The Political Desk: The Replacements

 OK, on the local ballot there are only six things, so let's try to do them in one swell foop. The bulk of these are replacements - open positions due to the office-previous holder moving on.

King County Proposition No. 1 Parks, Recreation, Trails, and Open Space Levy. I like parks. You like parks. The Stranger and the Times like parks. No one has even submitted an argument against it. This is a replacement of existing levy on property taxes to maintain parks. Sure. Go with Approved.

King County Executive Long-term King County Exec Dow Constantine has stepped down to oversee Sound Transit, so this is an open slot without an incumbent.  The two front running candidates in the run are former Bellevue Mayor Claudia Balducci and Grimay Zhailay, of the King County Council, Both are impressive, both have endorsements, and both are on the progressive side of the spectrum. The candidate that is the better centrist moderate was John Wilson, who ran into legal trouble from stalking his ex-wife and has dropped out following his arrest. The rest include Amiya Ingram, an independent who writes a damned poetic Voters' Guide, Bill Hirt, a perennial who runs to point out the flaws in Sound Transit, Rebecca Williamson who tacks down the Socialist end of the spectrum, and Don L. Rivers, who is humbled to put forward his candidacy. There is also a gosh-honest endorsed Republican, Derek Chartrand, who wants to know why King County is wasting money when it could just build more jails.

I'd love to see a face-off between Claudia Balducci, who has the experience, and Grimay Zhailay, who is the new young hotness, but for the primary, I am going for Claudia Balducci,  

King County Council District 5. King County District 5 is squarish lump of real estate that encompasses Renton, Kent, Seatac, Normandy Park, Des Moines and the southern part of Tukwilla. This is another replacement election, in that previous councilperson Dave Upthegrove left to become State Commissioner of Public Lands. And the roster is very strong with individuals with backgrounds in unions, local politics, and NGOs. That's the good stuff.

The bad stuff is ... well, there's an elephant in the room. A real political elephant. Steffanie Fain, is married to Joe Fain, a former Republican State Rep who stepped down after a rape accusation (after stepping down, they stopped the investigation, which is maddening - so we don't know what happened). The Times ignored the situation in their endorsement. The Stranger touched base on it briefly, then decided to endorse someone else. Ms. Fain packs a lot of heavy hitters in the Moderate/Liberal part of Democrat spectrum as far as endorsements. I literally don't know enough to give a firm opinion on all this. here, but I need to put it on the record.

Of the rest, I look at their Voter's Guide and what I can dig up. Angela Henderson has a strong union backing. Ryan McIrvin is a Renton Councilmember, as was Kim Khanh Van. Peter Kwon was one for SeaTac. All have a pretty respectable amount of accomplishments and endorsements. Ahmad Corner comes out the grassroots side of the equation, and stakes his claim on affordability and safety. This is a hard call, even at the primary level, but I'm going to suggest Ryan McIrvin.

City of Kent Position No. 6 OK, now we are getting into the weeds. Most of the urban blogs and magazines don't get this far south, so we're pretty much relying on what gets said in the Voters' Pamphlet and on their web sites (and yes, I am judging you on your web skills). All was to make Kent safe, happy, and affordable. I'm looking out primarily for red flags and dog whistles. But, if you tend towards the Progressive end of our spectrum, check out the Progressive Voters Guide, where you can dial down to the School District level. It's actually kinda impressive. 

Anyway, City of Kent Position No. 6.  At this level, everyone is an amateur. And that's great. Some have some experience under their belts. Some are small businessfolk as their day job. Some have been living in Kent all their lives. Some are first-generation citizens, their parents having come to one of the most diverse towns in Washington State. And that's where the goo-goo part of my civics goes out to them (Goo-goo is a Chicago term, usually used disparately, for "good-government"). Sharn Shoker is an extremely strong candidate, but for the primary I'm going to suggest you look at School Board Director Andy Song. 

Kent School District No. 415 Director District No.4 This is the trailing end of the ballot, where no one but the Lovely Bride and a few friends will be paying attention. And we actually have someone running who is an incumbent! Well, kinda. Teresa Gregory was put into the position to replace Awale Farah. for just a little while. But, so far so good, so yeah, let's keep her. 

Kent School District No 415 Director District No. 4 is a choice between two Lauras - Laura Williams and Laura Jensen. I hope both of them will be on the November ballot, just for the confusion factor. I'd go with Laura Williams, but that's just me.

OK, that's it. We can now return you to your regularly-scheduled theater, book, and game reviews. 

More later, 

The Political Desk: A Small Primary

Yard signs have sprouted. The sage editorial boards have delivered endorsements. The ballots have arrived. The Primary season is upon us. And let me rant a bit before getting to the meat of the situation.

It's short ballot this year, with only six items on the Grubb Street version, and half of those are dealing with my community of Kent. I buck the current movement of trying to shove all the elections into an even-year cadence. I do this for two reasons. The first is that if you put EVERYTHING on the ballot, there is an informational overload, which reduces the number of people who actually want to vote (I vote regardless, but I understand that people can look at a slew of names and let out an exhausted sigh). Secondly, and more importantly, I prefer to turn the boat slowly. Which is to say, if we go the wrong way, we can course-correct as opposed to lurching back and fourth between political poles. 

Also, I've described my politics as being "Politely Left of Center", which has served me well for the past 25+ years. Though I've described myself to pollsters as an Independent, I lean heavily Democrat, particularly in my time in Wisconsin and Washington State. I've supported Republicans in the past, but usually in non-partisan positions where they aren't obligated to line up with their crazier partners. I'm sure that the local leadership on the Kent City Council includes Reps, but to be honest, they've done a good job, they've stayed away from the crazy, and that's really what I care about.

Currently the Democrats are still a big-tent operation, which means it swarms with factions and arguments. That's cool - that's sort of the way Democracy is supposed to work. But I can put them into four major groups.

 Moderates, also called Centrists. They pitch themselves as the safe, sensible, responsible people. Big business should be encouraged, even pampered. Will not march, but claim to reflect the wants of most people in their districts. Are concerned that conservatives will consider them too liberal. Aware about infrastructure. 

Liberals. They want change, but are good with making it incremental. Slow change is still change. Patient. Unionist. Thoughtful, with can sometimes seem inert. Big Business should be carefully guided to do the right thing. Will march if they have to. Worry about infrastructure.

Progressives. Get things done. Movement is good, even if there are unintended consequences. Will march and protest to show that there are a lot of folk that agree with them. Corporations should be watched and kept on a short leash to keep them from screwing up. Want to rebuild infrastructure

Leftists, often called Socialists, though the term is often used by the conservatives for anyone more liberal than Barry Goldwater. Will march, will get loud, will throw things. Corporations should be burned to the ground. We need to reset everything to redress years of injustice.

I'd put myself down on this spectrum as on the Liberal/Progressive line - in favor of change, but willing to be thoughtful about it. Good with regulation, but let's playtest it. Most of the fights in our chunk of the PNW are between the Moderate and Liberal wings of the parties. Seattle itself (which I can't vote in) has been in the hands of the moderates recently, who have been doing safe, moderate things, like more money for police and cameras, shorter hours for beaches and libraries, supporting landlords, putting electronic billboards on sidewalks, and trying to reduce ethical requirements for their positions. On the other hand, cars are no longer pushing through pedestrians on the cobble-stone street at Pike Place, so ... yay?

I suppose I should address the current Republican factions as well, even though they are a rare breed in Metropolitan King County. Here's an analogy, though  Take a plate, stand over a concrete sidewalk, hold the plate at an arm's length, and let go. 

It used to be that the GOP was pretty monolithic, but now its riven with all different flavors of conservative; Neo, Theo, Paleo, Tech-Bro, Isolationist, Anarcho, Maga, and Original Flavor Conservative (though a lot of those have drifted over to become Moderate Dems). They expect the other factions to line up with them, they have a deep dislike of each other, and a hatred of Dems of any stripe trying to make things better.

OK, enough of a rant. If I go on I'd have to post this on Twitter. Lemme tag you in on the other folk reporting in.

The very-valuable official King County Voter's Guide is here. The Seattle Times, representing the Moderate Wing, and their recommendations are here. The Stranger is under new management and tends to the Liberal/Progressive side with less snide remarks and can be found here (TLDR Cheat Sheet here). The Progressive Voter's Guide is, duh, progressive, but handles a lot of areas that the Times and Stranger miss. The Urbanist's Endorsements are here. KUOW discusses the candidates without coming right out and making recommendations here. But as always, check out your sources. Don't just take my word for it.

And then we move on. More later,

Recent Arrivals: A Calm Before the Storm

The recent arrivals at Grubb Street ...

So things have been trickling into Grubb Street for the past few months - gifts from friends, kickstarters fulfilling, and the odd store pickup. But I want to gather them all in one place because the Washington State Primary primary ballots have arrived and I feel obligated to slog through this off-off-year election.  So here we go with the fun stuff first. 

The Sassoon Files 2nd Edition by Jason Sheets, Damon Lang, Andrew Montgomery, and Jesse Covner, Sons of the Singularity 272 page hardbound, 2025. Kickstarter. This is the 2nd Edition, and I should note that the 1st edition had problems seeing print since doing a project about pre-communist China hit some push-back from printing in China. The setting is Shanghai, which is touched on all-too-briefly in the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep and gets a deeper look in The Nyarlathotep Companion. I was the Keeper on a long-running Masks campaign (Which I may someday bore the heck of everyone here by talking about it - unsurprisingly, I have things to say).

But anyway ...

Sassoon Files is really good, and attempts to capture the flavor of Shanghai in the pre-war era. It is at the time where the city is overseen by a bunch of Western powers that broke it up into rival fiefdoms, have native Chinese movements verging on a split between Communists and Nationalists in the wake of the death of Sun Yat-Sen, has a collection of local criminal organizations of varying levels of control, and is in general being a hub of intrigue and adventure in a historical sense. And add new mythos cults, deep ones, ancient mystic relics elevates the entire setting. On the down side, the timing of the adventures overlap with each other and with Masks, so the Keeper may have to do some re-orging to run everything, and while the players can throw in with gangsters or the communists, they always tend to come back to dealing with Victor Sassoon, a wealthy bon vivant with a eye towards protecting the city from Mythos threats. Hence the title.

Daggerheart Core Set by Spenser Stark et. al, Darrington Press, 266-page hardbound, boxed set of 280 cards, 2025, Midgard Comics and Games. This is the most recent of the declared "D&D-Killers" I've encountered over the years, and has an excellent pedigree with the Critical Role folk. The book is colorful, well-organized, and hits all the beats of traditional RPGs, though it adheres to the more free-form Powered by the Apocalypse/Blades in the Dark style of play (I have opinions, but that will wait for another day as well). I'm not sold on the plethora of cards that came with the rules, but that may just from previous experiences, and I'll see how well they fit into the game. So this one is under investigation. I got this from my local friendly comic shop, which has a small section of RPGs and discovered that customers were amazed they had it, since it had sold out in more traditional gaming venues. 

The Excellent Prismatic Spray Volume 1, Issue 2, 72-page squarebound, Pelgrane Press, 2001, from the collection of John Rateliff. John (known the blogosphere as Sacnoth). John has been clearing out his collection, mostly on Ebay with the aid of Bill Webb, but occasionally something offers something up to the rest of the gang. This is the 'zine for The Dying Earth RPG, which is in the category of "Great RPGs I've read but will probably never play" - the gaming version of tsunduko. The game and 'zine both emulate the flowery, ornate, robust, superfluous language of Jack Vance's books perfectly, and to be frank, the game deserves to be featured in those podcasts where they talk about games that are no longer published. In addition, this particular volume contains a four-page essay by Gary Gygax on "Jack Vance & the D&D Game".

Curse of Candlelight Manor, by Heidi and Erik Gygax-Garland,  32-page self-covered digest booklet, 2023, Gaxland  Pooduction,  Shadows over Lake Geneva, A Sanguine Horror by Heidi and Erik Gygax-Garland, 32-page saddle-stitched booklet, 2023, both also from the collection of John Rateliff. Heidi is Gary Gygax's daughter, and she and her husband are continuing the family tradition. Curse is a wonderful, short, old-school style adventure written for 5E, and set in a haunted house. Sanguine is usable for both 1E and 5E, and is a modern adventure set in Lake Geneva of 1948, dealing with the old Oak Hill Sanitarium, which is one the site of now Colonial View Condos where I lived in the early 80s. I am really curious if the maps provided are based on the original Sanitarium. Both are volume 2s in a series, so I'm going to have to pick up the first volumes the next time I am at GaryCon.

Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games by Fred Van Lente, Tom Fowler, and Bill Crabtree, 112-page hardbound, Clover Press, 2025, Kickstarter. Fred Van Lente has done one of my favorite comic book series, Action Philosophers, so I was very interested in seeing what he did with the more recent history of RPGs. He covers the basics of history (sort of what you'd read in the first Playing at the World, traveling through Chess, miniatures, wargames, and the Braunsteins which birthed modern RPGs, as well as covering the more real-life salacious and scandalous adventures over the years (Dallas Eggbert, the FBI raid on Steve Jackson). But where it excels is when it starts talking about other, non-D&D RPG games, like Call of Cthulhu, West End's Star Wars and (ahem) the original Marvel Super Heroes by myself and Steve Winter. Its pretty good, though I have to note that liberties were taken in presentation (Yes, Lake Geneva had a Playboy Resort, No, there were no Playboy Bunnies at the first GenCon (At least in uniform)), and some of the stories are of the "yeah ... kinda", but its an excellent, entertaining look at our hobby and industry.

An Infinity of Ships by by Adam Good and Jamie Peters, Illustrated by Rob Turpin, 152-page digest hardcover, published by STATIONS, 2025, Kickstarter. I love the art and idea behind this one - the ability to create your own spaceships. But not a formulaic "Here is how many credits the astronavigation unit costs", but a more free-form "Here, roll on a huge number of tables and tell me what you and you players can make of it". It is more inspirational than instructive. The ships themselves range from mechanical to organic to beyond, and the AI ranges from simple servants to godlike commanders. The names are out of IMBanks novels.("for example, "This Could Have Been an Email"). It doesn't try the define the universe that these ships operate in, but in covering all types and options (and running light on operating systems), they portray a radically diverse and chaotic galaxy where there are few known constants. Still, worth hacking about with it. The Kickstarter included stickers, bookmarks, and 115 cards to randomly create ships on the fly.

... and one that arrived after I took the photo.

The Old Margrave by Matthew Corley et. al, 256-page hardbound, Kobold Press, 2025, Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide Pocket Edition by Celeste Conowitch et. al. 304-page softbound digest, Kobold Press, Tales of the Valliant Game Master's Map Folio, 6 24" by 36" double-sided maps, gift of the publisher. The Old Margrave is an ancient forest just to the East of Zobeck, the main city of Kobold's Midgard campaign setting. Its a wonderful forest location for adventure, and the book (for 5E and their Tales of the Valiant) has new heritages, lineages, spells, subclasses, and a huge adventure arc set in the forest. Speaking of Tales of the Valiant, the Pocket Edition of the ToV GM's Guide is a digest-sized reprint of the original book, in a handier and portable format. And while my current gaming style (sitting around a living room or online) does not use maps and miniatures, the Map Folio hosts a number of locations (Inn, Gate, Fort, Tower, Villa, Lighthouse) that can be ported into any adventure.

Ticket To Ride Legacy: Legends of the Old West by Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, and Alan Moon, Big box of a boardgame, Days of Wonder, 2023, Gift from Ed Stark, who was out here visiting for a wedding. The original Ticket To Ride has been a go-to game for our game days on Grubb Street, and a source of contention between the Lovely Bride and the mighty Stan! This version is a Legacy game, which means that as you play it, you modify the game materials that will affect future plays. In this case, you start with the Eastern Seaboard, and work west over time, with specialized rules as you add more pieces to the game. And ultimately you have a finished version for replay. Now we just have to find a regular gaming group to meet up with, since our own gaming groups are different and on different days. Ah, the challenges of game players.

And that's it for this round. Now I settle into the more boring stuff about very local politics. Its cool if you find something else to read. I'll understand. 

More Later, 

A Book and a Play: Golf Outing

 The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, William Morrow Paperback Edition, original publication 1923.

Murder on the Links by Steven Dietz,  Directed by Karen Lund, Taproot Theatre, Extended run through 30 August.

So John, who is Sacnoth and Janice, who is the Bride of Sacnoth, invited me to join them in an expedition in the Greenwood neighborhood for this Hercule Poirot mystery in Taproot's renovated main stage. The new/old digs are well-renovated, and the seating, while still tight, has been improved. In preparation for the play, I actually tracked down a copy of the original story at Page 2 books in Burien. It was an interesting search, in that while a lot of my regular haunts had all manner of Agatha Christie novels, they did not have this one. 

Anyway, long story short, I liked the play better than I liked the book. But I'll get to that. Lemme talk about the book first.

The Murder on the Links is the second Poirot novel. Poirot (for those who never got near PBS in their upbringing) is Agatha Christie's Belgian Detective, with his fastidious nature, distinctive moustache, flashing green eyes, and little grey cells that he uses to navigate through the mysteries. I had powered through a number of Poirot short stories, collected in Poirot Investigates, and he has the talent of targeting some small fact that blows up traditional theories about the case. 

Poirot's assistant and narrator of the tales is Captain Hastings, who is Watson to the Belgian Holmes. He is note quite the dullard of Nigel Bruce in the Sherlock Holmes movies of the 40s, but missteps regularly, concludes erroneously, and is often distracted by beautiful women (Poirot is, of course, immune to all feminine wiles).

So, the novel: Poirot and Hastings are summoned to France by a wealthy Brit named Renauld, who fears for his life because of an unstated "great secret". They arrive on the scene to find Renauld has been murdered, his body found in what would become a bunker in an adjoining golf course (this is the only mention of golf in the book). What follows is a torturous route with continual twists and revelations - hidden histories, changed wills, stolen evidence, secret romances, strange coincidences, exploded alibis, multiple confessions, acrobatic twins, another body, and a rival for Poirot in the form of Surete officer (seriously underused). There is a lot going on, stuffing it all into a relatively short novel. All of this is told with the dry, mannered, clockwork style of Christie, which, for all the murder involved, feels very temperate and bloodless. Having read a lot of Christie recently, I can see why Raymond Chandler really hated her work.

So that's the book, and on reading it I saw it would be a great challenge adapting it to the stage. There are a huge number of characters involved in the novel, including all the suspects, witnesses, and detectives. There is a lot of travel, from England to France with Poirot frequently dropping away from the narrative for some secretive mission in Paris or London. The book's plot turns on itself, with blind alleyways and false leads that are later revealed to be pertinent facts. Oh, and Hastings at one point does something lumpishly stupid and obvious that is then ignored by the author for several chapters. How to handle all that?

Well, writer Dietz does a pretty good job of it, and in addition, makes it a comedy.

Now, Christie lends itself well to comedy, particularly with sometimes overblown characters like Poirot. Check out Miss Marples in the 1960s movies, where the prim, elderly villager is overtaken by Dame Margaret Rutherford's more boisterous portrayal. And Dietz and the actors lean into the implausibility of the original text heavily. The accents are heavy, the actions are frenetic, and the lines are overblown. It actually lends a strong sense of fun to proceedings, and is frankly contagious. Dietz allows Hastings to be the narrator, and to fully narrate, piercing the veil between the fictional world and recognizing it as a play. Janice pointed out a similarity with The 39 Steps, and I heard another patron afterwards make the same comment. So yes, we can put his piece in the same wheelhouse as that one, making the original story a metatextual comment on the fact that this is a play. 

More importantly, the huge cast is cut down to a mere six. Nathan Brackett as a woosterish Hastings, Richard Ngyugen Stoniker (or perhaps understudy Mark Emerson - the moustache is that mesmerizing) is a solid Poirot. Everyone else in the play is portrayed by two men (Tyler Todd Kimmel and Jeff Allen Pierce) and two women (Betsy Mugavero and Claire Marx), which leads to situations where quick changes and transformations are required (and sometimes performed comically on-stage). And the players are in on the joke - this is a performance, and as the players move all the props about on the stage and pull together to make it all make some sort of narrative sense.

And as a play, it works so much better than as a novel. The linearity of moving the action forward makes clear the various plot points and revelations. I did not lose the thread. And even Hastings' bumbling in places makes better sense on the stage than it did on the printed page. Also, the play allows Brackett's Hasting to be more of the romantic hero he sees himself as, with his heart on his sleeve and his desire to protect young (and pretty) young women. And it gives Hasting not only a happy ending, but a lead-in to another Poirot mystery as an Easter Egg. Oh, and a scene actually takes place on a golf course.

All in all, it was an enjoyable way to spend and afternoon, and highly recommended. The cast is frantic and positively acrobatic in their portrayals, and leaves the audience exhausted and delighted. Worth seeing.

More later,

Theatre: What Is This Thing Called Love?

 The Effect by Lucy Prebble, Directed by Mathew Wright, Arts West through July 13

Arts West closes its season with a extremely powerful performance. The Lovely Bride took it in after an excellent Sushi dinner at Mashiko, then settled in for what turned out to be an excellent, amazing, emotional performance. This is one of those plays where I cannot say enough good things about it. 

The Effect deals with the meeting of biology and psychology. Connie (Anna Mulia) and Tristan (Morgan Gwilym Tso) are volunteers for a set of drug trials. The trials are overseen by Dr. Lorna James (Sunam Ellis) under the direction of biochemical entrepreneur Dr. Toby Sealey (Tim Couran, embracing the spirit of Steve Job) 

Tristan is a slacker who has does this before, and is there for the payout - he's flirty and nervous. Connie is a student and treats the drug trials as a personal test - she wants to give the "right answers". The drug itself elevates dopamine levels, which affects, among other things, affects emotions and falling in love.

And yes, things go off the rails quickly. Connie and Tristan fall in love. Maybe its their own doing, or the drugs or their emotions. They don't know, and it is frightening. They have their own challenges which surface in the process as they do not believe they have control of their own decisions. Lorna and Toby have their own emotional wounds driving them forward and affecting the results and what they choose to do with them. Lorna in particular is at the fragile center of the storm. Both couples spiral into anger and argument, and no one knows the truth of the matter. Are Connie and Tristan in love because of the drug or is the drug just affecting their own emotions? Are we all victims of our own biochemistry?

And it all works. The actors are frankly terrific. Their characters are human and relatable. The descent into doubt, desperation, and despair is completely believable. The dialogue is natural and often choreographed, the dancelike move of the actors. There are a lot of big ideas fighting with the big emotions in the play, and the bare-bones set of a simple raised platform, limned by neon lights, gives the actors the space to big it all home. The direction (Mathew Wright, also the Artistic Director of Arts West) fits all the pieces together marvelously. The resolution is ferocious and devastating, to the point that the stunned audience at the end was silenced for a few breaths before thunderously applauding.

It all left me shaken in a way that few plays do.

Arts West had an incredible season. Both The Effect and Covenant were among the best theater I've seen in Seattle this year. Guards at the Taj was heartbreaking, and Athena was very good (the Lovely B loved it). The weakest of the lot, the sequel to last years Snowed In, was still festive in the spirit of the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland lets-put-on-a-show performances.

They did a fantastic job, and The Effect was the icing on the cake. Go see it. 

More later, 

Theatre: Kinetic Bard

 Duel Reality, Written, Directed & Choreographed by Shana Carroll, Seattle Rep through 22 June.

I've talked about Shakespeare-adjacent plays a couple times in these pages. These plays use one of the works of the canon as a base, shifting it in time and/or space, or just revising it to see what happens next or what is happening elsewhere. They are retellings, and as a result rewirings of the original. Duel Reality is one of those Shakespeare-adjacent performances, using acrobats and cirque performers to tell the tale.

The acrobats in question are the 7 Fingers troupe, who we last saw a couple years back in Passengers. Back then I mentioned that while the performance was top-notch, the performance didn't seem to have a lot going for it as far as an overarching plot. Here, we've got a plot. Well, mostly. And it is one that you know of - Romeo and Juliet. Again, mostly.

The performance takes its base bones from the original play in that we have Capulets and Montagues. Jets and Sharks. Two families, alike in dignity, poised against each other. In this case, we have two troupes of acrobats, Reds and Blues, who battle against each other in competition and in hand-to-hand conflict. And a Romeo and an Juliet from each side that breaks through the limitations of clan and tribe. 

And that's about it. The conflict of the original play provides the framework for the acts. pole-climbing and hula hoops (the party where the young lovers meet) and teeter-totters (for a duel to the death). Bodies are being suspended and thrown back and forth across the stage. There's amazing juggling. No family dynamics, no members of the family easily identified. No nurse or friar. Liberties are freely taken, and while a few beats are maintained and few lines sprinkled along to help direct the play, most of the story-telling is physical in nature. 

And it works. This is polar opposite of Eddie Izard's Hamlet - this is all dynamic and kinetic and waves at the bard as it zooms past him. The conflict of Reds and Blues is extended to the audience, who are given red and blue cloth wristbands at the start of the play, and whose seats are lit with red and blue lights. The troupe reaches out to the audience continually for approval and encouragement, and there are patrons on stage as physical supporters. The play ends with everyone dancing (including the audience), and, unlike Laughs in Spanish, it felt incredibly earned. 

As I say, liberties are taken, Great liberties. And you don't mind because the sheer athleticism of the group is overwhelming. Were I to pick a nit or two, that the overwhelming nature of the stage-wide performances often had me distracted by some incredible bit of business to one side of the stage competing with the main thrust of the activity in the center. Usually the Lovely Bride and I adjourn to a local restaurant to pick over plot points and writer's intent. This time we sat on the sidewalk patio of the local Agave, and dispensed with only a couple "That was great" statements. And it was.

Duel Reality finishes up this year at the Rep for us, and it was a rocky season this time. The best of the collection was Hamlet, which wasn't even on the initial list. Duel Reality was also excellent, as was Primary Trust. Mother Russia was very good. Laughs in Spanish and Blues for an Alabama Sky were OK. It was the most tradition plays - revivals of The Skin of our Teeth and Blithe Spirit, that stumbled and brought the average down. Now we just wrap up one more play at the Arts West, and we're done until August.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: All This and North Texas, Too!

 There has been a slow accretion of new games here on Grubb Street for the past few months. Kickstarters fulfilling. Old games I found at my favorite local used bookstore. But generally things have been quiet.

And then, a large, heavy box, attached to a large, heavy deadline, shows up on my doorstep. The Three Castles nominees have arrived. 

The Three Castles Award (3CA) is given every year at the North Texas RPG Con, in Dallas, which this year is the weekend of 7 June. NTRPGCon is a small, definitely old-school convention that celebrates the older games of our shared histories, including the early editions of D&D. The process consists of four or five ancient eminences reviewing the presented product, filling out their votes based on previously-agreed-upon standards, and go from there. I am occasionally one of those grey eminences. Sometimes the project I think of as best doesn't win. Sometimes it does. Here are the nominees. 

A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633, by Ezra Claverie, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, three clothbound hardback digest volumes - Volume I: Jamestown and Environs, 96 pages, Volume II: Lo! New Lands, 192 pages, Volume III: Prodigies, Monsters, and Index, 130 pages, 2024, 3 Castles Award Candidate.  Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a weird game in the literal sense – it thrives on the weird, strange, and occult. This is an extremely impressive adventure both for size (three hardback volumes) and the nature itself (An alien ship crashes into Earth, in the process creating a rip in reality 150 years previously outside of Jamestown Virginia in the seventeenth century). The melding of historical accuracy (a lot covering the time period) and outré strangeness (mutated plants and animals, animated corpses, alternate realities) make it a very interesting read and should be an interesting play as well. This is the sort of thing that RPGs can do very well.

The End of Everything by Alex Kammer and Alan Patrick, Frog God Games, 216-page hardbound, 2023, 3 Castles Award Candidate. Once upon a time, the 32-page saddle-stitched booklet was the standard for adventures, covering a single location and adventure. Now they tend to be larger, in full cover, and cover a lot more levels and a full campaign. This one couples an epic “end-of-the-world” threat (very Cthulhian in nature) with an out-of-the-ordinary fantasy setting (The Haunted Steppes of the Lost Lands) with its own unique cultures (horsemen, tribal groups, and convivial Gnolls). Carries the players from level 1 to level 12 and spans the width of this rolling, roiling land. Nicely done.

ShadowRim by Greg Christopher, Chubby Funster Games, 200-page digest hardbound, 2023, 3 Castles Award Candidate.  My day job is a Senior Writer on Elder Scrolls Online, so imagine my surprise when I saw this volume, which uses the ShadowDark rules (which it recognizes) in the Skyrim setting (which it doesn't recognize, at least not directly). It does not SAY Skyrim, but it uses the races (name-changed), pull-quotes from the game, the Skyrim map (available separately, but also name-changed), and a declaration that it was “Inspired by the greatest CRPG of all time” (again, without mentioning that CRPG by name). Oh, and the back cover has a hand print with the words “We Know” written beneath it.  It reads well, uses the ShadowDark layout, and looks like a labor of love, but … really?

Dragonslayer by Greg Gillespie, Old School Publishing, 298-page hardbound, 2024, 3 Castles Award Candidate. My gaming group has played in some previous Gillespie adventures – Barrowmaze and Lost Canyons of Archaia. We had a good time with the old-school feel, and our GM (hey, Steve!) transposed what was there into D&Dish terms (%E 2014 edition). This is the rule set that ties more directly to it. It is definitely old-school right down to its Jeff Easley cover, and embraces the original rules with a strong eye towards combat and a delightful lethality. Some of the material has appeared in the adventures where they first showed up, but now they are gathered in one spot. Strong, intense rush of old-school nostalgia here.

Don’t F*ck The Priest by James Edward Raggi IV, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, box set, 64-page hardbound digest, cards, dice, 2024, 3 Castles Award Candidate. Good points? Excellent production values, that outré, weird, mushy organic vibe that exudes from LotFP products, and a card-based dungeon design that actually works for the story they’re telling. Bad points – Black on puce interior text, unreadable death metal heading fonts, extreme sexuality and grossness, and edgelord GM approach that tells you that if you play the adventure in any way other than being a CPU for the brilliant design, you’re having badwrongfun. Can’t mention the title at dinner parties. Didn’t even know if I want to show the cover. It's there, but didn't like it enough not to censor it.

And the winner is: TBA

And as for the rest that has come over the transom recently:

Rapscallion by Elizabeth Chaipraditkul (Product Management) and Whistler (Lead Designer/Lead Writer), Magpie Games, 288-page digest hardbound, GM Screen, playing maps, dice, dice tray, 2024, Kickstarter. So I’m a fan of pirate games, and this looks like a good one. It is of the Powered By The Apocalypse (PBtA) family, so we’re talking playbooks and moves. One of the key things I like about this is the rising tendency to make the case ship as a separate character with its own playbook. This sort of group identity has shown up in games like Blades in the Dark, and creates a cohesive identity for the players, as opposed to just “You are adventurers meeting in a bar”. Worth further investigation.

Dreadnought Return of the Black Maw by Alex Beisel and Nicholas Ross, Liminal Artifact, 88 page softbound, 2024, Kickstarter. The was part of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest, but it really is a bit large for that moniker. It is a horror game with a nautical theme, where tidal waves destroy a fantasy-ish Port Royal and an evil black submarine (?) washes up in the ruins, leaking evil from its reactor.  Your choices are to investigate it or run away. Neither are good options. It is yet again Powered by the Apocalypse (uses moves) but is mostly statless and uses a unique fear (dread) determining mechanism - 2d8 roll against a third die (starts at a d4 but ratches up). Interesting.

Flying Circus by Erika Chappell, Newstand Press, 304-page digest softbound, 2020, Page Turner Books. OK, besides pirates, I always had a fascination with WWI air games. Dogfight from Milton Bradley, Ace of Aces from Nova Games, Richthofen's War from Avalon Hill. Flying Circus is a fantasy air game, which means dragons and biplanes among other things. It is PBtA again, and uses a playbook for your aircraft as well. However, the playbooks are not in the book, but can be found online, and the links provided in the book are no longer accurate. I had to dig around in Reddit and their Discord to figure out where they were. Cool thing, unlike a lot of PbtA, the game gets down into the nuts and bolts of air-to-air combat.

Cthulhu Dark Ages by Chad Bowser and Andi Newton with James Holloway and Mike Mason, Chaosium, 272-page hardback, 2020, Page Turner Books. So the conventional wisdom about old TSR was that it put out too much stuff – splatbooks and new settings and revisiting old ones. Yet the modern Chaosium has been doing the same thing and seems to be doing OK. This is a revision of earlier Call of Cthulhu books covering Cthulhu adventures in the medieval world, and is a serious, serious upgrade. It has the standard features of new and modified investigator skills, game systems tweaked to the new setting, and appropriate mythos monsters, but also has a history of 10^th century England, a new setting (in the Severin Valley, of course) and a few new adventures. Very well done.

Get It at Sutlers by Daniel Sell, Melsonian Arts Council, 110-page digest hardback and numerous small booklets, 2024, Kickstarter. Troika is a very weird little game, and this is an … I think “adventure area” would be the best description of it. Imagine a weird tales version of Harrods of London, or Mike Moorcock writing an episode of “Are You Being Served?”. The setting is an all-purpose department store (remember department stores? And malls? Yeah, good times), which has a eclectic clientele, bizarre staff, and unique and alien challenges. You’re assumed to be working a shift there. Bunches of random encounters. Sort of an opium dream of a setting.

 Bounty Kingdom Gazetteer by Simone Laudiero, Acheron Games, 184-hardback, 2024m Kickstarter. Well, half a Kickstarter – the other half (a monster book) will show up eventually. This is an expansion/setting book for Brancalonia, a whimsical Spaghetti Fantasy based on Italian folklore and more than a dash of Commedia delle-Arte. New races, new classes, new subclasses, then a long tour though the city-states of the Italianish peninsula. This one’s set up for 5E, but it is just a good sourcebook. 

And that is it for now (though more has shown up in the meantime). Stay tuned for the winner of the Three Castles Award, and as always -

[UPDATE: And the Winner Is - A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum. Congratulations to Ezra Claverie and the LotFP team]! 

More later,

Play: Izzard's Shakespeare

 Eddie Izzard Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Adapted for the stage by Mark Izzard, Directed by Selina Cadwell, Presented by Eddie Izzard, Seattle Rep, Through 19 May

Wow. This was amazing. Just bloody amazing.

This is a one-person presentation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The one person doing the presentation is comedian Eddie Izzard. I haven't caught a lot of her material over the years, but the Lovely Bride had and got us tickets. This was not part of the Rep's standard season, and was held in the smaller Leo K. Theater. 

But, wow.

Eddie Izzard is best-known for her comedy, so I expected comedy. A light-hearted take on a classic. And boy, was I wrong. This was a spell-binding performance that held the audience rapt as she essayed Hamlet in its dramatic glory.

And she plays all 23 characters - Prince, King and Queen, Ghost and Gravedigger. And she does it with a subtlety and grace that enraptures, moving from character to character fluidly yet defining each one with their own voice. Watching the full-bore performances of the Shakespearean canon, I sometimes get lost among the characters, costumes, and pageantry. Yet on this simple, mostly bare stage (set designer Tom Piper), Izzard commands every inch. Creating a sword-fight from both sides without swords is incredible in itself, yet Izzard pulls it off.

There was a bit of humor here. I mean, we are talking Shakespeare. The Gravediggers contribute their lines, and Izzard presents Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as hand puppets (oh-so-effectively), but for the most part Izzard plays it directly and honestly. The writer in me recognizes all the bits that we've since looted and turned into common phrases, but Izzard restores them to their proper place in the plot. And the soliloquies are pure and solid.

I've referred to a lot of Shakespearean performances as "Shakespeare-Adjacent" - revisions, modernizations, recreations, and inspirations. Examples include Fat Ham and Mac Beth. This isn't that. This is full-bore Shakespeare's plots, words and actions, but boiled down to their bare framework and presented in a natural, accessible style. Izzard's command of the language, accents, and the stage itself was simply marvelous, and the entire audience rose to their feet at the end of performance with hearty and enthusiastic applause. 

Now let me throw you the bad news - the rest of the performances (they already extended a week) are sold out, but there are SRO tickets available. But if you can, this one is worth catching.

More later, 

Play: La Risa

 Laughs in Spanish by Alexis Scheer, Directed by Damaso Rodriguez, Seattle Rep through 11 May

Short version? A pleasant afternoon and a pleasant play. Laughs in Spanish does not have high stakes or deeper moral meanings. But it is pleasant and amusing and sometimes that is good enough.

Mariana (Beth Pollack) runs an art gallery in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami. The night before the big opening, all the art is stolen. Mariana is not taking this particularly well. Her intern assistant, Carolina (Diana Garle) sees this as a chance to exhibit her own art. Carolina's boyfriend, Juan (Gabriell Salgado) is an officer investigating the case.  And in the midst of this, Mariana's mother the movie star (Diana Burbano) descends on Miami, with HER latest assistant, Jenny (Cheyenne Barton), who Mariana knew in school, in tow.  Jenny and Mariana had a thing back then, and may have a thing yet again.

Throughout, the emotions are high and the stakes are modest. Everyone has their own secrets, but they are not horrible secrets (I mean, not REALLY horrible). Jenny is bright and positive. Carolina is passionate about her art. Juan is a big-hearted lug, like Joey from Friends. Estella the movie-star mom is loud and over-the-top. And they're a good ensemble.

The weak link is Pollack's Mariana. The character is written as brittle and business-like, the boss confronting a disaster badly and arguing with everyone around her. She is put-upon throughout, and wants to stay grounded and realistic, but ends up inert and angry, trying to weather the challenges with a frosty disposition and a sense of universal disdain. And yeah, she does grow a little over the course of her travails with career, life, and mom, but the movement feels slight. In short, as a character she's hard to root for, and difficult to laugh at. 

The stagecraft is standard Seattle Rep - high-tech but not overly intrusive. Walls slide away, hidden patios are revealed, vehicles are brought onstage. It works, but does not overwhelm the actors. 

The play brushes against topics include career choices, the Latino experience in the States, and the conflict between business and art, but it is primarily about relationship between mom and daughter and Mariana's own struggle to escape Estella's shadow. And it works more often than it doesn't. Let me praise with faint damns - it is a pleasant play. And that's part of the nature of theater. Not every play has to be epic or hit it out of the park or twist your emotions. Were there laughs? A few, but a lot more wry chuckles. But "Wry Chuckles In Spanish" would not work as well as a title.

More later, 

Play: En Garde!

 Athena by Gracie Gardner, Directed by Kathryn Van Meter, presented in collaboration with Salle Auriol Fencing Club, Arts West, Through May 4. 

Back to the Junction in West Seattle. Dinner at our favorite sushi place, a desert donut at the nearby Top Pot (which was also hosting a local distillery for a tasting for rye whiskeys and berry liqueurs), and the Athena at the Arts West on its opening Friday. A play about two young women. And swordplay. A lot of swordplay.

Mary Ellen (Anteia Delaney) and the aforementioned Athena (Allison Renee) are 17-year old fencers training for nationals. Mary Ellen is dexterous, gangly and introverted, fencing to make herself look better for college. Solo-named Athena is strong, loud, and pushy, fencing to prove herself the best. Mary Ellen is from the burbs and wants to impress her parents. Athena is from the city and has a rocky relationship with her father. Both are socially maladroit. They start practicing together. And the play is about their relationship as they cross swords and words and emotions.

They're seventeen, and all the emotions are on the surface. The conversations just tumble out nonlinearly, with whipsaw changes in direction and hummingbird levels of attention. And through it all you see the bonds growing between them, as they both want the same thing, and very different things as well. You're supporting Mary Ellen at the beginning (she's the underdog of the pair), but come to appreciate Athena as well.

The play is presented in collaboration with the Salle Auriol Fencing Club. There have been a lot of such team-ups in West Seattle's productions, usually other entertainment groups but this is the first one for a fencing club. The single setting is the piste - the long strip that combat takes place on. The action orbits around the field of combat, but centralizes there. And the fencing is ... real good, and carries the plot forward as both young women change each other. 

And the Athena is ... good. I liked it but did not love it, but then, I have never fenced nor been a 17-year-old girl. The Lovely Bride DID love it, because in her storied history she was both. I found it well-written, well-acted, and well-presented. Arts West has produced another excellent evening of entertainment. 

 More later,

The Political Desk Pops Off

OK, I'm going to be 'that guy'. The grumpy old man complaining about the responsibilities of the modern world. Blame the killer head cold that has been kicking me around since Gary Con, but I'm going to vent a little.

This past week a packet arrived from the King County Department of Elections with a ballot. And the ballot had one measure on it. One. The official title is Proposition No. 1 Regional Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Levy. Its to fund the King County Fingerprinting unit. Yep. Fingerprinting.

It's a replacement levy for the elapsing levy. It is a property tax increase, but at a lesser percentage than the previous one. Of course, your house is worth more at this point as well. but doing the numbers, it is an extra 20 bucks on top of everything else. And AFIS has done a pretty good job for the past few decades, has been really transparent about their work, and touts their successes on their site. And checking on the web, there is not even a statement AGAINST this measure.

But,

But,

But why are you asking US at this point? Shouldn't this be part of the rest of the budget? Is this worth sending out ballots for something like this?

Well, they're asking us because thems the rules. You want the county government to boost your property taxes (even by about a Jackson) without your OK? You want a chance to be a part of the decision -making process? Well, here it is. Being a separate item also protects it from being put on the chopping block for some closed-door budget cutting (like, say, the mounted police unit for Seattle itself, which met its end last year due to budgetary constraints). 

And the ballots have a lot more on them, just not stuff where I'm living. School levies on Mercer Island and in Enumclaw. Fire Protection issues in Renton, Duvall, and Woodinville. And some of this stuff can't really wait around for a November election. 

I'm actually an opponent of the proposals to bunch everything together in one mammoth ballot, and as a result am willing to put up with this "pecked by baby ducks" approach to government. And if it is a irritant, its the same sort of irritant as getting your oil changed at regular intervals, or separating your trash and recycling, or taking those two separate bins to the curb, even when it's been raining for hours and you're really rather be inside because you already have a nasty cold. AND hauling them back up the driveway. In the RAIN.

But I digress.

Anyway, go vote when you get your ballots. Its practically frictionless at the moment, and requires only a little effort on your part. It shows you're paying attention. Despite all my whining about the process, I'd say let's keep the AFIS, and vote Approved on this. 

S'allright? S'allright.

More later,

[UPDATE:] Proposition one passed, 58 to 42%. However, only 25% of the registered voters weighed in on the matter, which as always, a little sad. By the same token, a hotly-contested school bond issue on Mercer Island also passed, with 50% of the citizens weighing in. So, good going, Mercer!

Book: An Elegy for Ellison

  The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison (with J. Michael Stracynski), Blackstone Publishing, 2024

Provenance: Christmas present from the Lovely Bride, purchased off Amazon.

Review: I talked about Harlan Ellison the man back here. Let's talk about his "last work" - The long-promised collection of bleeding edge stories called The Last Dangerous Visions. 

I read the initial Dangerous Visions (published 1967) in hardback in our high school library, and purchased paperback editions of it and its two-volume sequel, Again Dangerous Visions (1972), in college. For a young person who had drifted into SF through the ABC axis (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke), the subject matter and writing was a bit mind-blowing. It helped codify the American New Wave of Science Fiction, went after a variety of societal taboos, and kicked down the doors of tradition bolts-and-rivets SF.

Then there was a bit of a lapse of about 50 years, and only after Ellison's passing did his executor, J. Michael Stracynski (the Babylon 5 guy), organize the remaining material Ellison had, added a few stories, and finally finished the volume. 

The result is a mixed bag. Some pieces have that urgent, nostalgic, whiff of the originals ("Assignment No. 1" by Stephen Robinett and "A Night at the Opera" by Robert Wissner). Some feel like political tracks that could appear in the Economist ("Hunger" by Max Brooks). Some were utterly frightening ("The Final Pogrom" by Dan Simmons, which combines the holocaust with American Ingenuity, made more poignant by recent events in this country). Some of the best feel like recent, post-Harlan additions. "War Stories" by Edward Bryant, dealing with weaponized sharks, was brilliant in both presentation and subject. "First Sight" by Adrian Tchaikovski mixes the tropes of first contact, alien cultures, and the limits of the senses in a nice little package. But more than a few were "meh" - OK, but not shaking the earth great. And there were short "Intermezzos" by D.M.Rowles that just completely missed the mark. The art (by Tim Kirk) is a wondrous call-back to the earlier volumes, but the Ellisonesque intros (telling you WHY this story and this author are worth your time) are mostly missing. Yes, and there some typos in the text, including the punchline of Ward Moore "Falling from Grace", which needed a bit more typographic love to make the story land.

The longest entry in the book is Stracynski's own introduction/eulogy of Ellison, two parts remembrance of a friend, and two parts why-this-project-is-late. He hits the good parts and bad parts of Ellison in his travel from Terrible Infant to Grey Eminence, and offers some reasons behind his personal actions over the years. But reasons are not a denial of responsibility, and Ellison the man, the writer, and the editor, has to accept responsibility. An afterword talks about earlier incarnations of the book, and seems like an interesting collection of stories in their own right.

And the end result is ... OK. This final volume would neither kick down the doors of traditional SF (which now continues, but no longer dominates, the marketplace), nor wade onto the shores like a Leviathan, sweeping all in its path. My mind is not blown, but then, I'm no longer a teenager, my high school has been completely renovated, and the world turns and moves on. Some of the dystopian futures are all-too-real. Others feel right around the corner.

But it's a suitable memorial to a mercurial talent. Thank you J. Michael. Rest easy, Harlan.

More later,

Recent Arrivals: The Gary Con Cache

 I was a guest last week back at Gary Con, a convention celebrating the life and works of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax. It was held in the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It is one of the best-run, most-fun conventions in gaming. For me it is a chance to game, meet new gamers, and hang out with old friends from TSR. And I pick up some interesting stuff in the process. Only one of the items shown at the right is from a Kickstarter. The rest come from my experiences in beautiful Lake Geneva (hey, it didn't snow this time). Here's what is in the photo:

Echoes from Fomalhaut by Gabor Lux and others, 5 issues, First Hungarian D20 Society, Various page length, 'Zine  digest format, 2018-2022. One of the joys of the Gary Con dealer's area is the Black Blade booth which carries OSR material that doesn't always show up at the local game store, like Dungeoneer 'zines, Judges Guild adventures and Empire of the Petal Throne reprints. I picked up issues #1-3 and issue #10 of Fomalhaut last time out, and really enjoyed them. They have that old-school flair of early D&D 'zines, with a booklet format and separate maps, tucked in a simple paper envelope. This time out I expanded my collection with Echoes from Fomalhaut #s 4, 5, and 8, In The Shadow of the City-God (cool name), and EMDT #100, A Journey to Fomalhaut (opened and shown here). Cool stuff. Thinking about running adventures in Shadowdark using this setting and dungeon (see below).

Various Shadowdark Products by Kelsey Dionne, Arcane Library, saddle-stitched digest-sized booklets, 2023-2025. Shadowdark is the new hotness, an Old School Revival pitching into a New School Revival for FRPGs. I picked up a copy last Gary Con out and was really, really impressed with the simplicity of the game, the new twist they added, and the clean b/w presentation. This time out I picked up a recent versions of their 'zine, Cursed Scroll (64-pages) and latched onto a copy of the adventure Raiders of the Hidden Temple (26-pages) at the dead dog party Sunday night. Looking forward to digging through this, and should mention they are doing a MASSIVE Kickstarter for a campaign setting. 

Secrets of Morocco: Eldritch Explorations in the Ancient Kingdom by William Jones et. al.  Chaosium had a booth at the con, celebrating 50 years of the company (their first project, the White Bear & Red Moon boardgame came out a year after D&D, and introduced everyone to the world of Glorantha that would host Runequest). And they brought some old stock they found in the warehouse. In my case, this worked out well, since I was struggling with The Blessed and the Blasphemous, which was set in Morocco about twenty years later (B&B also caused me to start reading Destination Casablanca, by Meredith Hindley, a rich, well-told history of the region in WWII). History overlaid with the Cthulhu Mythos. Looking forward to reading the Chaosium version.

Runequest Starter Set by Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, Jason Durall and others, Boxed Set, Chaosium Inc. 2022. I've been impressed with what Chaosium has done with its starter sets such as Pendragon - they are heavy, meaty, affordable introductions to the game. This one is packed with four booklets (rules, campaign setting, solo adventure, adventure), character sheets, maps, and polyhedral dice. Runequest is a complex game set in a complex world, and this set pushes to make it accessible to newcomers.  

Wildspace Magazine issue #2 Elves of the Stars and #3 Groundlings' Guide to Spelljammer, Various authors, David Shepheard, Editor, Published by The Piazza, 2024. I'm delighted that people are still enthusiastically playing and expanding the original Spelljammer campaign setting. Last year I was presented with issue one, and this year with Pdf printouts of issues two and three. Issue two concentrates on the elves in the Spelljammer universe, which are pretty much the British Navy. Issue three is an excellent collection of articles on introducing Spelljammer to your groundling characters. These are free, well-done fanzines, clearly labors of love. Terry Hawkins, who gave me the copies, also gave me a draft copy of his adventure Race Across the Stars, a Spelljammer space race through a slew of Wildspace locations. As an aside, he's looking for someone to publish it. 

These mugs with those mugs

Game Lizard Mug. The first night before the convention officially started, colleague Ed Stark arranged a dinner at the Chophouse, which is the resort's upscale restaurant. Picture is to the left, and you may recognize some of the folk gathered around the table. Ed also invite Mark Jeranek, of the Order of the Owls, who run a large group  of fans continually through the convention. And Mark in turn brought some mugs he created, which are beautiful and have the original Greg Bell game lizard from TSR's early product on them (with permission of the artist). Really nice!

Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 200 ml. I'll be frank, I'm of mixed emotions about people giving gifts to the Dungeon Master. I mean, you paid to come to the convention and came all this way, you don't have to toss a coin to the GM. That said, I will not turn down a kindness from fans, and a small bottle of whiskey is greatly appreciated when I get back to rainy Seattle and the post-convention head cold. Thank you.

TSR Alumni totchies. Tim Calhoun puts together a gathering of old TSR employees every year, and his work is greatly appreciated. It is a chance to see old friends and catch up on what everyone has been doing (spoilers: We're all getting old). We had drinks. We had drink tokens. This year they were poker chips. They were so cool I forwent my normal third beer in order to keep this one. Also, former TSR colleague Kevin Melka does 3-D printing, and I snagged a black unicorn from him, which I gave to the Lovely Bride and is currently on her desk.

Orcus Dice Bag. I got this at the Gary Con Merch booth, which has a host of neat stuff - hats, tropical shirts, adventures, and yes, dice bags. This one features an truly old-school Orcus on it. I has been years since I got a new bag, and it pairs well with the whiskey to create my own Chivas Regal moment. 

Tower of Gygax, various authors, 50-page ringbound booklet, various years. A tradition at Gary Con is the Tower of Gygax. Oh, I'm sorry, it should be read TOWER! OF! GYGAX!  This is 2-hour public session where various DMs run players through a series of encounters, the bulk of which consist of an entrance, and exit, and something nasty and murderous in-between. I had the chance to run it with veteran designer Doug Niles at the other table, and we had a great time. My style of running, particularly in combat encounters, tends to be a bit ... flamboyant. If you get a chance at Gary Con, take it out for a spin. (Oh, and I got a button as well).

It belongs in a museum!

The Sanitariums of Lake Geneva by Sonja Arkright, Self-Published, 96 page square-bound digest 2024. OK, so this isn't from Gary Con proper, but rather found in the Lake Geneva Museum. Situated in the old Power & Light building where the lake's outlet creates the White River, the museum has a three major rooms - a hall that features typical furnishing and artifacts from the town's past, another vault of specific displays of local hisotry (like the old Playboy resort and the raising of the Lucius Newberry), and a room dedicated to Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons. And one of the books I wrote (Manual of the Planes) is in the display. So now I have something in the museum. So I feel old.

ANYWAY, Lake Geneva was the site of several Sanitariums/rest homes/health resorts, the most impressive of which was Oakwood, a massive five-story brick structure just east of town. In fact, the apartments that the Lovely Bride and I lived in when we first moved to Lake Geneva (The Colonial View Condominiums) were built on the site of this sanitarium. I picked up the book for potential Call of Cthulhu history, but did not know this. Nifty little book.

Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme RPG (No it isn't!) by Brian Saliba and Craig Schaffer, Exalted Funeral/Crowbar Creative, 350-page Hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. OK, This is the only non-Gary Con entry this time out, and is probably the weirdest game I've seen in the last decade (and I have one where you play vampires wanting to drink Hitler's blood). Saliba and Schaffer have cheerfully plundered the entire Python corpus to produce a huge volume in which no bit of the comedy group's work goes untouched. Dead parrots, spam, the Spanish Inquisition, the whole lot, all wrapped around the core of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. However, there is a REAL RPG underneath all this silliness. A step-level approach to damage. Pendragonesque character traits.  A host of character classes. Character Personas for the Gamemaster (sorry - the Head of Light Entertainment) who can over the course of play be sacked and replaced with a randomly-rolled NEW GM (Sorry, Head of Light Entertainment). I find this one fascinating in its mechanics, but am going to have to dig down through all the spam to find them. The Kickstarter came with a box of dice (including a boulderous 30-Sider, a sash for the HoLE and some plastic coconuts). No, they hit every base on this particular license, with a playable game. It's kinda frightening.

And that's if for this collection of loot/swag/totches/kickstarters. More later,

Play: Brave Old World

 Mother Russia by Lauren Yee, Directed by Nicholas C. Avila, Seattle Rep through 6 April 13 April

If writer Lauren Yee has a "thing" that describes her plays, it's dark comedies set against authoritarian backgrounds. Her excellent Cambodian Rock Band featured a man literally playing for time against a bouncy, humorous  leader in the Cambodian genocide. The Great Leap Forward sent a US basketball team to China and ended at Tiananmen Square. And now she take on Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of Soviet Russia and the triumph of capitalism. And its a wild ride.

So, we're in St Petersburg in the early 90s, and we have three people for whom the great move to capitalism has not worked out so well. Billy Finn is Evgeny, a unemployed milquetoast who lurks in the shadow of his father, a former KGB bigwig. He's hired by an old school chum Dmitri (Jesse Calixto), who has used the new freedom to open a small, failing business, and has pivoted it into a front for a freelance domestic espionage operation. Their target is Katya M (Andi Alhadeff),a  former rebel rocker who was big in the secret listening parties during the bad old times, and left for America. She couldn't compete with Whitney Houston, and no one wanted songs about the gulags when the gulags were supposedly closed down, so she came back. They are all lost in this brave new world of MacDonald's filet-o-fish sandwiches, adidas swooshes, and Folger's instant coffee. Freedom of choice means little to them when they themselves are not chosen.

And punctuating all of this is the always-appealing Rep semi-regular Julia Briskman, who wanders onto the stage between scenes as the babushka-wearing old woman. She's the embodiment of old Russia herself, though she never comes out an admits it. She plies the audience with donuts to get them on her side, complains about how everything is different now, and describes the former leaders of the USSR as old lovers who come to woo her yet always disappoint her. 

And the set-up feels comfortable and little frothy, and you think you know what's coming, and you're right and you're also wrong. Yee throws in some delightful curveballs in the plot, and all the characters are both smart and incredibly stupid at the same time. Billy Finn is timid,  trying to strike out on his own, and get his father's love and respect while dealing with his own inner cowardice. Jesse Calixto evokes Jackie Gleason with his wide-eyed reactions and own cluelessness of his weakness. Both men were originally planning on moving up to the big leagues of the old regime in the ranks of the KBG, and are now lost in the wake of the Soviet Collapse. Andi Alhadeff carves her own path as Katya, with her own arc and goals which the others both miss.

Now, in Mississippi Moon I loved the music, but recognized its existence as a cover to the motions of a rotating set design. Julia Briskman's Russian Mom does the same thing here with monologues and complaints, but the rotating set design here actually works, going from inside the shop to outside to a bus interior to outside Evgeny's father's door neatly. In this case there is precious little downtime and without breaking the flow. The fact that Briskman is wonderful just adds to it.

And, like Yee's other works, there is a lot of bright spots and human nature against the authoritarian background, and while there are the horrors of the past and perils of an uncertain future, the performance sparkle against it. Some of it feels like a SNL skit from the same period, making fun of Russian interpretations of American styles, yet it peels away easily to reveal the vulnerabilities of three people who have been conditioned to hide their true selves by their government. And it is a bit uncomfortable at a time when our own authoritarians are seeking to remake the world in their image, so some of the laughter feels like whistling past the graveyard.

I'm going to mark this one as a hit, and am delighted that the Rep is pushing its own World Premieres. More of this, please.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: Winter Festival

 So, things have been trickling into Grubb Street for the past few months. Some are Kickstarter resolutions, while other a bit of retail therapy.

The current situation is a mess as far as new game offers are concerned. The raw mess that is tariffs and trade wars threatens this entire cottage wing of the industry. We're already paying 20% over the initial investment with increased shipping costs, and it is only going to get worse. In addition to the added cost is the fact that we now have another step in the process - you order, you pay, and then you have to confirm and pay again wherever the wheel of financial fortune shows up. When I worked for Amazon, we obsessed with the idea of reducing the number of clicks needed to get somewhere. We're not doing it here, and it's going to hurt us, badly.

In any event, here are the latest things from the outside world.

Hamil's House of Oddities by Jon and Brynn Hage , Sleeping Giant Games, 304-page hardbound, Kickstarter, and Shadow's Reach by Jon and Brynn Hage  Sleeping Giant Games, 252-page hardbound, Kickstarters. This is one of the more beautiful projects to come across my transom in the past year. The main book (Hamil's) is a 5E adventure, while the Shadow's Reach is campaign, treasure, and monsters/characters. There's not a lot of text on each page, but it has a calm, cozy look to it, and really nice b/w art. This is the sort of thing I look for in Kickstarters - nice, personal products. 

Playing at the World, 2E Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons by Jon Peterson, the MIT Press, 374-page trade softbound, Gabi's Olympic Cards and Comics, Lacy, WA. Hang on, didn't I already get the original Playing at the World? Well, yeah, but that version covered everything, from German Kriegspiels and HGWell's Floor Games to the almost-present day. This is both cut down to the "juicy bits" about D&D itself, and expands in that Peterson has gained access to previously unavailable information. I'm looking forward to a reread (though right now on my reading list I am obsessing over the various colonial struggles in and around what is now Pittsburgh).

Triangle Agency, Normal Briefcase Collection, by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland, Haunted Table Games, Boxed set containing 300-page hardbound book, 216-page mission book, ring-bound character sheet booklet, dice, 2024, Kickstarter. I don't think I've ever been as intimidated by a game as by this one. It arrived, I opened the "Normal Briefcase" box, found it completely packed, carefully put the components back into the box, and and set it aside for when I could properly examine it. That was about four months ago. Anyway, finally cracking the game, it is pretty impressive, and fairly daunting. It is a corporate supernatural game where you are employed by the Triangle Agency to investigate anomalies. The game runs off four-sided die, but only the 3s matter. The books themselves are laid out as orientation manuals for the new "employees", and are spot-on happy-talk versions you'd find when you start at Amazon. Impressive and a little frightening.

Changed Stars by Patrice Daniel Long, Leland Andercheck, Dieselshot Express, 304-page hardbound, 2023, Kickstarter. This was definite whim purchase, but I'm pretty happy with it. SF set in the future of the Orion Arm, where humanity expanded out, acted like a bunch of militaristic a-holes, lost the war and was transformed into less a-holes. Original system, diverse alien species, lots of cool-looking ships, a very Star Trek Next Generation meets Traveller vibe. Merits a more thorough read-through.

Aetherial Expanse: Setting Guide by Joe Raso (project lead) and James J. Haeck (Story), Ghostfire Games, 294-page hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. This one has an interesting provenance - it is the campaign setting book for a series of pdf adventures. But it is also another take of D&D IN SPAAAACE, so I'm naturally interested in it. Space in this case is an astral sea dotted by various island nations. They look like they've expanding in how to handle ship movement and combat within the D&D system (though I've been partial to the methodology laid out in Secrets of Saltmarsh, no one else seems to have picked up on it). Ship hit points seem a bit light, but I can do a bit more digging on that.

The Grey Knight by Larry DiTillio, Moon Design Publications, 84-page hardbound, 2024 (original 1986), Gabi's Cards and Comics, Lacey, Washington. I can't say a lot about this one, since a colleague is running the original version of this adventure using original Pendragon rules (character generation was complex for the time). This looks like it has added some additional material and tied it in more tightly with their starter set. The graphic quality is high. But I'll wait until our current campaign wraps before delving too deeply into it.

Arkham by Mike Mason, Keith Herger, Bret Kramer, Chaosium, 268-page hardbound w/ two full-color maps and a facsimile newspaper, 2023, Gabi's Olympic Cards and Comics. Another whim purchase and a good one. Arkham was HPLovecraft's setting for many of his stories. He did a sketch map for it, which was expanded by others (most notably cartoonish Gahan Wilson), each new version adding stuff to it. Chaosium has done several editions of the town, and this one is probably the best yet. Not only does it have a lot of the characters, locations and creatures of the haunted city, but also a lot of good info on how to use all this information and playing characters in the 1920s. Eminently browsable. 

Urban Shadows by Mark Diaz Truman and Marissa Kelly, Magpie games, 320 pages, 2024, Kickstarter. This is 2nd edition of the game, the first being 10 years previous, much like the current D&D. Powered by the Apocalypse, and hews more tightly to all the options presented there than, say, Brindlewood Bay. We have moves, we have play books, we have a lot of player empowerment. Has a heavy scent of the World of Darkness in its urban fantasy with factions as different character ancestries. The interior is very, very purple, but it is an impressive volume, 

Swyvers by Luke Gearing and David Hoskins, Melsonian Arts Council, 96-page hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. This is an odd and amusing little duck. deep in the alleys of a Londonish fantasy city. Players are thieves and knaves of the worst sort. The rules are light and portable, and the book is filled with random tables. Also, you play blackjack to cast spells. Yeah, this is not too deep, and good for making stuff up as you go. The included adventure involves cheese thieves. Production values are nice and fit the setting well. Worth trying out once or twice. 

Found Worlds by Todd Lockwood, 352-page hardbound, Gift from a Friend. An art book? Here? Sure. Todd Lockwood is a brilliant artist, and an excellent heir to the classic TSR Artdogs. The book covers the full career, but of course the stuff that connects with me is the TSR/WotC material, particularly in crystalizing the look and feel of 3E. Heavy stock, beautiful colors, captures the detail o his art.  

That's if for now. I'll be heading for Gary Con next week in beautiful Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and may have a bit more after that.

More later, 

Theatre: Anniversary Plays

Covenant by York Walker, Directed by Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Arts West Through 2 March.

Blues For an Alabama Sky by Peral Cleage, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Seattle Rep through 23 February

The Lovely Bride and I have crested 42 years of marriage this past week (thank you, thank you), and to celebrate, we decided to hold a "staycation" where both of us took off work. As a result, we played games (I lost several games of Wingspan), ate a lot of good food (Chestnut Cafe, which is the LB's favorite's lunch spot, Lobster Shop in Tacoma, Mashiko Sushi in West Seattle, and Toulouse Petite near the Seattle Center). And, as fate would have it, we had two plays scheduled over three days - Covenant at the Arts West, and Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Seattle Rep.

Let me get to the heart of the matter - Covenant was the best play and the best performance I have seen in Seattle for years, Arts West has been putting together bang-up seasons for the past couple years, and this one fired on all cylinders. The writing was top-notch, the performances were amazing, the direction was fantastic, and set design was grand. The small nature of the theatre brought an intimacy that allowed the actors to reach out across the void of the forestage and grab the audience by the collective shoulders and give them a good shake. The play is mythic and suspenseful and fully engaged.

Covenant is about secrets. It is also about faith and superstition, but it is most of all about secrets. The setting is a small town in Georgia, 1936. Johnny (Donavan Mahannah) comes back to his home town. He left town a stammering boy in the wake of his older brother's death. He returns now without the stammer, a master musician with his guitar, and possessing a smooth self-assurance. Naturally there's suspicion he made a deal with the devil. He came back for Avery (Simone Alene), who was just a friend but now something much more. Avery's Mama (Felicia V. Loud) is a god-fearing woman who does not approve of Johnny and his juke joint antics. Little sister Violet (Deja Culver) and family friend Ruthie (Kaila Towers) round out the ensemble. They're all brilliant.

And I don't want to say more because I don't want to do spoilers here - it's that good. Each character gets their turn to tell stories and reveal secrets, as well as sparking off each other in meaningful relationships. And the writing is SO GOOD, of the level that I was left thinking "Man, I wish I had written that" and "Man, I wish I could write like that". There is a not an ounce of fat in this play - even the most cast-off line has meaning and subtext, and is delivered in such a natural and engaged fashion, that over the course of the play as you realize (often to your horror) what is really going on here. All questions are resolved, even the ones you didn't know you had.

And part of that is the direction (Nicholas Japaul Bernard) and the dramaturg (Marquisa 'QuiQui" Dominguez. The players maneuver perfectly a two-tiered stage, the back stage being Mama's dining room, dominated by a cross, which the forestage was open for a variety of purposes, including a general "theatre space" as the actors share secrets with the audience. The sound design was excellent, accenting the action on the stage. Even the stagehands, the black-dressed theatre ninjas moving props onto and off the stage, were used perfectly. 

I rarely say that something is a near-perfect play, but this is it. Get yourself out to West Seattle for this one. 

Sunday we decamped for the Seattle Center and Blues for an Alabama Sky. And I will be honest - it was good. And if I saw it on its own I would probably give it greater praise. But it suffers in comparison with Covenant.

We're still in the 1930s, but this time in Harlem. Angel (Ayanna Bria Bakeri) is a hot mess of cabaret singer who just lost her job, her living space, and her boyfriend. Guy (Jamar Jones) is her gay best friend from Savannah, who is a costumer and is sure that Josephine Baker will sweep him up and invite him to come work for her in Paris. As he is trying to navigate a drunken Angel home, they're aided by Leland (Ajaz Dontavius), newly arrived from Alabama in the big sinful city. Delia (Ester Okech Lewis) is the prim neighbor from across the hall who is working to bring a family planning center (read: birth control) to Harlem, aided by a boisterous local doctor (Yusef Seevers). The five of them struggle with life and survival in the wake of the fading Harlme Renaissance.

And it works, mostly. The first act feels like it drags a bit, Checkov's gun makes a requisite appearance, and you can see some of the twists and turns coming a ways off. Some personal revelations and traumas show up rather late in the day. And there is a huge amount of name dropping going on - Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, Adam Clayton Powell (Jr and Sr), Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, none of whom show up on stage. 

The music, however, is haunting and delightful, with Nathan Breedlove on the trumpet acting as the ghostly spirit of the city itself to show time passing. Which is a good thing, since the stagecraft involves a turntable set that shifts back and forth to show what apartment we are in. I would wonder if the play would work better in a smaller confines, or, on the other hand, if Covenant would fade if thrust onto a larger stage.

Yet, it all comes together. The actors are fine. It is the best of three revivals at the Rep this season (it was originally produced 30 years ago). Given a choice between this and the Super Bowl, I'd definitely choose Alabama Sky. But seriously, go hunt down Covenant and prepare to be impressed. 

More later,