past, and can happen again. 

Also, you the candidate can declare your party own allegiance (referred to as "Preference") as you the candidate sees fit. So we usually have a party-approved candidate and not party-approved candidates flying under the same banner, and occasionally people sailing under false flags. You can also create your own party, so we see a lot of ... creative ... names for parties over the years. There is a lot of potential for shenanigans here, but more of that when we get to the Governor's race.

Two large matters loom over this primary which are not on the ballot. One is a set of cynical initiatives launched by some conservatives to help their main investors (the wealthy) at the expense of everybody else (that would be you). These initiatives are not on the ballot, but will be there in the fall. For the moment, we can put it aside, but the prime reason for these initiatives is to get out the vote on the conservative side, in hopes of it helping more conservative candidates. 

The other large matter is the Presidential race. At the time of this writing, the ballot will be most likely Vice President Kamala Harris versus Former President/Convicted Felon Trump. The former is taking over for President Biden due to inner party doubts about his age and health. The latter also has concerns about age and health, and in addition is an anchor around the neck of every Republican candidate, since they can endorse Trump and have people laugh at them every time they say "Law and Order", or they can distance themselves from Trump and  have the right-wing chunk of the party turn on them. Or they can be vewy, vewy quiet, which seems to be the course in general. Yet that's going to have an impact of this vote as well.

The Washington State Voter's Guide for King County is here. The Seattle Times has been doing its due diligence here, and has surprisingly swung more liberal/center than normal. The Stranger has grumped its way through the candidates, disappointed that they don't check all their required boxes. The Urbanist, talks about a lot of races I don't cover here, and refuses to recommend any candidate that did not meet with them (which is fair). The Cascade Advocate (a progressive blog) has an article comparing The Stranger and Times lists, and finds that they mostly agree. The Washington State Standard summarizes some of the races here, but does not make specific recommendations. Voting for Judges and the Municipal League sites, previously good places for info, are now shut down and available from GoDaddy.

Since this is a top-two primary system, I will be sometimes mentioning a second-choice as well. The Political Desk tends to lean left, but ultimately I want competent people in office. Elections are not a beauty contest or a two-team game, though there are components of both those things. It's a job interview - yeah, imagine that you have to re-interview for YOUR job every two/four/six years.   

Usually, I do a deep dive on these, giving even the minor candidates their time in the spotlight. This time, not so much. I've got a convention looming at the end of the month (GenCon) and don't have much time to savor the races. Some races are pretty obvious, some are going to very interesting. So when you hear the bell, turn over your papers and begin. 

More later,

Book: Which King? That King!

 Witch King by Martha Wells, Tordotcom, 2023

Provenance: Christmas gift from the Lovely Bride. She also got me a copy of the latest Murderbot book, by the same author, but I went with this one first. And while I have a lot of other books in the reviewing queue, I thought to jump this one forward while it is still fresh in my mind.

Review: This was a very enjoyable, challenging and rewarding read. It is a fantasy novel, but it bends (but not breaks) a lot of the traditional tropes, creating a distinct world and and engaging story. I'll admit, this was the bedside book for several months, and was put aside three times due to its complexity, but always lured me back.

The story is told in two parts, a present and flashback. Kaiisteron, Prince of the Fourth House, is a demon, a otherworldly race that takes over the recently deceased to live in this world. In the past narrative, his plains-dwelling adopting people were overrun by powerful invaders, the Hierarchs, and he was taken prisoner. The story there is his escape of bondage how he helped create a rebellion. In the present, some 60 years later, the Hierarchs have been defeated and a new empire is rising, Kai awakens from being imprisoned again by persons unknown, alongside Zeide Daiyahah, a Witch. In order to figure out what is going on, the two need to find Zeide's wife, who is a Marshall of the Blessed Lands, and has also vanished without a trace.

That's about as organized as I can make it. Wells has created a world with extremely diverse peoples and types of magic. The demons can drain life, and Kai learns to transfer between bodies as well. Witches are the progeny of Demon/Mortal mating, and have elemental powers. The Blessed are angelic figures pulling from a central power core for their spells.  And the conquering Hierarchs use as similar central well of power, but pull from death magic. And that's pretty much the reason for invasion, which eliminates a host of unique cultures, and gives them more power from their deaths. 

Kai is our viewpoint character, in that we only learn about the world through him, and he shares only as much as he needs to. There is not a lot of exposition here - no explanation of a timeline, no lecture on how the world came to be, no moment when one character turns to another and say "As you know ...". There is a list of Dramatis Personae at the front of the book, a needed tool since there are a large number of allies and enemies for Kai and Zeide. And there is a map, is a bit more perfunctory than your standard issue fantasy, giving me general locations with a lot of space in between.  

And we are dealing with two Kais, here. In the past, Kai is swept up by the Hierarchs' assault. In the present, the Hierarchs have been overthrown and a new Rising World coalition has formed, verging on becoming its own empire. But you have to put that together, and that requires a bit more from the readers than your standard fantasy. Even the intro italicized excerpts from in-world histories fronting the chapters makes little sense in and of themselves, and only when I finished the book did I go back and re-read those sections, just to get a handle on what the world-building was. Wells shows and not tells, and what she shows is often colored by Kai' viewpoints in the two eras.

And there are two eras to Kai's personality as well. Past-Kai is a junior demon coming to terms with his role among his people, and as such more innocent. Present-Kai has lived through an empire's rise and its fall and is much more cynical and untrusting. You can see how the character had grown (and been harmed) over the interim. And it is not impenetrable as, say, aGene Wolfe novel but it takes some awareness to understand.

Magic is similarly not explained, but demonstrated. Spells are intentions, magicians are expositors, constructs are amalgams or chimera. Its more than just a renaming, but rather a reconfiguring of traditional tropes, and you the reader are expected to keep up. 

AND Wells turns a couple fantasy-tropes upside down, literally such as when Kai talks about the Top of the World being the south pole. Pale-skinned folk come from the colder southern islands. There are a lot of matriarchies, which are not presented as exceptions but as norms. Gender preference and identity is fluid. Women in Kai's orbit are the majority, not the token minority. 

And, all this works. Wells is fantastic writer who has created an involved world with a complex story to it. She skips of the epic bits - how the Hierarchs specifically captured Kai, and how the new alliance drives out the Hierarchs. It concentrates on the important bits for Kai - survival in the past, and discovery of a conspiracy in the present. As I said, I put the book aside several time, but each time I re-engaged, I found myself swept up in it. 

This one is up for a Hugo, and yeah, I can see that. It is a doorstop fantasy novel, and I am relieved to know that it is (currently) only a solitaire. While I really like Wells' shorter, more contained works, the presentation of world and the flow of the narration is excellent, and I would not be surprised if it took the award this year.

But yes, it does put demands on you, the reader. And it rewards them. 

More later. 

Theatre: Season's End

 Clyde's by Lynn Nottage, Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Arts West, June 6-30, 2024

Jinkx Monsoon & Major Scales Together Again, Again! Created by Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales, Original Music by Major Scales. Seattle Rep, 31 May-23 June,2024

The Lovely Bride (herein known as the LB) and I have season tickets to local theatres Arts West and the Seattle Rep, but rarely do the stars align such that we have plays at both the same weekend. On this particular sunny Seattle weekend, we did, and so the entire weekend became theatrical in nature. And eating. Lots of eating.

Friday we set out for West Seattle on the far side of the industrialized Duwamish river for dinner and show. The dinner was at the Phoenicia, our go-to place in good weather as we like to eat on the patio outside. They know us there by now - we're the older couple that orders way-too-many small plates and defeats the lot of them. Olives, pita, hummus, burrata, manila clams, green beans and lamb chop lollypops. Baklava to go. This time, for once, there was no parking weirdness. 

On to the play. Clyde's is a truck stop restaurant on the off-ramp to purgatory run by Clyde (Tracy Michelle Hughes), literally the boss from hell, who torments a kitchen crew of ex-cons that no one else will hire. The kitchen staff in return have banded together into a demi-family who trade fantasies of sandwich combinations and try to create that perfect bite. Montie (Reginald Andre-Jackson, last seen tearing up the stage in the Rep's Fat Ham) is the zen master of sandwiches, and the only one who doesn't seem afraid of Clyde. Rafael (Jacob Alcazar) is the acolyte, seeking to learn from the master. Tisha (Deja Culver) tries, but is too weighed down by her reality. And Jason (Joe Moore), is the new guy, whose racist tats are scribed on a very sensitive flesh.

The dialogue is as rapid-fire and intense as a kitchen in the weeds. The character laugh, yell, argue, and fume at full volume. The actors throw everything into it, and leave nothing in the tank afterwards. Hughes' portrayal of Clyde is that of head devil, rampaging in make everyone's life miserable, knowing that her staff has nowhere else to go. The set itself is an intensely detailed kitchen, its walls stained by smoke and pain. 

The LB says it was the best play of the season, and I would agree, though I will note that the entire season from the Arts West was excellent. English was very good, Born with Teeth was excellent, and Matt & Ben was OK in a weird, quirky way. Hedwig didn't work for me, and I am filled with Christmas charity for the cheesy, breezy Snowed In. In General, Arts West had more hits than misses, and is a strong season of seriously good performances. 

So, that was Friday. Saturday, after the last practice session of our Tai Chi class (we get three weeks off) and poke (from Big Island in Renton), we decamped for Seattle Center. This year they moved the matinee performance up to noon, so we decided to stay in town overnight as opposed to rushing around on Sunday morning. So we stayed overnight at the Mediterranean Inn, a nice 3-start hotel caddy-corner from Dick's Drive-in (and with that, everyone in Seattle knows where I am talking about). Most of clientele are families going on cruises, gathering in Seattle before heading off to parts unknown. Nice rooms, but the strong recommendation is the rooftop patio, which gives a sweeping view of Queen Anne Hill, the Needle, Rainier, the docks, West Seattle, and the Olympics. The LB and I spent the afternoon and early evening on that deck, reading (Demon Copperhead for Kate, while I finished up a Raymond Chandler novel (more on that sometime later). I got takeout from our fave place in the area, Racha Thai - calamari, fresh rolls (for her) chicken satay (for me), bananas in coconut milk (desert for her) and black sticky rice (for me). So yeah, we've been eating out a lot this weekend.

Breakfast was at the Mecca Cafe, a bar that serves all day breakfast. Denver omelet and hash browns for me, oatmeal and ham for the LB. One of the two elevators in the hotel broke down, so all the guests going on cruises with all their luggage had to manipulate the surviving lift (the younger couples took their luggage down multiple flights of stairs instead). We spent the late morning on the roof again, which the cruise people had abandoned. The LB had gotten some advance parking in a lot a few blocks away, and to my surprise, everything worked. Has the curse been lifted? (OK, the lot was a little too far from the theater, and the LB had to take the walk in stages, but we still got there in plenty of time - she is a little brilliant that way).

So, the Rep. I can honestly say we has seen Monsoon and Scales back in the before-time, before she won RuPauls' Drag Race a second time and got to be a Doctor Who villain. I likes the performance then. This one? Not so much. The conceit of the show is that this is the final reunion of vocalist Monsoon and pianist Scales in a dystopian future where the sun has burned out and gelatinous aliens are in charge.  Fun times. And both characters have seen better days, as Monsoon Norma-Desmonds her way through memories and songs, while the age-makeuped Scales is equal parts provocative Larry David and subservient Renfield. There's not much of plot, rather just a framework for the songs, most of them about the perils of getting old. Maybe that's what frustrates me, as a bonified, card-carrying old person. A lot of references to Drag Race, which I had never watched and so the references went over my head (but landed firmly with the quartet of young women behind us). Monsoon's voice is amazing and Scales keyboard work was great. In the intimacy of a cabaret show, or even the smaller Leo K theater, all this probably could work, but up on main stage of the Rep, not so much. Monsoon made the best of it interacting the decidedly less-than-full-house on that way-too-early-matinee, but it was just OK.

And I think "just OK" is the final judgement I have to throw at this Rep's season. Passengers was another not-quite-a-play but was another good performance. Islander was good. The queer-themed Little Women had challenges living up to the original text. Same with Fat Ham, thought the end result was much better. And ditto Quixote Nuevo, which had the additional sin of using puppets.  Sanctuary City was probably the best of the season and was darn good. So yeah, there have been better years, and this season had a brace of solid performances. But were this baseball, we would be talking about it being a building year. Next year's agenda looks much stronger. 

And that was our weekend. We headed home, got a couple small pizzas from the local Romio's, and collapsed in the hanging chairs overlooking our back yard. I think I've had enough activity for a little while.

So how was your weekend?

More late,

Book: A Conventional Murder

 Murder at the ABA by Isaac Asimov, Fawcett Crest paperback edition, 1976

Provenance: Half-Price books down in Tukwilla, picked up before a trip to the MisCon convention in Missoula, Montana. When I fly, I tend to read old paperbacks. They are small, light, and, if forgotten on the airplane, easily replaced. They also, I believe, are slowly going extinct, replaced in the first-run bookstores with larger trade paperbacks. So there is a whiff of nostalgia and slowly decaying pulp about them. I like 'em.

This particular volume belonged to a John Braschler, and had as a bookmark a ticket to see Doctor Strange in 3D at the Pacific Science Center on 11/19/2016. Add to that a bookmark from Half-Price, and a sticker from SKS Props, another guest of the convention, given to me by owner Steve on the plane trip back from Missoula, Montana, so the physical book has its own history.

It is kind of strange, reading a book about a murder at a convention over Memorial Day weekend, while I was traveling to and from a convention over Memorial Day weekend. Such is life.

But what about the book? Well, I didn't care for it much, but decided to bull through it (and then write about it). Another advantage of old spinner-rack paperbacks. Even if you don't like 'em, you can still power through them.

Review: Isaac Asimov is known primarily for his SF and nonfiction science, but wrote mysteries as well. His best-known were about the Black Widower Club, where a bunch of writers gather for dinner, are presented with a  mystery, cast about options and opinions, then have the waiter solve it for them (usually the mystery revolves around someone mis-hearing or misunderstanding something). And in this case, Asimov was hired by Doubleday to write a full mystery novel set at the American Bookseller's Association, which was held in 1975 in New York City (he never identifies the city in the book, but Asimov says he attended the 1975 convention to pick up local color). 

And I attended ABAs and ALAs (American Library Association) about a decade later, when they had reached their apex such that the attending editors would bring along their assistant editors as sherpas to carry out all the free books offered. And Asimov gets the ambience and panels and celebrities and hurley-burley pretty correct. 

Supposedly Asimov based his main character, Darius Just, on fellow writer Harlan Ellison (who he dedicates the book to). And it's a pity that he didn't use more Ellison, who carved his own trail through SF as a brilliant writer, a complete mensch, and a raging pain in the butt, all at the same time. Darius Just is simply a height-deficient midlist writer, successful with a bad movie adaptation, as was Ellison in the mid-70s. That portrayal lacks the fire, irritation, ego, and lyrical verbal swagger of the original version's public persona, even in those days. Asimov's Ellison-clone is a wan, fatalistic figure who believes in the immovability of fate in addition to his own personal culpability in that fate. That's a shame.

Oh, OK, the plot. Darius Just is a semi-popular midlist writer asked to do an interview at the ABA by a friend. Also at the convention is Giles Devore, who Just mentored. Devore's first novel was a huge hit. Devore has become a complete jerk, his infantile obsessive-compulsive nature offending all around him. Just finds him dead in the bathtub and we're off to the races. And because Devore is so obsessive-compulsive, Just suspects murder.

And to be honest it plods a bit.  Mind you, Asimov's fiction tends towards the bloodless - people talking and thinking as opposed to people doing. And that style is evident here as Just rolls through suspects and prospects throughout the book. Asimov takes his time getting to the point - we are about a third through the book before the deserving victim finally croaks.

In addition, the book is filled with liberated 70s sexism, that Playboy-era mindset where equality meant that women had the right to have sex with you. Darius Just comes off a horndog, and Asimov (who writes himself into the novel, working on a book called Murder at the ABA - very meta) self-identifies as a lecherous flirt (and is praised for it). Add to that the fact that almost every female character in the book is described is sexual terms (bustlines and body-shape are a major factor here). And victim Devore has his own personal kinks. The end result is, as kids today say, cringe. 

The mystery is mechanically OK. I tagged the murderer early on, primarily in terms of the book's pacing (non-important suspects drop away from the narrative, but the true murderer keeps popping up). I also tweaked to the key clue. But I missed the full rationalization for the crime, in part because writing technology has changed from the mid-seventies.

Ultimately, the book comes off as dated and my eyes rolled many times in the reading - Stan! was traveling with me, and noted that I would read a few pages, then close the book and look into the middle distance for a short time before returning to the text. It's not great Asimov, but more on the level of his other mysteries. I would've liked to see Harlan Ellison as a main character as opposed to this dry-veined doppelganger. He'd have been an interesting detective.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals - North Texas Edition

 Along with the usual bunch of new arrivals from Kickstarters and convention purchases, this write-up includes candidates for the North Texas RPG Con's Three Castles award, which I and others have been asked to judge. As a result, a big box of stuff arrived that I spent several week-ends pawing through.

The excellent North Texas RPG Convention and its awards are very much OSR, and for the awards I judge primarily on that basis. But because I am judging, I dig a little deeper into the works than I normally do with my other  "Recent Arrivals" entries. The judging has rules which stress heavily originality and presentation as well as textural content, so I'm looking at that as well in the final judging. But it also means that I may like a product for one of the applicable categories, but find that it comes up short in the other areas. Such is the nature of judging.

Looking at the candidates for the Three Castles, we have:

Splinters of Faith by Gary Schotter and Jeff Harkness, Frog God Games, 454 page hardback, 2022. This massive campaign adventure was originally ten earlier adventures which are now reunited into one thick volume. High quality, lotta maps, lotta handouts, including postcards (!). Set in the Lost Lands, the adventure is a grand tour of various temples and holy sites, and its through-line involves restoring the Scepter of Faiths in order to face the final baddie. The adventure starts with missing chickens (hey, it's first level) and ending up around 14th level in battle with a death-priest of Orcus. 

Shadowdark, by Kelsey Dione, The Arcane Library 326-page digest-sized hardback, 2023.  This is the one in corner with the silver beholder/eye tyrant/sphere of eyes on it. I talked about it here. And after doing a deep dive on it, it pretty much stands as I originally described it - if you turned 5th edition into an Old School product, this would be it, with a lot of cool table rules. I liked it a lot. My copy from the review package went to Stan!, who is running in a campaign that uses the game.

Three Curses for Sister Saren by Mike Pike and Levi Combs, Planet X Games, 54-page hardback,  2023. Previous Planet X releases tended to keep its tongue firmly in its cheek, but this one is actually a pretty solid, straightforward adventure. Here's the backstory - In order to defeat bandit raiders, the town leaders brought in demons. In order to get rid of the demons, they trapped them in the body of a pious cleric, chopped her up, and separated the parts. Now the body parts are leaking demons, with worse to come. Tidy little adventure where the players have to figure out exactly WHAT happened and HOW to deal with it, and combines both a linear plot with a sandbox setting. 

Megadungeon Monster Manual by Greg Gillespie, OSR, Greg Gillespie. I've run through Gillespie's dungeons with Steve Winter as my DM - Barrowmaze and Forbidden Caverns of Archaia. Therefore I've met some of these beasties first-hand, and suffered accordingly. This compiles the monsters from those books, along with the other books in the series. Art is at the original Fiend Folio level, which means it is pretty darn good. Monsters that have appeared in core (1st edition D&D) books get some tweaks for the OSR derivatives of the Open Gaming License, (Morale in particularly nice add). Excellent for those looking at the old-school monster books.

Dark Places & Demogorgons 1980s Retro Roleplaying Game Eric Bloat and Josh Palmer, 304 page digest hardback,  Bloat Games, 2022. System uses the Old School Rules from Necromantic Gnome. There is a subgenre in RPGs called Kids on Bikes. The ET movie was a good example (they played D&D after all), but it really bloomed with Tales of the Loop and of course, Stranger Things on Netflix. It is about High School Students (think Buffy) combating the weird stuff in a small town in Kentucky. Class-based, with the classes like Party Animal, Geek, Final Girl, and Most Excellent Dude (or Dudette). Digs deep into the Reagan-Era 80s, complete with satanic panic. Even has its own Upside-down, called the Otherside. Oddly, I am not sufficiently nostalgic for the era, but it is a good take on the media presentations of the times (When MTV actually played music videos).

Zeta Complex: Mankind's Lost Hope A Dark Humor Setting by Ben Burns, New Comet Games, 102-page digest Softbound, 2023. This one actually bothered me. On one hand, it uses Savage Worlds, but on the other hand it is little more than a reskin of the classic Paranoia from West End games. The Alpha Complex is the Zeta Complex, the Computer is the Authority, the Trouble-Shooters are now Operatives and you still get multiple clones. The art is cartoons plus last-year's Midjourney AI - dark and muddy. The end product actually makes me want to dig out the original game. 

Whisper & Venom by Zach Glazar, John Hammerle, and Edwin Nagy, 132-page hardback with fold-out map, Necromancer Games, 2023. This is a nice small-town setting - a small community filled with internal plots and conflicts, threatened by mutated goblins. One main adventure, a couple additional ones. It has nice maps, but could use some tags on them to make the GM's life easier (where IS that Monastery? - oh, there, in the far corner).

AND THE AWARD GOES TO: I'll tell you when I find out. [Update: Shadowdark, which is nice. It was my top choice, and my top choice does not always win. Congratulations to Kelsey Dione and her team].

Meanwhile, some other things have crossed over the transom:

The Restless Dead by William Wandless, 24 page staplebound zine,, and A Puppethand's Guide to the Rainy City by Anred D. Devenney, 16 page saddlestitched zine, Superhero Necromancer Press, 2024, Kickstarter.. I think I've mentioned that I am a fan of zines, and the Rainy City series has been exceptionally good. The central conceit centers on the last city of a flooded world, which has a surprising amount of puppet shows and an unsurprising amount of ghosts. Presentation is sharp, the art evokes old woodcuts, and vibe is very much like Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. I like them. 

Eat The Reich by Grant Howitt (words) and Will Kirkby (art), 72-page full-color squarebound book, and an  big envelope filled with stuff - a character and map sheet pack, stickers, patches, bookmarks, and postcards, Rowan, Rook, and Decard, 2023, Kickstarter. You are a team of vampire commandos infiltrating occupied Paris to find Hitler and drink his blood. That's it. A lot of necromantic Nazi-punching. This is very much an art game, where the presentation overwhelms the mechanics, and has all the hall-marks of edgy production values - dutch angles for blocks of text, reversed-out text headers, and red on black backgrounds (did White Wolf teach us nothing?) A lot of DMing advice as well, which boils down to "Yeah, you're running Nazi's, but don't feel too bad when they die. Messily." Very much Magnificent Bastards meets Dracula. Surprised not more people are upset about this. 

Cthulhu Awakens Mythos Roleplaying Across The Weird Century by a veritable host of talented people (sorry, 13 credits are a bit much for even me), 288-hardback, Green Ronin, 2024, Kickstarter. Kickstarter version is the one with the gold foil cover. Production values are up to GR's standard excellence, and the system is their AGE (Adventure Gaming Engine) system, 3d6 where one die is a different color and called a stunt die, which determines degree of success and stunt points available (stunt points are special effects, actions, and bonuses). A lot of recent games have recognized the hard-baked bigotry of HP Lovecraft, but this one has gone the furthest in pulling it completely away from the original creator - The Elder Gods are now Outsiders, Insanity is replaced by Alienation, and the text pulls the mythos out of Lovecraft's racist clutches. The Outsiders as a result are truly uncaring cosmic beings, which pushes the nihilistic nature of Lovecraft's cosmology nicely in a new way. Most of the action (in two attached adventures) shows that their minions have their own agendas as opposed to being malicious for the sake of maliciousness, and the destruction they wreck being often just collateral damage. Its an excellent take on the mythos, and again, I'm surprised that few people have noticed. The Kickstarter came with the Dreadcrawls zine, Issue Zero (by Jesse Heinig, 28 pages), which sets the stage for Cthuloid hotspots, but can be used with any system.

Eberron, Rising from the Last War, Gold Edition, by Jon Ciccolini, Matthew Lillard, Bill Rehor, Charlie Rehor, Paul Shapiro, Big honking 2" deep box of stuff, 2020,  Beadle & Grimm,, Gary Con. This was a leftover from Gary Con, where they offered it as a freebie for folk working the con, and I was interested in what went into a B&G version. The answer is a lot. They carved the original E:RftLW hardback into 6 booklets, making them easier to pass around the table. DM Screen, campaign maps, battle maps, player handouts, magic item cards, oversized Encounter cards, some Bonus Encounters, and Pre-gen characters. rub-on dragonmark tattoos, a metal feather token, and some plastic dragonshards. The end result carries a LOT of weight to it. Intriguing, but the hardback would probably meet my needs well enough.

Vecna, Eve of Ruin by Amanda Hammond (lead designer) and others, 256-pages and full-sized map. 2024. Wizards of the Coat, purchase at Miscon. Presentation values are the industry-leader and industry-standard. This is a "Crisis on All The Planes" adventure for the very high level adventurers. Vecna is trying to reboot the multiverse and you need to stop him. The adventure is a grand-tour of the old TSR settings - Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft and the Outer Planes all get a chapter (though not the later settings like Theros, Ravinca, or Strixhaven). The Rod of Seven Parts provides the McGuffin for the through-line, and there are more than a few thing I created that show up (insert Leo DiCaprio meme of pointing at the screen here when they name-check Habbakuk). It is interesting, and I'd like to see how it would perform in play at high levels. It also feels like the last product in the line, sort of a send-off to the earlier edition and that Post 5.5/6.0/Beyond D&D could abandon the entire hardback-book route and go entirely on-line. But maybe that's just me. Then again, if it happens, you read it hear first.

More later, 

Play: Holmsien Romp

 Sherlock Holmes and the Precarious Position by Margaret Raether (Based on the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Taproot Theatre, through 22 June

The regular theatre seasons are winding down, so, as has happened before, we (the Lovely Bride,  and friends Janice and John, (who best known to the blogosphere as Sacnoth)) set out to Taproot Theatre in Greenwood for a whopping good dose of Sherlock Holmes. The Taproot is a small but feisty acting company is a small but charming theatre. The stage is thrust out, flanked on three sides by audience, with a narrow balcony above with a precipitous view of the stage. The LB notes that despite the close quarters, the seats are still more comfortable than the Arts West.

And the Taproot's performances tends to aim towards the positive, with uplifting stories and classic characters. And by the latter, we're looking at Austin's Pemberley, Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves, the occasional Oscar Wilde, and this time out, the Great Detective. 

Holmes has evolved over the years  a width and breadth of his character, and there has been a plethora of portrayals. There have been cerebral Holmes and action-adventure Holmes. There have been young student Holmes and elderly beekeeper Holmes. Functioning sociopaths and drug addicts and cartoon characters. Taproot's current Holmes, played by Calder Jameson Shilling, is a brilliant social maladroit, a positive Homes who worships at the altar of logic and deduction and doesn't care if no one else sees it that way. His Watson, well-played by Nathaniel Tenenbaum, is his social intermedium to the world at large, a good friend who tolerates his companion's eccentricities and explains them to those who might judge Holmes harshly. 

Everyone else - cops, robbers, elderly sisters, clerks, Mrs. Hudson and Inspector Lestrade, are played by David Roby and Ariel Rose, who don a multitude of costumes and accents to populate the rest of London orbiting around the binary star that is Holmes and Watson. Ariel Rose in particular shines, swapping off roles easily, effectively, and charmingly. She got the best role of the bunch, and is up to the task.

And yes, this is a comedy, the characters broad and the humor chuckling. Watson narrates exposition to the audience and gets called upon it by the other characters. Holmes finds his bastion of logic under siege as he talks to two elderly sisters. Mrs. Hudson is frustrated by Holmes' behavior and Lestrade is a bit of a glory hound. Add it all up and you have a bit of light, comic theatre.

The stage itself aids for quick changes and locations. The thrust part of the stage is left open, which reduces the amount of blocked shots from the seats (a problem with theater-in-the-roundish). The backdrop rotates its back wall to quickly transform interior scenes and not get into the way of the actors and play. A nice presentation.

The plot may be familiar to Holmes' fans - a pair of elderly women who run a shop for women's apparel are hired to transcribe the encyclopedia, then mysteriously fired (unpaid). There is also a stolen gemstone involved from a separate case. But its not so much the mystery as the delivery. Fast-paced, witty, barreling through the lanes in a delightful take on the characters.

So. It's a rouser, a romp, a bit of light amusement. A gemstone set in a jewel box setting. A worthwhile bit of theatre for the evening, and in the time it has taken for me to write this up, it has extended it's run. Good show. 

More later

Book: Early Stout

 The President Vanishes by Rex Stout (Originally published as Anonymous), Farrar & Reinhart, 1934.

Provenance: Purchase from Half-Price Books, off the shelf. I've pretty much tapped out the original Nero Wolfe series over the years, and have been wandering around the canon's periphery since.

Review: One of the challenges in following a writer for a particular series is that you might not always enjoy their other works as much. I have been a noticeable fan of the Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout, but I've found his related Tecumseh Fox mysteries, which had the same level of twists and turns, to be less engaging than the domestic squabbles of corpulent detective Wolfe and his wisecracking leg-man Archie Goodwin. 

And there's a similar challenge with The President Vanishes. This one was written after the first Wolfe mystery, Fer-De-Lance, but was published first. And it much more a political thriller than a mystery. It was initially published anonymously, in part to create the impression that someone with strong political connections penned it, but that pseudonymous fig-leaf did not last long (a 1934 Times review points the finger strongly at Wolfe, and he admitted it a few years after publication). 

Here's the plot - Europe is at war, and some movers and shakers from the business community want in on the racket. They've got Congress, the Press, and a bunch of neo-nazis called the Grey Shirts, under the control of a charismatic leader Lincoln Lee all gunning for war. Against them we have the president, who is pacifistic and doesn't want to send US boys into battle. Then, right before a major vote on war, the president, well, vanishes. Kidnapping is assumed and there is a mad scramble of the various inhabitants of Washington to find him, as the powers-behind-the-throne push for the Vice President to step in or ignite a populist Grey Shirt rebellion. Either way gives them the war they want.

The book scatters its main characters, starting with a lobbyist working with the conspirators, then moving to the Secretary of War, who is in charge of the investigation, and finally settling on Chic Moffat, square-jawed, wise-racking Secret Service agent. He feels like an early draft of Archie Goodwin, but more willing to slug his girlfriend (Alma, a secretary for the First Lady) for her own good.  Stout also gets into the details of the Grey Shirts, their organization, secrets, and Lincoln Lee's patriotism. Lee is a true believer, and gets some dandy speeches, and Stout pulls it off well. 

The plot has its echoes in the past. The year before, a group of businessmen sought to launch a coup against FDR and install retired Major General Smedley Butler as a dictator. Butler dropped a dime on his co-conspirators, and this all came out about the time the book was written. Also, we have the earlier example of Woodrow Wilson being incapacitated, and his Vice President being unwilling to take the office. And we had our home-grown fascist groups, like the Silver Shirts in the Pacific Northwest. So there was some grounding on this.

The nature of the war itself (This was 1934) is left a bit vague. There are battles in Siberia. France is a opponent, and the US leans towards helping Germany, but the nature of the players and causes is left unexplained. Which makes sense because the action is all in Washington DC, and war, any war, will do. 

The book generated a movie of the same name, which also hit in 1934 (Paramount started filming before the book was published). There are a lot of demi-familiar faces from that age of the studio system, including Rosalind Russell in one of her early roles as well as perennial cowboy sidekick Andy Devine. The conflict is simplified a bit, but it pretty much follows the same beats as the book itself.

So how is it? Not bad, showing a lot of Stout's strengths with character and plot. But I'm pleased with the fact that Wolfe and Goodwin took off, and that there was a lot more them in the future.

More later, 

Book: Occupy This Book!

 The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement David Graeber, Spiegel & Grau, 2013

Provenance: This was a gift from the (now former) Housemates, Anne and Sig. I'm an easy person to buy for - just send books. The thing they didn't know when they picked it up was that the late David Graeber was also the co-author of the History of Everything, which I read earlier, but that's just a bit of serendipity.

Review: I finished this books several months ago, but has taken me a while to write this one up. I've been pulling this entry out, writing a few sentences, removing some others, and then putting it aside for awhile. As a result, I've ended up with a big pile of books stacking up behind it. Because this book's given me a lot to think about.

The Occupy Movement was over a decade ago. Its primetime was in 2011-2012, consisted of protests in most major cities around the world, and its tactics were a variant of what the oldest of the old guard would call sit-ins and teach-ins - literally occupying (usually public) space. It was vocal about money in politics and the ongoing bankrupting of the next generation. It didn't have demands so much as questions. The best-known example was in New York City, on Wall Street, where thousands camped out to occupy public space and protest. This did not go over well with the money-makers and their contribution-seeking pols working in the area. 

The late David Graeber was one of the instrumental members of the organization, in addition to the author of later works on Debt and The History of Everything. I can't say he was a leader of the movement, because by definition the movement didn't have leaders in the traditional sense. It was extremely decentralized, to the point of being a democratic anarchy. So David Graeber is kinda a leader - near the center but not at the center.

 And this history is kinda a history. It is more of an overview of the problems that brought about the movement and the challenges of protest. It is, like the movement it describes, not organized along recognizable lines. 

We start at the beginning with how the situation has evolved. Over the years, money has had a greater and greater role in our politics, particularly since the Citizens United decision of 2009, which declared money to be free speech, and we should not keep large organizations from giving large amounts of money to sympathetic candidates (and reaping the rewards). This resulted in a solidification of the Golden Rule - he that has the gold, makes the rules. It has also intensified such things as predatory loans and killer interest. In particular, for young people, was saddling the next generations with unescapable debt. And in this created a large group of people concerned about their future. Cyberpunk in that Corpos are running stuff, but without the cool body mods. 

The restive group found common ground with others and protested across the board. Most of these protests didn't amount to much, but Occupy did, spreading like wildfire through the year and across the globe. Graeber doesn't really offer a solid reason why THIS protest became widespread, other than to note that it doesn't have any success, until it does. He goes into detail on certain elements of the protest, such as the people's microphone - a pass-along method of relaying a speaker without using electronics. and in particular a decentralized hub. It also adamantly resists the idea of creating leaders or spokespeople to channel and massage the message. 

Graeber takes a break from the narration to get into history - that those in charge have always had a fear of the "mob" - defined as large groups of people that are not on your side. In fact, the word "democracy" has been used historically as a term to defame others and their position. Democracy was a dog whistle for mob rule. Only in the past century, particularly in the WWII era, did we start using the term democracy as a positive trait in comparison to authoritarian governments we opposed. And yeah, recently the Washington State GOP has decided to NOT use democracy since they fell that promotes, well, the Democratic Party. 

We get into some nuts and bolts of consensus government, including the problems of dealing with bad actors - those who are just there to oppose, and will never gain consensus. Again, we're seeing that currently over in the Republican Party, which has logjammed itself into inertia. Graeber also gets into the tactics of the authorities, including elevating a "leader" as a single spokesperson, and such stunts as dumping newly-released criminals and homeless into the area, then using that as an excuse to move against the entire group. 

Finally, Graeber argues for a casting off of capitalistic tropes and thought processes that are ingrained in us, and for a redefinition of labor and of communism (which carries the same demerits that democracy once did). He's not sure about where this would go with a movement that does not make direct demands, but would like to check it out. 

Since this book was first published, a lot of water has gone under the gate. BLM, the Capital Hill Occupation here in Seattle, and most recently the Jan 6 Insurrection. In the CHOP, we saw a lot of authoritative behavior that matches up with his descriptions of the anti-Occupy forces, up to the stunt of the authorities abandoning a police station, sending word out the right-wing protesters were going to seize it, then acting against left-wing protesters grabbed it instead. (We think - any evidence that this was NOT the authorities thinking was "accidentally" deleted from their phones). The Jan 6 attack on the capital is interesting in that not only did it see a stronger pushback from authorities, it continues on with publicized arrests and convictions of those present (and seeking justice against those leaders behind the attack). Most leftist protests seem to be responded to on a catch-and-release program (Even currently - a pro-Palestine group blocked traffic to the airport for a couple hours, and resulted in 42 misdemeanor arrests), and there is often little in the way of media follow-up to arrests (In an earlier protest from January that closed I-5, 6 people are going to trial-that showed up today in the paper.).

I'm not sure I agree with everything Graeber puts forward here - he seems to nod positively towards "direct action" and defends actions of the "black block" (violent protesters) as being a tactic. not a particular group (crimes against property, while not as horrible as violence against people, are still crimes). And to be honest, democracies (including republics) can both make horrible choices that rival those of mad kings - Brexit and large chunks of our population voting for Trump both come to mind.

And yet protest does bring change. Getting back to Graeber's original starting occupy, we are (slowly, after all this time) seeing debt forgiveness for a lot of college students. And a lot of folk are tired of big money in politics. Baby steps are still steps.

Interestingly, The Democracy Project does give me a grounding that I only slowly picked up in his The History of Everything - that the way we traditionally deal with things (hierarchical, authoritarian) is not the only way of governance, even if it is the way most of us are dealing with them. And so it's given me a lot to think about. 

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: Gary Con Edition

Buckle in, chums. This is going to be a long one. I blame Gary Con.

Gary Con itself is a great little convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin celebrating the life and works of Gary Gygax. It is ringleadered by Gary's son Luke, his family, and a host of extremely talented people. It is one of the best-organized small conventions I have attended. Right now it is straining at the seams as we had a not-so-small 4000 people at the Grand Geneva (once upon a time the Playboy Resort) at the edge of town. It is a great little con, and it continues to impress. 

A few things on this list showed up since last time, but with the convention a whole slew of new products came in. Part of this is because I was a guest of the convention, and as such had a swag bag of stuff (thanks, folks!). And part of it is because there are good small publishers that I only find at conventions like Gary Con.

Let's do the Gary Con material first.

Gary Con Event Guide #16, Luke Gygax, the Gygax family, and a host of talented people, 56-page saddle-stitched magazine format, 2024.  A gift from a fan (whose name I missed - I was sitting doing autographs, admired the book (which I had not seen up to that point) and he presented me a copy).  I offer this as exhibit A for the organizational skills behind Gary Con. It is an impressive volume in heavy stock, with ALL the guests of honor, maps of the Grand Geneva done in 1st Edition style, adverts for various sponsors, and a cover by Erol Otus. I remain impressed.

Expert Level Dice Set, Gaxx Worx, Seven polyhedral dice (well five polyhedrals and two percentage dice, to be accurate), plus a white crayon, swag bag at Gary Con. I'll be honest, this really, really made me smile, and I am SO torn between the temptation of leaving it intact in the packaging or taking it out and PLAYING with the dice. Part of that delight, for the younger folk here, is that early on, we didn't ink the dice, but instead provided a white crayon for the players to fill in the numbers themselves. It's a heady whiff of nostalgia. Some folk were selling these off Ebay after the event, but you're patient, you probably can get them for a more reasonable price here.

Gary Con DM Screen, four-panel plasticized DM Screen with paper inserts, swag bag, I assume this is another Gaxx Worx project, but to be honest I don't have anything on the item to indicate an owner. The panels have cartoons on them involving Demogorgon, an Aboloth, and (I think) Acerak on them. The interior (removable) sheets have useful information from 5E. It reminds me that I shlep my ancient and decaying AD&D 1e DM Screen around because it contains n all the to-hit and saving throw charts from the era. This, I'll admit, I like.

D&D 50th Anniversary Placard by Tim "Ollie" Cahoon. TSR Veteran Ollie Calhoun had these printed (3D Plastic) up and was passing them out at the TSR reunion party (which he also organized). I just wanted to show it off and say thank you to Ollie - great work!

Echoes from Fomalhaut by Gabor Lux and others, 4 issues, First Hungarian D20 Society, Various page length (40-54 pages), 'Zine  digest format, 2018-2022. Purchased from the Black Blade booth at Gary Con (as an aside, the Black Blade is exactly the sort of place I frequent at conventions - carrying stuff I can't find at the Friendly Local Shop).  I like 'zines, They tend to be handmade, personal takes on the chosen gaming system. This collection comes from the First Hungarian D20 Society, translated into English. And these 'zines are pretty cool - each one contains a couple dungeons, some additional articles, and a separate B/W map. Very artisanal - the maps are hand-drawn. I picked up issues 1-3 and issue 10, and will seek to fill out the rest of the collection at future cons.

Cosmology of Role-Playing Games by Alyssa Faden, Cave Geek Art and Frog God Games 24" by 36" poster. Purchased at the Frog God Games booth. OK, in the picture above, it is UNDERNEATH everything else, but you can see it in all its glory here. Faden has researched 1300-some RPGS and laid them out in a timeline with TSR as the big bang in the center, and the other games spreading out to the right and left over time. The end collections are further gathered by publisher (The White Wolf wing or the West End arm of the galaxy). There was a larger version hanging on the wall at Gary Con, which quickly became the "Where's Waldo" experience for all the game designers. 

I Choose to Rise by Dr. Artika Tyner and Merle M. Rasmussen, 52-card deck, Planting People Growing Justice Leadership Institute, 2022, gift from the designer. Long ago and far away Merle created Top Secret for TSR, and recently has been more active in game design (with, among other things, a new version of Top Secret). I Choose to Rise is a point-scoring card game based around Black history, and the Rise in the title reflect the suits (Respect, Integrity, Self-Awareness, and Engagement). The cards themselves feature famous Black leaders, athletes, and entertainers. 

DM Offerings - Ran a few games at Gary Con, and some of the players brought small gifts for the DM. These are appreciated (thank you) but definitely not required. Andy was in two games, and brought dice each time (including some nice ruby jeweled dice), while Sypros gave me a small bag containing a Waterdhavian coin and a Magic Card for a character I created that I never knew had been turned into a card (Jodah, Archmage Eternal). The card's flavor text a pull from one of my books. Thank you both.

Preludes to Adventure: In the Days of Our Youth by Jon Cook, Renaissance Tactical Studies, 24 page squarebound, 2022, Prologue to the Story: Lambethfield Faire by Jon Cook, Renaissance Tactical Studies, 36-pages, 2023, Gift from the Author. Another gift to the DM, but this one has more text. This is what the kids today would call "Session Zero" stuff - the adventures you have before you start adventuring. Days of Our Youth provide four intros to 1 or 2 characters each, while Lambethfield Faire holds some springboards for adventure. The text is straightforward, the format is open, and while the project uses art in the public domain, it then credits the original sources. That's nice.

Shadowdark by Kelsey Dione,  The Arcane Library 326-page digest-sized hardback, 2023, Black Blade Booth at Gary Con. Longtime TSR Vet Steve Winter clued me in on this, and I saw a LOT of this being played at Gary Con itself. I'm not surprised. Imagine taking 5th Edition and doing an OSR version of it. Four classes, three alignments, three type of armor. Add some modern tweaks - Ancestries instead of Races (but the standard Elf-Dwarf-Halfling mix is there). Advantages and Disadvantages. And some interesting wrinkles - Initiative starts with high roll and goes clockwise. A good chunk of the book is monster stats and random encounter tables. The book itself is clear and heavy - it's the one with the weird beholder on the cover in the picture - not putting the name on the cover is a thing these days. Picked it up with a Shadowdark Zine Cursed Scroll (Also Kelsey Dione, The Arcane Library, 64-page digest), which in the tradition of early D&D zines has more classes, spells, and an adventure. 

Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Quick Start Rules and Adventure by Derek Stoelting, Elf Lair Games, 32-page saddle-stitched booklet, 2019, Either in the swag bag or from the designer of the Night Shift game, I'm really not certain at this point. This is not only an introduction to the world of Night Shift (Which feels very Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Forever Knight in tone) but for the OGRES system (Oldschool Generic Roleplaying Engine System) which is close enough to D&D that it includes an OGL statement. Classes include thing like Sage, Veteran, and Chosen One. Looks interesting.

Wildspace Magazine: Rock of Bral, David "Big Mac" Shepheard, Editor and a variety of authors, The Piazza,  2024(?), 64-page perfect bound,  Free magazine but presented to me by Lee at one of my signings. This is pretty impressive - heavy stock, full color, cover that echoes the Spelljammer module covers of yore. The insides echo with classic magazine fare - short fiction, locations, NPCs, and an adventure. Neat stuff, and great to see that people are still creating and developing for this corner of fantasy reality.

So, what about things that were NOT Gary Con related?

Candela Obscura by Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall, Darrington Press/Illuminated Worlds, 204 page hardbound, 2023, Purchase from MOX Boarding House in Bellevue. This is part of a Critical Role series of live-plays (which I haven't seen). and was curious about what sort of system they would create free of the shackles of traditional D&D-style fantasy. I need to do more reading, but it does feel more like a descendent of Blades in the Dark, with clocks and roles, but some wrinkles like dice tricks (if a die is Gilded or not). The concept is a small group of professional paranormal investigators in a fantasy turn-of-the-twentieth city investigating the paranormal. Sort of a heroic horror genre. I'd want to read a bit more of it (There's a lot of unique terms to wrap my brain around) before taking it out for a spin.

Dr. Grordbort's Scientific Adventure Violence, by T.G. Crackle, Brian Saliba, and Zach Theiler, Exalted Funeral/Stardog Limited Partnership, 332-page hardback, 2024, Kickstarter. This is a Space-1889ish version of 5E based on the art and designs of Greg Broadmore of Weta Workshop. Broadmore has a lot of weapons, ships and other steampunk/raypunk designs, and they built a campaign setting around them. They addressed the inherent colonialism of the era by identifying the colonial leaders as being asshats, a variation of the "Are we the baddies?" trope, and while not pushing the PCs towards being rebels, they definitely give a head-nod to it. OK, that's cool. More irritating is the fact that there is no character sheet in the book, even though credit is given to the character sheet designer and have made some mods to how being on a different planet affects your 5E stats (It is the PDF material, but that's not helpful to people picking it up at the local hobby shop). A separate booklet, repeating all the information on how devices malfunctions, came with the Kickstarter, but that's missing a character sheet as well.

Aquellaire: The Demonic Medieval Role-Playing Game by Ricard Ibanez, translated by Cabell Venable and Lester Smith, 568-page hardback, Nocturnal Media, 2015, purchased at Apparition Books, Renton. I found this massive tome at Apparition Books in Renton, which is a small one-person operation with an curated collection heavily into the occult and mythology. The owner has recently expanded to the tune of adding several additional shelves on top of his original collection, and has started carrying used RPGs as well. Anyway, Aquellaire is a translated  Spanish RPG that set in the Iberian peninsula in the 14th and 15th centuries, before its unification into what we think of as Spain. Players are demon-hunters, and the huge book is filled with data on demons, spells, and the social world of pre-Empiric Spain. Physically, it is a solid book, though my ancient eyes could do without the Italicized/Bold text peppered through the text, and the Gothic section headers. 

The Blessed and the Blasphemous by Francis Acquarone, Patrick Chandler, DanBass, Jason Sheets, and Jesse Covner, 340 page hardback, Sons of the Singularity, 2023, Kickstarter. Another mammoth text, this one wrapped around a single adventure for Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium. You actually have to do some digging in the text to figure out exactly what is going on - Several groups in pre-WWII Morocco are trying to bring back a Mythos entity. Your job is to stop them. A lot on the cultural and political situation of the region, much of it repeated elsewhere in sidebars. Kickstarter came with a Boxed Campaign Dossier Set that includes handouts, character sheet, a GM Screen, and a "Clue board" for organizing the play.

And as I was finishing this up a large package arrived from the North Texas RPG Con. I've agreed to be one of their judges for the Three Castles Award this year. So the next writeup should not be until June, when the convention occurs. So look out for that one.

More later, 

Theatre: The Comedy of Hamlet

 Fat Ham by James Ijames, Directed by Timothy McCuen Piggee, Seattle Rep through 12 May.

In a bit of happenstance, this is ALSO a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, winning the year before English did. So I did a little research, to discover HOW one wins a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The award is a juried award, which means that five grey eminences (one academic and four critics) get to make the call based on the year's submitted output (usually New York City based). Their choice can be overruled by the larger Pulitzer Prize committee at Columbia. but usually there is agreement (but there have been some notable exceptions). Just so you know.

Fat Ham falls into that category of "Shakespeare Adjacent" plays - Hamlet set behind around a BBQ grill in a black family's suburban home. Juicy (Taj E.M. Burroughs) is our Hamlet. His dad (Reginald Andre Jackson) just died in prison and his mom (Dedra D. Woods) just married his uncle (also Reginald Andre Jackson). Dad's ghost shows up to declare that Uncle Rev is responsible for his death, and demands the son avenge the father.

Familiar stuff, right? Well, Juicy/Hamlet isn't sure about all this avenging stuff. In fact, Juicy is not sure about a lot of things - he's an outsider, a loner, a young gay man in hostile territory. His family loves him but thinks he's soft, effeminate, and too smart for his own good. So he's trying to navigate a dysfunctional family that includes his dead (and abusive) father and his angry (and abusive) step-dad.

And tonally the production is all over the map, skittering from August Wilson levels of subliminal violence to BET Sitcom, then dipping into Shakespeare's original work, then tapping on the fourth wall and finally breaking it entirely. Juicy has his strange interludes, and brings some of the rest of his fam in with him. They make their case to the audience. Its an interesting mix, and in the end, it works.

What also works is giving more for the supporting cast things to work with. The original Shakespeare was all about Hamlet, and how he manipulates the situation around the others. Fat Ham's family all has their own stories, their own histories. We actually get into Tedra/Gertrude's thought processes on marrying her husband's brother. Opal/Ophelia (Aishe Keita) is much more than a tangential love interest that dies in a pond. Tio/Horatio (Chip Sherman) is an overblown, too-loud sidekick, and pulls it off incredibly well, as does Semaj Miller, who is transformative as the jarhead Larry/Laertes. Even Felicia V. Loud, who is pitched as Rabby/Polonius in this to-do, graduates from a stock character on Sanford & Son to a real person.

And the stagecraft for the most of the play actually behaves itself, until it finally cuts the surly bounds of gravity and takes flight itself, moving from earthbound to, well, luminescent. 

So, Pulitzer prize-winner. Yeah, I can see it, not for how it hews to the original material, but how it veers away and eventually discards its predecessor. I'll be honest - I liked English better, but this one, over the course of the performance, really won me over. 

More later, 

Political Desk: Hyperlocal

So, this one is only for people in Kent School District No. 415 who read this blog. Both of you.

Proposition1 Capital Projects and Technology Levy. Vote YES.

And yeah, you've seen something like this before. It was a bond issue that needed 60% approval (and didn't get it), and then another levy which only needed 50% (and didn't get it). And this one has some modifications to the pitch that reduced it a bit more. It is still pushing replacing the HVACs, roofs, boilers, and putting artificial turf on a couple sports fields. The No faction is upset about the listed priorities, the idea that even the priorities they like can be removed, and that a bunch of politicians are pushing the issue. It is the only thing on the ballot, so the pro and anti messages are in the same envelope with the ballot itself.

The whole thing bothers me in a couple ways that have no bearing on the moneys raised (This blog supported the previous attempts as well). Kent City Council asked the legislature for the ability to raise the sales tax to pay for more police officers (that request failed to get out of committee). But they did approve a raise for the Mayor without a vote. Now, both are worthy causes, but it sort of grinds my gears the we can do that, but whenever we want to push education (which is mandated by our state constitution) we have to get out the begging bowl and stand at the SR 167 exits cadging for spare change.

And this election is sort of out there in the middle of nowhere. I don't support the sudden move to gather all the elections together in one place, but the idea that we need to make this election now (budget timing) is frustrating in that there is nothing else going on. And this sort of thing will happen more often as we move elected offices to even-years only.

But that's just me. I feel like I am an old man yelling at the cloud. But let's do this one before some roofs start caving in around here. Dig out you ballot, Kenters (Kentarians? Kentfolk?) and vote YES. 

More later, 

[Update: And the Levy loses again, 57-43%, which is more than last time. Yeah, part of it is that it is by its lonesome on the ballot, and older voters tend to be more represented in the sample as a result. But I think that if they drop the artificial sports fields, they could have notched it up to being competitive]

Life in the Time of the Virus: The Great Forgetting

I probably should rethink the title of this series. It is now ALWAYS the time of the Virus, as we wait for it to mutate once more, or for something EVEN WORSE to show up on the horizon. It's not going away.

New York Restaurant, Edward Hopper, 1922

But in the meantime, we are in the throes of the Great Forgetting. Having passed through the worst of times, we are trying to forget they even happened. The pandemic that crushed our medical infrastructure and cost a million lives in the US alone has subdued to endemic levels. Maybe even just demic levels. And so we kinda forget it was only yesterday.

At first I thought it was just me. I'm at the age where I think of the 90s as only five years ago or so, and my entire computer game career to be some sort of side gig I took between writing campaign settings for RPGs. And that I have to THINK about things to remember that 2004 was twenty years ago.

But it's just not me. We seem as a people to have "moved on" and dumped what collective experiences we had down the memory hole. Everything since the millennium has been just a couple years ago. We seem to be stuck in neutral, and part of it is throwing out stuff we don't want to remember. Like the pandemic. Facebook sends the occasional reminder from four years past, and there is the much-rarer news report of someone flipping out about someone else wearing a mask, but it has all been pushed to the sidelines. There is more talk about people working from home than WHY they were working from home in the first place.

And yeah, we've done it before. In the wake of the misnamed Spanish Flu (which is not truly Spanish, but got its start in the trenches of WWI), we wanted to pass on that ever happening. There were occasional references in later years to the Great Influenza, but by the time I started learning history, it was a footnote. We were so damned determined to return to normalcy (heck, politicians even ran on the platform in the 1920's), that we pretty much learned nothing, and reacted in surprise when other flus and diseases rolled through like summer storms.

In part my concern is that I'm personally moving into convention season, in a year when D&D turns 50 and I'm traveling more than normal. I returned from Gary Con (great convention in Lake Geneva, WI) with a killer cold that literally knocked me out for a couple days (and I am still gravel-voiced for a while). It was the first time since I had COVID that I was seriously ill. A colleague returned from the con with a nasty case of the flu and exhaustion, and another colleague tested positive from COVID. So as we're moving around more, it is getting more likely we'll pick something up.

So that's where we are. Challenges still lurk out there. Caution recommended but not expected.  We've kinda forgotten.

More later, 

Theatre: Language Lab

 

English by Sanaz Toossi, Directed by Naghmeh Samini, a co-production with Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble, Arts West, through 28 April.

Another journey to the Junction in West Seattle, and with it yet ANOTHER change is how they handle parking there. Same parking lot, yet every time we're out there, there is a new vendor and/or new process. This one is run by the lot owner themselves, and while we had to work through the menus to park, there was a guy in a hoodie (lot attendant, I hope) walking around and scanning people's plates. 

So there's that. But also, we had dinner at our favorite sushi place in the neighborhood, Mashiko. We've been going there for some time, such that the kitchen knows us (and that we always order a salmon tartar that's no longer on the menu). Great food, and settles us well for the theater.

Oh, the play? Excellent. English is takes place within a classroom in Tehran, teaching for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) with a goal of allowing the students to travel abroad. Instructor Marjan (Vahista Vafadari) demands that they are "English Only", but her students slip into their native Farsi easily out of humor and frustration. The students are a mixed bag - Omid (Emon Elboudware) is the teacher's pet, speaking English well. Goli (Newsha Farahani) is the youngest and most eager to learn. Roya (Janet Hayatshahi) is a grandmother who wants to learn English so she can go to Canada and speak with her granddaughter. And Elham (Shereen Khatibloo) is the class rebel - she's failed the final test five times already and hates English and everything connected with it.

And the conceit is that when the cast speaks English, they do so in accented English, but when speaking their native Farsi, the speak in unaccented English. In Farsi, their words and mannerisms are colloquial and natural, while in English is stilted, halting, and unsure. Even the subject matter in English shows a marked difference from reality (Really, how many conversations have you had where you ask "What is your favorite color?") And yeah, I got a bit of High School PTSD from trying to learn French (I tried to  hit it head-on, looking at it as a problem to be solved logically, and as a result bounced right off it).

Ultimately, another language is a mask of another culture, and embracing it often challenges one's own inherent presentation and identity. Watching the class struggle with the language, with each other, and with their own desires provides a rich tapestry of choice and thought. Each has to answer the question - why are you doing this? Is it worth it?

The actors are amazing and deep in capturing the dual nature forced on their characters. The stage is a backdrop of school chairs cascading from the ceiling, underscoring the internal chaos within the classroom. The scrim behind them is the blackboard, which echoes Marjan's instructions. Both do a lot to support the actors and their interactions.

This won a Pulitzer. Yeah, I can see that. 

More later, 

Recent Arrival: Special Edition

Other gaming products have shown up at Grubb Street, and they will eventually get their own write-ups, but this one just showed up, and I feel it is important enough to merit its own separate blog entry.

Dark Tower by Jennell Jaquays  and others, Goodman Games, Goodman Games, 2024, consisting of a 96-page hardback, a 316-page hardback, a 164 page hardback, additional handouts, slipcased, Kickstarter.

Jennell Jaquays (1956-2024) was an artist and designer of  tabletop and computer games. She was brilliant at all these things. I had an opportunity to work with her when she joined TSR as an artist, producing the covers for the Mystara revision,  as well as a beautiful piece of a wounded Nautiloid for Spelljammer, and she further immortalized me on the cover of a D&D product - Temple, Tower, and Tomb. She passed on in January of this year. Her work spanned numerous companies, some of which she founded, and she was there when the dawn first broke over the horizon of RPGs with Dark Tower. 

Dark Tower was originally produced by Judges Guild, and was a 70-page adventure dealing with a secretive cult of Set that had taken over a small community. The adventure consisted of that small town (called Mitra's Fist), and an extensive dungeon beneath it, filled with traps and creatures. The tower of the title is underground. But what established itself over other adventure models of its era was its non-linear design. There were multiple entrances, multiple passages between levels, and across levels between two sunken towers. This type of design has since been giving many names, but I'm comfortable with Jaqaysing as its nom du design.

Jaquays produces interesting adventures that veer away from standard approaches. For a linear dungeon design (good for tournaments), you move directly from room to room, and from encounter to encounter. One entrance (usually) and one exit from each encounter. There may be nests and complexes, but the assumption is that you cleaned out one room or section before moving forward. Everyone has the same experience. In as Jaquays-styled dungeon, there are multiple ways up and down and across, and there is no guarantee that the adventurers will hit everything. The original Ravenloft would pull off the same trick years later, but Dark Tower was first, and set a high bar.

Jaquaysing does have some challenges. A linear dungeon works for linear storytelling. You can feed the player characters information over time. Under a  non-linear dungeon, encounters and clues may be missed entirely, so creating a strong story sense can be a challenge to the DM. In Dark Tower, the players slowly piece together what is going on, and may not engage with the entire story, depending on their choices.

In addition, in this form of dungeon, adventurers can quickly find themselves in over their heads, particularly if the dungeon levels are set for different character levels John "Sacnoth" Rateliff ran us through it in preparation of his essay (which is included in the deluxe edition), and I ended our experience suddenly when I accidentally used the door from a Robe of Useful Items to open a passage into the high-level final boss fight room. OK, maybe it wasn't totally the dungeon design's fault, but it did have the potential to go casters-up and then did.

The cover of Temple, Tower & Tomb.
I'm the one screaming.

The new edition, from Goodman Games, is a slip-cased beauty. Goodman has been revising classic modules of the previous eras, updated from modern systems. The re-released the original in a thin hardback, including a number of essays (from Sacnoth, Grognardia and others). For those who have not seen how things were presented at the dawn of time from people other than TSR, take a look.

Volume 2, by Chris Doyle, is a massive translation of the original adventure in 5th Edition D&D (though the game is not directly referred to as such). The text has expanded, and the appendices are almost twice the size of the original, But it brings the classic adventure forward for more modern audiences. Plus there is more on the overworld around Dark Tower. 

Book 3 by a number of folk, is a continuation of the story at the post-12th level, continuing the themes of Mitra versus Set through a number of smaller dungeons. There is definitely a feeling "But wait, there's more" going on here, but it is all begun with Dark Tower, which remains the centerpiece of the project.

This is a Goodman Games production, which means it has old-school black and white interiors and there are numerous player handouts and character sheets (also part of the Kickstarter). The art is solid and evokes the rough edges of the earlier editions of D&D and maps look good and complete (the originals were pretty spiffy as well). The combined projects both show where we have been in design, and where we have grown, and are playable in either configuration.

In short, they did well by Jennell, and the revised, updated, and expanded Dark Tower is as challenging and engaging as the original was. It is an excellent testament to her contributions in RPGs. 

More later,