Primary: Any Storm in a Port

Goodness, do we have a primary coming up?

Yep, the state primary has been moved up to August, and given (for this area at least) a pretty soft opening. Here on Grubb Street we don't vote for the Seattle City Council, don't belong to Renton or Kent (yet), and due to the recent provincialization of the King County Council, we have an off-year there as well. That leaves King County Prosecuting Attorney and Assessor (Partisan posts), a couple ballot measures, and two non-partisan positions with the Port of Seattle (Top two going to November).

Ah, the Port of Seattle. This is a non-partisan post, which means Republicans can run for it without having to admit they are Republicans, only that they favor "business and growth". And, being a large, murky operation with opaque meetings of late and access to a great deal of power (SeaTac airport, our ports, cargo loading, and a large amount of choice land), it is no surprise that here is where we tend to find a crop of scandals. And the most recent one stems from a Platinum Parachute given to the former head of the Port of Seattle, which was approved in secret by the Port of Seattle Council. The Port if Seattle investigated this charge and found the Port of Seattle innocent. And then gave itself a cookie.

So reform is in the air for the Port, and I'm going to recommend Jack Block, a longshoreman who sits on the Burien City Council (Burien being cheek-by-jowl on the Third runway of SeaTac) and who gets an Outstanding record from the Municipal League and the Sierra Club's endorsement. The incumbent is Bob Edwards who is apparently part of the problem.

For the other position, I am going to recommend Alec Fisken, who also gets the Sierra Club nod but (surprise!) is the incumbent in this case. Fisken is a progressive who has been fighting uphill against the tinted windows around the Port's meetings and needs some aid in letting some light in.

For the Democratic primary for KC Prosecutor, both candidates, Keith Scully and Bill Sherman are good, and this is a place where there is an embarrassment of riches. I'm going to go with Bill Sherman only because of the Municipal League rating. but I shan't cry if Scully gets the nod.

For Democratic Primary for KC Assessor, we have one candidate, the incumbent, Scott Noble. Yeah, sounds good to me.

There are a pair of ballot measures on the boards as well for King County, Proposition 1 is to retain a levy for regional and rural parks. Proposition 2 is to create a new levy for the regional trails and the Woodland Park Zoo. Vote YES on both of these. The local fire district has to huxter for money as well YES to them

And that's about it. It is a warmup for the fall, so vote early and vote ... well, early. They're figuring around a 34% turnout this time around, so your vote counts a little more than normal.

More later,

So

DOW breaks 13000!

Whatheheydehuh?

Didn't I just just a month ago post that the DOW, our hothouse flowers of the stock market, broke through the 14000 mark? That the market was starting to recover from all the messes of the past few years and start making real progress?

Alas, such was not to be. And as much as I want to make a Rupert Murdoch joke about it, the man who Mike Royko once tagged as "The Alien" has little to directly do with it.

The thing is, the market of late has been a Potemkin village, a series of false fronts with not much supporting them on the backside with real progress. A big chunk of the growth has been is sub-prime loans and other chancy ventures. Now we have a reckoning, or as those in the biz like to call it, a "correction" (Doctor Evil quote-fingers apply). Apparently a "correction" is if the stock market loses some 10% of its value. No word on what happens when it gets past that mark.

So of course, these brave financial entrepreneurs take such reverses in stride, and redouble efforts to grow their stocks. Yeah, right. The same folk who rail against government interference go nuts when the market decides to "correct" itself and demand government help. And so the Federal Reserve pumped a lot of money into the system last Friday to "preserve liquidity". And the stock market showed its appreciation by holding steady on Monday before taking a dives yesterday and today. Oh, and the Fed pumped more liquidity in today, but to no avail. Would the Federal Government work as hard pumping out the Gulf Coast a few years back, we might not have these problems.

Oh, and all those sub-prime mortgages, all that bad debt and iffy paper floating around? Your government is backing it up. So even if you're smart enough to avoid these sucker bundled loans and ARMs, your government isn't. Insert standard reference of those who pay taxes bailing out those that don't here, but you know the drill.

The interesting thing is, I've been doing some research on the big crash of '29. This was primarily for my Call of Cthulhu game - we're running Tatters of the King, an adventure which takes place in '28 and '29, but which avoids ALL MENTION of the stock market crash. Making it harder for me, it is set in England, so not only I am investigating the crash, I am trying to interpolate its effects on Europe.

Anyway, the research shows some scary parallels (including market jitters created by rumors that the Gummint would crack down on the phoney-baloney buying on margin practices). The Market hit its all-time high about a month before. slid backwards, fell off a small cliff on Black Thursday (24 October), was shored up by the banks for Friday, and then fell off a larger cliff on the well-remembered Black Tuesday (29 October). And all during this time, any faint economic heartbeat was seized upon as proof that the markets would reverse themselves and things would return to normal.

Which they did. By 1954. So buckle in. This may be a bit of a ride.

More later,

Story Time

Last week we held Media Day here at ArenaNet for our upcoming Guild Wars: Eye of the North expansion. We invited members of the online and paper computer game press to come into the office and play the game and talk to us.

The most amusing moment for me was during game's opening moments, when the heroes are attacked by the Destroyers, our big bads, and are supposed to help the dwarves escape by running at full tilt away. Instead, every one of these brave professional journalists stopped, turned around to face the eldritch horrors and took a screen shot to use with their articles. Needless to say, very few heroes reached the exit.

Anyway, as a result of the interviews, we have gotten a lot of good press about the game, leading up to its release at the end of the month - here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, and here. And also, Allen Rausch of Gamespy and I had a long chat (OK, I did most of the chatting, I'm afraid) about story and games. Check that one out here.

And since I'm doing the major promotion thing, we're having a major presence at the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo, so if you're in the Seattle area, come on down and see us.

More later,

Lucky Chaarms

So I dropped in at IKEA in Renton the other day, an idea which scares some people (like, you know, me). Even scarier, I discovered that they had expanded.

Now saying that the IKEA, blue-walled purveyor of flat-pack furnishings, has expanded is sort of like saying the the Vatican has suddenly thrown up another wing. When I first moved out here, the IKEA was a big warehouse, half of which was store and half of which was indoor parking (a surprising rarity in a land with so much supposed rain). Well, most of that parking is gone, and they gutted out the warehouse next door for more parking, and gutted the next building over as WELL for the overflow lot. So yeah, they've expanded.

And like the Vatican, the IKEA is its own self-established nation-state completely surrounded by another, larger governmental entity. Actually, it is more like mitochondria in our cells in that it has its own unique DNA that doesn't match up with its surroundings. It is this little (well, big) wafer of European salesmanship in the midst of otherwise American consumerism.

Anyway, my goal was to find two items that the Lovely Bride has been unable to locate in more traditional outlets - a hand-held orange squeezer (which looks like a frozen, unbloomed flower, or a small, medieval mace), and the plastic lid you put on the plate you put the plate in the microwave. They were pretty common but specialized items, and I felt if they would be anywhere, it would be here.

So, walking into an IKEA is a strange thing in itself, with its carry-all bags and recycling bins. Very different from the stink of desperation and failure I always get when I go into a Walmart. Indeed, there is a feeling of Scandinavian progressivism that extends far beyond its blonde furnishings and low-priced Swedish meatballs. The layout of the store is a single lane that meanders through its huge vault, punctured by small but discrete openings in the walls. These do a great job separating the shoppers (who take the paths and are looking for many things) from the buyers (who want to go in, get what they want, and leave).

But it does create this weird vibe that you are rats in the maze, and in his secret bunker, Ingvar, secret master of IKEA, is watching your progress, flanked by two busty Scandanavian assistants in tight lab coats. "You see?" He says, as Sasha (or is it Inga?) marks down something on a clipboard, "By moving the entrance to the cooking implements three feet over from the Persian rugs, we have increased cross traffic by three entire percentiles!"

And I admit, I felt like a very smart little lab rat, being able to avoid the home furnishings and framed posters to get to the cooking tools. Where I found what I was looking for with very little difficulty. In non-American tradition, there was only ONE orange-squeezer (called chaarm - everything here has its own strange, cute name. There is a lab somewhere in Denmark filled with writers whose only job is to come up with these names). But it was a big bin of chaarms, negating the need for any other chaarms in the world. Similarly, there was only one "plastic-lid-you-put-on-the-dish-in-the-microwave", called a haaselhoff or something, but it was the only plastic-lid-you-put-on-the-dish-in-the-microwave you'll ever need. You can imagine Invar and his assistants testing hundreds of them is some clean, bright lab, just to bring you a bin of them.

And there was stuff there that I, Food-Network junkie that I am, could not identify - single-taskers that would make Alton Brown have a cardiac. I had to ask one of the well-informed clerks to identify something that looked like a cross between a rifle bolt-action and a robotic sex toy, and was informed it was a corer. I think its name was knurdel.

So, having grabbed my chaarm and haaselhoff, I fled for the exits, to discover that there are fewer secret doors the deeper you go into Invar's lair. I finally found myself in the new checkout area, where they have incorporated self-checkout. I was partially successful, for while the haaselhoff read properly, the tag on the chaarm was such it would not read and ANOTHER friendly, well-informed clerk ran it through. Properly armed with my chaarm and haaselhoff, like a knight of old with lance and shield, I fled to the indoor parking lot next door.

Though I left, I could have sworn I heard Invar's dry, Swedish chuckle behind me.

More later,

Elliot S! Maggin

So my old comic book editor is running for office. Elliot was one of the editors on the now-classic Forgotten Realms book back in the 80s, but is better known for his extensive work as a writer, including a screaming bunch of good comics as well as novels on Superman and Kingdom Come.

Elliot has always had a political outlook, which spills into his public, personal, and fictional lives. Most recently, in the DC Universe, he was the Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen's campaign manager in the superhero's run for Mayor of Star City.

According to the Wikipedia, the 24th occupies parts of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and is strong Republican. It delivered for George Bush at 56% in the last presidential, and the local Dems got pasted in the 2006 election, but things have been bad for incumbent GOP across the board of late. Rep Elton Gallegy has been making noises about stepping down for medical reasons (he's been in office for 24 years), but has a massive war chest.

Elliot has company for the Democratic primary - other candidates include the Democrat candidate from 2006, Jill Martinez, businesswoman Mary Pallant, 2004 nominee Brett Wagner, and maybe former mayor of Ventura Richard Francis.

It looks like a crowded field. Maybe Elliot can get Oliver Queen's campaign manager to help out.

More later,

Victorian Battlemechs

So I was going to write about something else, but this short film caught my eye. Its from Blur Studios, which does the cyber-football players you see on FOX NFL games.

As one of my co-workers put it best "I want to play the game that this video is not the Hi-Res graphic for". Me, I'll settle for building the world.

More later,

Peas

So the back of our house has a pair of balcony decks, one outside the bedroom and one outside my home office. And the Lovely Bride has built window-boxes to hang on the railings of those decks, and planted various annuals there.

And every year, as we move towards high summer, I forget to water said plants for a week or so, and everything turns brown, and it is my fault (my balcony, you see).

So the LB came up with the solution. This year she planted peas among the annuals. And since I like to eat raw peas from the shell, I am watering more often, since nothing beats sitting on your back porch, eating raw peas within easy reach.

Smart woman, that Lovely Bride,

More later,

H. P. Baumcraft

So a long while back, I talked about the local comics convention, and the large number of books dealing in the shared realities of H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and Frank Baum's Oz. And part of this is because both exist in this nebulous copyright territory where some pieces are clearly in the public domain, while others may not be (depending on who you talk to).

But then I started riffing on REALLY sharing the realities between the two, and ended up with a list of mashup titles, suitable to drive any copyright lawyer up the wall.

Here's what I got:

Ozathoth
Beyond the Gate of the Silver Slippers
The Statement of Dorothy Gale
The Winkies in the Walls
The King in Yellow Brick
At the Munchkins of Madness
The Call of th'C'wardly Lion
The Nameless Emerald City
Rinkitink, Reanimator
Pumpkinhead's Model
The Tik-Tok on the Doorstep
The Dreams in the Wicked Witch House
The Dreamquest of Unknown Kansas
The Doom that Came to Ozma

More are left as an exercise to the reader.

More later,

Novel: Four Color in Black and White

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, Pantheon, 2007

This is a bit weird - not the book itself, it is pretty traditional pop lit that attempts to straddle the domain between Real Literature and Comic Book Heroes, but the way that it has heaved up on my horizon, and all the pieces that fit into it.

So first I saw this book on Scalzi's site. Literally saw it - he posted a picture of books he is reading at the moment. Then Bill and Mi'ko had a copy, and I borrowed it from them. Then when preparing this review, I discovered the author was the brother of Lev Grossman, who wrote Codex, which I reviewed here. And Lev Grossman's name popped up in a comment from Sacnoth for an article he wrote on Harry Potter.

Small world, eh?

OK, the book. I have seen it pitched as a "funny" take on funny book heroes, but it is not, despite a relatively light tone. I mean, you're competing with FUNNY funny books, and mere text ain't going to be able to surpass the physical humor of a Plastic Man comic. Soon... a little wry, a little learned, and a little mocking of the tropes and traditions of the comic book universes. You know, origins (everyone has one), arch enemies, secret IDs, Headquarters and super teams. The chapter headings pull from the full plethora of catch phrases in use. I wouldn't say it was funny, but I would say it amuses.

The book alternates between narration by Doctor Impossible (archcriminal and perennial punching bag for the good guys) and Fatale (Cyborg without a past and newbie on the Justice League-ish super team). Doctor Impossible seeks to take over the world while ruminating on why he does what he does. Fatale goes behind the looking glass to see that her heroes (Batman-clone, Superman-Clone, Wonder Woman-clone. etc ...) are not what they appear to be to the common man.

It is all very neatly done, but it has been done before, in the comic books, in the 80s and 90s. Astro City is probably the best example of the "grounding" of the supermen, but even in print with have Wild Cards, and both of these go deeper into the psyches of their targets. Soon ... embraces without question many of the tropes that it purportedly satirizes (all the superpowers seem to have gone to the same high school, evil geniuses are evil geniuses because ... they are evil geniuses (following along the idea that "knowledge is bad")).

The book bounces along nicely though, except for two chapters where the author seems to say magic is a fraud, and with it the magic of comic books, but these moments pass and we move to a four-color conclusion. I guessed the second-act reveal but not the third-act, which makes sense if you think about it, but only if you stop and think about it. But style works, and works best when Doctor Impossible has the podium, both recognizing his weaknesses and lockstepping his way to his next defeat.

Its amusing, lacking the hard edges of Watchmen or the deep background of Cavalier and Clay, but its something to curl up with on the back porch and read while drinking a frozen rum punch.

More later,

When Night Falls

So right now, Renton is setting up for its "Renton River Days", which translates into "Hey, let's close all the alternate routes through the town and REALLY clog up I-405!" So while I'm slogging through traffic (a strange prophesy of what would happen should they ever BUILD the sonics arena down there), here's something different:

This is a link to a journal that has been chronicling a group's passage through Guild Wars: Nightfall. It is raised above the level of "Let me tell you about my characters" by a very intelligent and amusing writing style. So if you wanted to know what the game was about without actually, you know, PLAYING the game, check it out.

More later,

Blackout

So, there was a weird explosion and electrical outage in the SoMa (South of Market) area of San Francisco yesterday. Which normally wouldn't affect anyone outside the immediate area, but in fact strung out a good chunk of the net, since one of the businesses affected runs Livejournal. It was as if thousands of personal sites suddenly cried out, and then were suddenly silenced.

No, Blogger was not affected, but it is a good warning sign that just because everyone uses the net, it doesn't mean that it suddenly cannot lose functionality (or go away entirely) if a couple chokepoints suddenly close.

More later,

Comics: After the War

(The comics-geek flag is unfurled. Proceed with caution)

Captain America is still dead. Thor, however, is alive again.

Thor? Yeah, he died. You didn't know? A couple years back. He was confronted with the fact that constant Ragnaröks were the result of meddling from even-greater gods and so he ended the cycle of cosmic abuse by bringing the whole shebang down and ending it all. Actually, it was a punk death, and in-continuity, the rest of the Marvel Universe didn't even notice. None of his supposed buds came looking for him. And now they're sneaking him back into the universe in a middle-of-the-night sort of way (Compare this with how DC has bungled up Wonder Woman - odd that for being "modern mythology" the big two have a problem with dealing with mythology).

I'm wandering, but since Marvel has wrapped up its last megaseries (Civil War), is in the midst of its new one (Hulk fights everyone) and is prepping for a third (Everyone you ever liked is really a Skrull), it is a good time to look back on the Marvel Civil War.

Credit should be given for making a change, even a bad change, and then following it to the bitter end (As cautionary tale if nothing else). The purpose was to create a new status quo, and everyone in that universe now has to deal with it. Most of them have dealt with it, though, by vilifying the current status quo. Almost every book works off the vibe of showing the Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA) as a cynical sham at best, a real threat overall. Even characters put on the "pro" side have to tapdance and refine their internal stories to handle supporting an odious operation. Some come off as Stormtroopers, others as apologists. None really make the grade as "heroes".

And the truly interesting thing is that: it did not have to end up this way. Over here is a very interesting artifact, and if you have been following the entire mess, it is a really good read and a demonstration of how creativity functions within a corporate environment.

It is the original proposal for the Civil War series. And the interesting thing is - it's a better book than what came out. Traditional in some senses (there is a definite bad guy for everyone to unify against), but it also identifies where the series went wrong - the case for the Pro-SHRA group was never made beyond the initial disaster (an argument that weakens every time there is another disaster - Superheroes accidentally wiping out a town in Connecticut requires immediate action, but superheroes brawling in Times Square (again) does not?).

The planned results laid out in the original proposal are also missing from the final story - we get a couple voice balloons in-story saying that crime is down and people appreciate the change, but we never see it (Comics are about showing as opposed to telling). Those involved in the original pitch aren't sure about the Spider-Man unmasking at all, much less on national television. And in a telling moment, the editorial notes state that even the guys reviewing the initial approach don't buy the fact the Captain America would surrender or retire, a sign that more groundwork has to be done if we're going to build up to that resolution.

And the original was supposed to be the big return of Thor, in a set-up that made sense, which not only left the characters intact but creates a third path, which could have broken away from the bipolar "fer us or agin us" feel of the final Civil War series. That would bring Thor back at the heart of the Marvel creation, and re-establish him as one of the "Big Three" traditional heroes. Another missed opportunity.

This is a very interesting insight into the sausage-making of the creative process. The original proposal shows that most of the pieces were in place and most of the challenges were identified in advance. And yet the final product was weak in its ending, demonized one side of the equation, crippled long-standing characterization, was marred by a lack of internal logic, and failed to create a platform to return a missing character that was originally planned.

But against this background, that I just read the first mainstream Marvel book that treats the SHRA as something other than a fascist irritant. It is one of their second-generation spin-off books called "The Order" and actually puts together some interesting characters in the situation hinted at at the end of Civil War, while remaining morally grounded to the underpinning that the Pro-SHRA forces were supposed to stand for (Some of the team show lack of judgment by publicly partying after hours - and they get fired! Captain America moment!). Now, it is a second-tier book and set in California (kiss of marketing death in the Marvel Universe), but it actually delivers some of the goods promised, but never presented, in the Civil War.

OK, I think I'm done now with it this. At least until something else goes weird (and new comics come out tomorrow).

More later,

Pötterdämmerung

So, it was a very quiet weekend at Grubb Street, mainly because the latest and last Harry Potter book arrived Saturday morning, and with the exception of her Saturday afternoon gaming group, the Lovely Bride was face-down in the text for the bulk of the weekend.

Which made things quiet. Creepy quiet. I sat on the back porch, reading. I worked on finishing projects (An essay in galleys, in-game text for The Settlers, a proposed article). I watched TV, which I rarely do. That included a marathon for "Who Will Be The Next Food Network Star?" (Don't care much for reality shows, but add cooking and I am SO there) and a TBSed version of "Sin City" (Note: Frank Miller no longer writes comic books - he just publishes his storyboards). But it was weirdly, strangely quiet in the household.

Mind you, I have not read any of the books, though I have been following along in the movies, and the LB has kept me up to date with the status and the "deep geek" moments (I tell her about the O'Brian novels, so it's a fair trade). But this weekend I have been avoiding a lot of the Internet, just to avoid everyone who was issuing spoilers, or even non-spoiler spoilers ("Well, it ended the way I expected it to" IS a spoiler if you've previously offered your opinions).

It ends a twelve year run for the series, and I am buckling down for the inevitable "Now that HP is gone, the book business will crash" (Like it's been in raring good health so far) and the inevitable search for the Next Young Adult Novel Star.

Hmmm - maybe they could do a reality show on that ....

More later,

Local Politics: Groundwork

So the 4th of July has come and gone, the lawn signs are starting to sprout up like our western variety of dandelion, and people are planning for not only 2007 election, but the 2008 one as well (be very afraid). Here's the foundations that have been laid, which may or may not pop up as we move forward into the campaign season.

Starting at the tightest level, sometime over the next year or so, our chunk of unincorporated King County is supposed to swallowed by Kent. "Supposed to be" is the operative word, since due the fact we have a Renton postal address, I haven't seen anything in the way of mail on this (and I have to pursue this more to find out if there are really plans for annexation - more on that as I learn it).

With the last general election, the Dems took a strong majority in the state house, and proceeded to ... um ... run the state pretty well. There are a few things I would have preferred to have seen go through (like laws against predatory lenders), but in general, the roof did not fall in just because one party had the bulk of the power (compare with the national level for the previous six years). Nobody drove off any legislative cliffs. The biggest ruckus I remember was over Nascar wanting to build a track in the area. Our local Rep, Geoff Simpson, was a strong supporter of the idea. I came out of the debate with the feeling that I wouldn't use a Nascar track, wouldn't be heartbroken if one were built down near, say, Puyallup, but would really rather see our state funds spent elsewhere rather than as welfare to wealthy owners. But that's just me.

On the state level, the GOP, narrowly edged out in the controversial gubernatorial election of 2004, is trying to make the case that things have been horrible without stern, rational pro-business conservatives in charge. That task has been made tougher by the fact that the state's economy has rebounded nicely over the past couple years, and Forbes has declared the state to be one of the top five to do business in (with a special gold star for reducing bureaucratic red tape). Plus, the current administration get high marks for transparency and disclosure, another state-level (at least) GOP talking point. So barring a scandal, it looks like an uphill battle for the GOP. At the moment, their tactic seems to be "Sure, things are good, but its not like the Governor has anything to DO with that".

For US Rep in the fighting 8th district the current incumbent also made it in by a thin majority, but he has since pretty much dropped off the face of the earth. Getting a great deal of support from the GOP hierarchy during its halcyon years of the turn of the century, he remains loyal to an increasingly unpopular administration, and hasn't been doing much but standing firm on terror (I did get a mailer to that effect, but this looked like they found a couple boxes of them after the last campaign's carpetbombing). Last time he got by on the strength of the more conservative, rural areas of Pierce County to the south, but there is no guarantee this will carry him again.

Meanwhile, the Dem challenger from the last election has been active making friends and raising funds for another run (Your first political campaign is for love - your second is for vengeance). And our moribund Democratic establishment, which usually writes off the 8th as GOP territory has woken up, realized there may actually be a race out here, and has put forth what they think of as an ideal candidate - a former Republican who jumped the party last year. So it looks like we're going to have a primary, which is a great thing in my opinion, pitching Progressive and Traditional against each other.

But all this is groundwork. What's past is prologue. Things will just start getting interesting as we move forward.

More later,

DOW Breaks 14000!

And with upcoming purchase of the DOW by the Murdoch Media Machine(tm), that may be the last time that even this number has any passing relationship to reality. Of course, the DOW is a collection of only 30 cherry-picked stocks, fed through an arcane formula to produce an end product that is often a twisted mirror of America's financial health, but its a traditional number, so I can go with it.

Now, however, a memo will come down from Corporate that that DOW must react badly to some news about laws against media consolation, and it will be the responsibility of the working stiffs to make sure that this message goes out, regardless of reality (not making this up - this how FOX News stays "on message" (and the current message is - "whatever you do, don't mention the war")). So we're looking at another measurement overtaken by the very people that it is supposed to measure, and we know how that turns out.

But in the meantime, Americans are expected to be thankful for their 3 buck a gallon gas, since they were saying that it would be 4 buck a gallon (and still can be, if we don't shape up and stay "on message").

More later,

Update Oops! In the time it takes to write this up, the DOW slides 150 points. Ah, well, it was interesting while it lasted.

A Mighty Plug

Here is the link to the trailer to the Guild Wars expansion I have been working on.

I wrote the script and oversaw the voice recordings, but it is the images and editing that just makes it rock.

More later,

On the Road Again: Duck Dodgers

So every Tuesday (or MOSTLY every Tuesday), the Lovely Bride picks me up at work and we cross the I-90 bridge to Seattle for our weekly Tai Chi class (Chen Old Frame 1, and I am almost getting the kicks right at this point). And in good weather, whenever we cross Lake Washington, there is always a gaggle of sailboats off to our right (north of the bridge), spinning and diving on each other. From a distance it looks like a flock of seagulls, and we always wondered if it was an organized outing or just nautical swarm behavior.

Wonder no more. The front page of the Seattle Times (because there's like, nothing else really going on in the world) covers the Duck Dodge, which is the weekly gathering of sailcraft, which includes races, relaxation, and, apparently, mooning of other ships (Not visible from the highway). Enjoy.

More later,

Update Here's an older article on the merriment. Note that TODAY's Seattle Times goes on at length about how the city is cracking down on rowdy nighclubs. Maybe they should get sailboats.

Trailers

So the Lovely Bride and I went to see the latest "Harry Potter" film over the weekend, and I thought it. It was pretty good and it made internal sense to me, though the LB went back to re-read that particular book to see what they left in, took out, or created anew, in preparation of the release of the last book.

(And it gets very quiet around the house when a new HP book shows up, as Kate spends her non-painting hours in a chair, reading. But I digress...)

So the movie was good, but the trailers really attracted my attention. Mind you, I am not a major movie fan, so I rarely know when a movie is coming until the week before, when there is an overload of movie promos on the tube (and I know it is Friday when the movie opens and that huge surge disappears). So I was seeing stuff for the first time.

- Like the relentless "If you liked Harry Potter, you'll like ..." attitudes of the Golden Compass (Narnia for atheists) and some other YA book which I had no previous knowledge of where ordinary kid travels through time in the fight between light and darkness. ( I guess the holiday movie Fred Claus, about Santa's slacker older brother, also falls into this category).

- Like Steve Carell in a new Get Smart movie. Steve Miller and I howled at the trailer, the bulk of which was a phone booth gag worthy of the original series. May the movie be as good.

- Like a cute little video for "Across the Universe", which is a Beatles musical (anyone who remembers "Sgt Pepper's" or "All This and World War II" is now making holy signs against the computer screen and praying for their eternal souls). But they used a lesser-known (I had to look it up) song ("I've Just Seen a Face" which you know, but never by that title) and made it even more up-tempo than Paul McCartney usually barrels through. This is one movie I am going to deeply avoid (the story involves a young man named Jude, the girl he meets named Lucy, and Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite ... OK, I'll stop now before you gouge out your eyes). All the warning side of a horrible project. Still, as a two minute video, it is really cool (and not yet available on the net - another, sadder, odder trailer, is).

And one other thing - what are they thinking about the clientèle when they run promos for Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel before all this. Did they make a connection between foodies and Harry Potter fans?

More later,

A Small Plug

So, fellow Alliterate and all-around nice guy Wolfgang Baur, also known as the Monkey King, has launched his new gaming magazine, Kobold Quarterly, now available both as PDF and in that new-fangled, limited-edition, dead-tree version. Check it out.

More later,

Basic Questions

I don't discuss the "Big Subject" of Game Design much here, both because I think about it a lot as my "day-job" and I don't usually feel like preaching my particular version of the Faith. But I've been thinking about the basic questions you ask when you start on a game, a world, a novel, or a campaign, and I'm having a hard time doing better than a bit presented on J. Michael Straczynski's old SF show, Babylon 5.

In that show, it was revealed over time that there were two great elder races vying for power (The Vorlon and Shadows, but never mind that). How they defined the philosophies of those two races were the following two questions:

WHO ARE YOU?
WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Now whether these statements match up with that those elder races were doing with the universe is a discussion for some B5 BBS somewhere. My point is that these two questions are a pretty good starting point for your game, and a pretty good touchstone for how you succeed in presenting your vision. If you can communicate those two points, you've got a chance of connecting with your ultimate audience.

Let's roll the tape on a couple classic RPGs to test this out:

D&D and its linear descendants:
WHO ARE YOU? I am an adventurer
WHAT DO YOU WANT? I want to kill monsters and take their stuff.

Vampire the Masquerade
WHO ARE YOU? I am monster
WHAT DO YOU WANT? I want to be moral despite my monstrosity (angst!)

Shadowrun (and a lot of Cyberpunkish games)
WHO ARE YOU? I am an freelance criminal.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? I want to do what I have to do to get paid.

Call of Cthulhu
WHO ARE YOU? I am an investigator.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? I want to poke around the edges of sanity and try not to go mad.

Sometimes the answers may explain the challenges in the campaign:

Empire of the Petal Throne.
WHO ARE YOU? I am a citizen in a fantasy empire. Which is really in the future, and the advanced technology is magic, or extradimensional manipulation which is effectively magic, and has a Mayan/Egyptian vibe.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? I want to kill monsters and take their stuff.
(Need to communicate involved, non-traditional world and how it is different. Also, second statement doesn't jive up well with the first)

Traveller
WHO ARE YOU? I am former military personnel in a stellar empire.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? I want to own a spaceship, and so will do things so I can pay off my ship.
(Limited adventure room, short-term goals)

This approach can also open doors and show the nature of your world - Go back up to the top with D&D - What is an adventurer? How is it different than a citizen or a criminal? What defines "monsters"? When are you justified to take their stuff? Some of the flexibility in answering these questions (and there are more than one set of answers for any question) defines where you think the world is going.

Its just a start, and now I'm walking around, holding up this lens to various games and seeing how effective it is. And sometimes the answers reveal as much about how I view that game or genre as it does about the game itself.

More later,

Lovely Parting Gifts

The Origins Awards have been posted, and among the winners are DRAGON and Dungeon magazines from Paizo. A wonderful high point to go out on (Though calling one magazine "Fiction" and the other "Non-Fiction" feels like a bit of a reach).

Also, Wizards of the Coast won for "Best Miniature" for their Colossal Red Dragon, a truly beautiful piece, but one which completely busts the definition of "Miniature".

More later,

UPDATE: And in related news, The Monkey King has been nominated for an ENnie for his Shadowcrag adventure. Woohoo!

The Funny Pixels

So as opposed to a new entry, I updated the Blogroll on the right, making sure that the links were still current, upgrading some Alliterates, and most importantly, adding more comic strips and art:

My Elves Are Different (also known as MEAD) is deeply a deeply "inside the beltway" strip on science fiction and fantasy in general. It was the start of the entire Zombie Apocalypse thing. Best moment? Zombie Tolkien.

Sinfest is happy, perky, morally interesting and generally Not Safe For Work. But once you let Penny Arcade in the door, anything is fair game. It deals with religion, sin, redemption, and getting lucky.

And lastly, the mighty Stan! is doing his Doodle-A-Day. Which is exactly what it sounds like.

And on a more literate side, we have Sacnoth's Scriptorium, hosted by John Rateliff, Tolkien Scholar and general good egg.

Have fun. More later,

UPDATE: OK, one more - Diesel Sweeties is an odd one. It has a paper-based incarnation, as well as a web-version. The web-version is a lot more ...um ... mature ... in nature, and as such, is funnier.

The Song In My Head

So on Canada Day (1 July to us Yanks), I caught a YouTube video of a "Canadian Song" that has been caught in my brain and refuses to leave (except for a brief period when "Call for Super Chicken" replaced it). Here's the video, and the lyrics. Warning: this song is insidious.

The Log Drivers' Waltz
(Albert Wade Hemsworth/Traditional)

If you should ask any girl from the parish around
What pleases her most from her head to her toes
She'll say, "I'm not sure that it's business of yours
But I do like to waltz with a log driver".

Chorus
For he goes birling down a-down the white water
That's where the log driver learns to step lightly
It's birling down, a-down white water
A log driver's waltz pleases girls completely.

When the drive's nearly over, I like to go down
To see all the lads while they work on the river
I know that come evening they'll be in the town
And we all want to waltz with a log driver.

To please both my parents I've had to give way
And dance with the doctors and merchants and lawyers
Their manners are fine but their feet are of clay
For there's none with the style of a log driver.

I've had my chances with all sorts of men
But none is so fine as my lad on the river
So when the drive's over, if he asks me again
I think I will marry my log driver.

And yes, "birling" is a word. It means to spin a log in the water with one's feet.

Mood: Pleased (completely).

More later

July 4

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
"
- The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
- July 4, 1776

American Justice

EX LIBBRIS

We did nothing wrong.
And even if we did, no one saw it.
And even if they saw it, no one will say.
And even if they say, no one will believe.
And even if they believe, there will be no evidence.
And even if there is evidence, there will be no investigation.
nd even if there is an investigation, there will not be an indictment.
And even if there is an indictment, there will never be a trial.
And even if there is a trial, there will never be a verdict.
And even if there is a verdict, there will never be a penalty.
And even if there is a penalty, no one will pay the price.
Because we did nothing wrong.
- J.Grubb, 2007

(With a tip of the lid to Frabjous Dave, safely in hiding in Canada, for the title.)

More Later,

Suit

So you remember the Harlan Ellison/Fantagraphics feud? The one with both sides making declarations in public forums as the other side's veracity and honor?

Well, according to Galleycat the issues have been resolved. No, you don't get to know what happened, which is pretty much par for the course in these situations.

More later (but not about this),

Fortune

So on the 29th of March, this year, our regular Thursday-night group sat down to play D&D and eat Chinese food. Which, of course, meant fortune cookies. And I drew the following Fortune:

Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.

Having discussed the nature of fortune cookies to be extremely vague, we magnetted the fortune to the fridge with the date, so we could check it out later.

That was last Friday, and while it was pretty much a nice day, it wasn't something that stood out against all the other nice days. Nothing INCREDIBLE happened. So is this myth busted?

Well, yeah, but:
* An impossible deadline DID turn more possible
* I DID play Call of Cthulhu with friends in a nice session, and only drove one of them irreparably insane.
* I DID see the ToC (table of contents) for Hobby Games: The 100 Best, to which I contributed an essay. The games all merit inclusion in the book, and the contributors read like the batting order at an All-Star Game.
* And a summer storm rolled through on my way home that afternoon, and produced in its wake a full rainbow of an intensity that leeched into the IR and UV parts of the spectrum.

So it WAS a pretty nice day, but hardly memorable enough for a piece of typed paper within a cookie to give a shout-out for. But I think that's good enough.

More later,

Rating

Believe it or not, this rating is totally the result of talking about zombies. I guess I have to try harder.



Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

Furthermore: Booger.

More later,

Out of the Office

I very rarely talk about work and the people AT work, but this one it TOO GOOD to pass up.

So its the stuff of a bad sitcom - you call in sick, go to the ball game instead, you catch a home-run ball in the stands and your picture is on the front page of the local newspaper. Then you spend the next day trying to hide copies of the paper from your boss.

And sometimes the situation is reversed. Here's a picture of the line outside the Apple Store up in the U-District of people camped out for the new Iphones, from the front page of the Seattle Times site.



The guy in the center, in the green shirt, is one of my bosses, Jeff Strain, who is currently on paternity leave. I will note that he IS working on a laptop, probably has WiFi, and even as this picture is snapped was reconfiguring our Wiki.

(But I am going to be in SUCH trouble for this).

Update: Bonus! Then they give Jeff the lead quote in the article from the OTHER daily paper in town (Heheheh).

Leave of Absence

So, its been a week already?

I just looked at the journal, and it has been a week since the last posting, and that a snarky political one-shot. Have I grown beyond public displays of my crankiness, or are blogs just too, too 2004?

Truth of the matter is several things. One of them is a heavy day-job schedule as we surge forward on Guild Wars: Eye of the North. Another is work on The Settlers 6. And also there's the fact that the weather has been very, very nice out here of late, and what time I do have free I choose to spend on the back porch, reading the latest translation of The Three Musketeers and drinking a frozen rum punch.

Oh, and incipient alcoholism from all those rum punches. That's been slowing me down as well.

More later,

This Just In:

As it stands at the moment, the leading Democrat contender for President is a New Yorker. The leading Republican contender is also a New Yorker.

And if you don't like either of them, there is now a huggamugga of a sudden potential bid of ... another New Yorker.

The media really needs to get out of town more often.

More later,

When the Going Gets Tough ...

... the Tough go Clamming.

Yep, clamming. I've spent the past two days out on the Hood Canal (which is not a canal, but rather a fjord, but never mind), engaged in clamming.

It was a rest well-needed. We've been a little spotty on the postings of late, mainly because the workload has been a bit intense recently. Both the day-job and the freelance job are at critical junctures which need a lot of immediate attention to make sure everything works. As a result, there has been precious little time for anything else in my life.

But not for the past couple days. I took Friday off in my first vacation that did not involve bringing along a computer in over a year, and the Lovely Bride and I bundled into the hybrid, crossed to Bainbridge on the ferry (part-way escorted by Coast Guard craft with machine guns on the bows), crossed Bremerton Peninsula, across the Hood Canal Bride and down the other side to the beaches at Quilcene and Dosewallips.

Friday Quilcene was mostly empty, and it is a rich beach for manila steamers. Pick a spot, dig down an couple inches, and you come up with a handful. Saturday, when the low tide hit around noon, it was a zoo - everyone was clamming, including a lot of first-timers (you can tell they're first-timers - I'm giving clamming advice).

Doswallips was where the geoduck hunters hung out. We went there for horse clams, but were not successful (of course, our strategy was 'dig in a random location and hope for the best'). The geoduck hunters here are akin the deer hunters back in Wisconsin - good old boys that are heavily kitted out, packing post-hole-diggers as opposed to rifles, and clamming buckets with padded lids that can double as camp seats.

Civilization, such at it is on the canal, is clutched tight to the seashore, along a thing band between the high tide line and the National Forest. We ended up walking a lot in the national forest, down Falls Creek Canyon and into the murky wilds around Murhut Falls. They were strange hikes - beautiful, but oddly silent. I don't know if it because of the habitat, the season, or the recently-reported plummeting of bird populations, but the woods were strangely silent with only the occasional call.

But the clamming worked out (at least as far as the manilas). We're allowed to pull off 40 clams per person per day, so that means I have had around 80 clams over the weekend. The first batch we steamed over a primitive propane stove. The second batch made it home and were thrown into the pasta.

But I'm all clammed up for the moment, and ready to go back into the fray.

More later,

Huh?

What was THAT all about?

That was about this, an attempt to Blog like it was the end of the world. Sort of a Blogging flash mob Several of my companions chose more realistic (and depressing) approaches to challenge, but I had to be a smartass.

Congratulations to all who participated.

More later,

On The Road Again: Zombiepocalypse

As God is my witness, I never realized that zombies could drive.

I mean, it makes sense. Zombification strips out the upper brain functions, leaving only automatic responses - shuffling, biting, chewing, clawing, digging the gooey parts of the brain out with a forefinger, that sort of thing. And for a lot of people, driving is pretty much automatic, without a lot of attention from the higher brain.

Don't believe me? Tell me about your commute, yesterday, before the restless dead rose up to slay the living. Tell me about one other vehicle you saw on the road. Unless you've seen something out of the ordinary, it has just passed by you without a second thought. Yah see, automatic functions.

So when the world slipped into its present undead state, it really should not have surprised me that hundreds of zombie commuters rose up, lurched to their cars, and drove to work. At the same time I had to make my own commute. Just my luck.

And I know you're asking - with the living dead heralding the end of the world as we know it, why am I going to work? Because my company doesn't have a Zombie Day plan. Sure, I could stay home, but then it's a sick day, which is also a vacation day. I swear that this one business practice was more responsible than anything for the Zombiepocalypse. You get up, and you're feeling a little undead, not so undead that you want to spend one of your precious vacation days on it, so you go to work and before you know it, the front desk staff has killed everyone in accounting and is feasting on their entrails.

Anyway, you know those "slow zombies"? The Night-of-the-Living-Dead shamblers? Well, they drive just as slowly. No lie. So the 405 is a literal crawl. I pass one talking on his cell phone. Who does a zombie talk to on his cell? His broker?

Pulling out into the HOV lane was just as bad. And yes, it is breaking the law since I was alone, but the only cops I saw were lunching on an SUV filled with nuns, so the social order was a bit tattered at this point. No slow zombies here, but only those passive/aggressive fast zombies. One of whom decided by the Frye's exit to suddenly let go of the wheel and consume her car-pool buddy's eyes. So that tied up the HOV, and I'm back in the slow lanes with the shuffling corpses in their Detroit coffins.

The upshot was that by the Newcastle exit I gave up and turned around, with stop and go traffic through Renton. And since EVERYONE is moving like a zombie in their cars, there was no real prob with the undead looking for fresh meat. Got home, patched in remotely to the job, and am taking a vacation day (there will be a stiffly-worded memo coming out of THIS, I can tell you). The Internets are still up (insert IT/Zombie joke here), and the Lovely Bride is out getting something for dinner. So it is not like it is horrible.

But I tell you, if this keeps up, I'm going to consider going freelance again.

More later,

UPDATE: The Lovely Bride just got home:
Me: Hey honey, what's for dinner?
LB: Braaaaaainssssss!

So it looks like its another evening of experimental cuisine. End of a perfect day.

More later,

Update

Still busy, but in addition bummed out about the death of Hansa the elephant, age 6 and a half, at the Woodland Park Zoo.

More later. Really.

Busy

Dear Internet,

It is not that I don't love you anymore, nor do I love you any less. I have just been very, very busy for the past couple weeks. So busy I haven't had a chance to soak in my hot tub. So busy I haven't had a chance to play LotRO. So busy that the last deep discussion I've had involves whether rum punch can be considered in the "Fruits and Vegetables" part of a balanced meal.

More later,

Church and State

So here's where I shear myself away from some of my fellows. A lot of them (in mailing lists and in journals) are comfortable with the idea that science and religions are opposites. Black and white. On and off. Thinking and feeling. Up and down. One cannot exist in the presence of the other.

Actually, I think of them as salt and pepper, which can be combined (in various amounts) but really two completely different things, and have completely different paths to your kitchen table. Salt is a mineral, an edible rock that appeals to certain parts of your tastes, while pepper is a plant (a dried fruit of a flowering vine, actually), which appeals to other regions of one's taste buds. To say that the two are polar opposites is kinda silly, and in the same fashion I think the science/religion split is a false dichotomy as well.

In fact, the two work together better than working apart. Over the course of my lifetime, there have been Biblical stories that have benefited from scientific support. As a lad, the Great Flood was a "bible story", a religious tall tale with a moral ("Don't cheese off the Lord"). Yet over the years archaeological thought has moved from "was there a Great Flood?" to "Was there a single flood or a series of localized floods?") Indeed, discovery of previous legends, like that of Deucalion, act to support the existence of a biblical flood, not diminish it.

Similarly, faith has supported science over the years. Gregor Mendel (genetics), Roger Bacon (scientific method), and Copernicus (astronomy) were all men of the cloth and received encouragement from their church. There are the monks in Ireland who kept knowledge alive in the wake of the fall of Rome, and the flowering of Islam brought new concepts, even new words (Algebra, Algorithm, Alchol) into European thought.

I think that both science and religion are spectrums as opposed to absolutes, and when we have a hard orthodoxy in control in either case, there difficulty for the rest of us. In religion we currently seem to be under the sway of the orthodox forces, but not too many years ago we were in the porgressive grips of Vatican II and the Ecumenical Movement. In science we have seen where the hide-bound individuals who control the mechanisms twisting vital research for their own ends (Gallo and the HIV virus comes to mind). Yet in both cases it is moving across a spectrum (of course, in both cases, the installed orthodoxy wants to KEEP their power, and to that end seeks to exclude others who might disagree. The spectrum becomes a single wavelength).

There is pseudo-religion and there is psuedo-science. Both science and religion can have bad ideas, false leads and dead ends. The Catholic Church, seeking to answer the question - what happens to the unbaptized innocent? - ended up with the concept of Limbo, which was recently abandoned. Science similarly has a long history of mechanisms created to make the theory work - Ether (if light is a wave, how does it travel through a vacuum?) orphlogiston (what is that makes stuff burn?). Now dark matter and superstring theory are similar constructs. Both science and religion have a tendency to pick stuff up, examine it, and discard it if it does not work. In both cases, problems show up when the thought process becomes rigid and rejecting (Papal infallibility, corporate-paid research think tanks), seeking to exert temporal power as opposed to seeking knowledge, comprehension, and understanding.

Science and religion are playing fields, where conservative and progressive forces move back and forth. Orthodox forces in both seem to limit both what is going out (in the way of sharing understanding) and what is coming in (as far as believers or theorists who may hold contrary views). While it is very easy to identify an established extreme as an enemy, it is not representative of the entire spectrum. Indeed, calling all scientists heretics and all faithful people ignorant supports those orthodoxies by restricting the number of participants that need to be controlled, exiling those non-, un-, and wrong believers into some sort of darkness where they may be ignored.

The answer for both spectrums is "more light". More thought, more discussion, more examination of both science and faith. Because only then can either sphere move forward.

More later,

Memorial Day

From the Arlington West project in Santa Monica.

More later

A World Without Warcraft

So I made a peon cry the other day.

OK, it was an orcish peon, and a virtual orcish peon at that, so I shouldn't feel too badly. You see, I canceled my World of Warcraft account. My reasons were three-fold - I didn't have any time, what time I did have I wanted to use to explore new games, and while I was in a half-dozen worlds with various friends, I never got to play at the same time, and they eventually all leveled past me, created new characters, and those new characters leveled past me.

And all for fifteen bucks a month. I hadn't been able to really get going with anything for three months, so I figured it was time.

But when you cancel your WoW account, they first recommend you call their toll-free number so a human being can try to convince you otherwise. I passed on that option, downloaded the latest patch (yeah, I PATCHED in order to drop the game), and went to the site to cancel. And met the weeping orcish peon there.

The peon was despondent, and would not let me leave without a reason why. It had a pull-down menu, and experimenting with a few of them, found that when you chose one, the weeping orc would pop up with another box, arguing with me about why I was wrong.

And interesting approach. Of the three reasons I just mentioned, I couldn't find one for "no time" or "friends much better than I am", so I finally settled on "leaving for another game". And the weeping orc, a spurned, jealous lover, wanted to know "what game?" and I put down Guild Wars (though LOTRO and the beta of a Korean game I keep calling Grando Espresso were also there). And it informed me that other games may have their "shiny baubles" but only WoW strive to presenting the best and most varied game experience.

Uh-HUH. You know, these guys charge 45 bucks every three months whether I play or not. Their dedication to my participation would be more sincere if it showed up before I decided to turn off the cash flow. So a couple button punches later, along the lines "but are you SURE?", this shows up:

"If you choose to deactivate your subscription‚ you will still be able to play until your currently paid for time expires on June XX, 2007 X:XX AM PDT. The peon is full-on weeping now. We hope you're happy. Are you positive you want to deactivate your subscription?"

Am I happy? Absolutely. I made virtual orc marketing peon cry. More people should take advantage of that opportunity.

More later,

SoBo

So occasionally you hear an idea that just drops neatly into place and you say "Dayem! That makes sense!" And in this case the idea involves the ongoing huggamugga about the Seattle Sonics basketball team.

Now, I'm not a big Sonics fan, but I have friends here who are, and I'm good with the idea of keeping the Sonics in town. But the big problem is that I'm NOT a fan of looting the public funds to do so, and the various concepts that have been pitched have been along the lines of "This is the most expensive stadium in history AND if you don't pony up, we're moving to Oklahoma City". Its extortion that would ruffle the feathers even if the Sonics even if they, say, made it playoffs with any regularity.

But a lesser prob is that the locations that have been suggested have been ... suboptimal. You can revise Key Arena as much as you like, but it still involves getting off the Mercer Exit and shlepping overland through the new construction in South Union to get there. And the backup plan, down near the new mall in Renton, adds traffic load to an already stressed chunk of 405.

And then this idea balloon floats up. and I blink, and say "Dayem! etc....". It all makes a modicum of sense. If there is a more accessible location than the south end of Boeing Field, I'm not sure of it. The new Light Rail is coming through it. Major highway nearby - more importantly, major highway that isn't ALREADY a parking lot. Land that is undergoing a development change. It sounds like a plan. We have SoDo (South of Downtown). Now we can get SoBo (South of Boeing Field)

And if you can do it without cracking open the piggy bank, I say we go for it.

More later,

Polonium

Oh, here's a fun fact that I forgot to mention earlier - I'm not radioactive.

I'm sure that's a relief to many, but the question of why it would be important that I declare it is a story that I have been witholding from the blogosphere at large.

Back in early November, I was in Germany working with Blue Byte on their game - The Settlers: Rise of an Empire (which is looking real cool, by the way). Flew into Heathrow, smaller plane to Dusseldorf, and then back. Partial story of the trip is here. But about the same time as I was jetting about, former KBG agent Alexander Litvenenko was poisoned by a massive dose of Polonium-210

Time passes, as does Litvenenko. I'm back in Seattle and it is early December, and I get an urgent email from Blue Byte to contact them. The Brits had found trace amounts of PO-210 on four planes, including the one I was on for the Dusseldorf/Heathrow hop. There was no immediate danger, but everyone on board was encouraged to see their physician, just in case. Now.

Oh, joy.

So I call my GP, was told that things were kinda full, explained to them that there was an outside chance of my being radioactive, and was given an immediate appointment. There was a general determinance of my good health (no surprise - in the mean time, the LB and I had the great Thanksgiving disaster, which resulted in us walking four miles uphill in the snow) and a recommendation that I see the staff radiologist. He was in turn interested (I was his first Litvenenko-related case), ran a radiation counter/tricorder/studfinder over me, and declared me OK.

Mind you, Polonium-210 is a heavy particle that can be stopped by clothing or skin. The only prob is if it is injested (which is how Litvinenko got it - through a teapot). Since I didn't lick the pull-down seat tray on that flight, I was pretty sure I was good. Plus the fact that if I had pulled up even a mild dose, I would have showed some definite signs (like keeling over dead) in the month between by fateful flight and the warning.

I was concerned, though, and took it with some gallows humor. And my co-workers were amused. One of them said "The symptoms of Polonium poisoning are similar to those of being stabbed through a curtain." That made me laugh. Even in our darkest hour - Shakespeare humor!

So that's my brush with international espionage. Why didn't I mention it sooner? Well, two days BEFORE I got the call to check myself for radiation poisoning, I was talking to my Mom on the phone, and she was worried (as Moms worried) that the Brits were checking flights and since I was on a flight in Europe, I was at risk. And of course I said that there were a lot of flights in Europe, and it was unlikely I was affected.

And of course I was wrong, but I didn't want to then CALL her back and make her worry, so I resolved to mention it in person when I was back in Pgh this past month, when I could demonstrate I was in good health and ... well, not dead.

And I've been mum on the blog as well, but the sudden meme-tagging made me realize that I haven't shared THIS particular fact. But now I have. So there you have it.

How am I? Not Radioactive! Thank You!

More later,

Tag Meme

So Bruce Cordell tagged me with this:

Here are the rules: Each person tagged blogs 7 random facts about themselves, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog.

(Now, this is interesting, since I tend to share a lot of what happens in my world, and while there is private stuff, I'm pretty much an open book. So here goes.)

Seven Random Facts about Jeff:

1) I sing in the car when I'm alone.
2) Unless I'm listening to the Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey books on tape. I just finished Letter of Marque. Next up is The Thirteen Gun Salute, followed by my all-time favorite name for a book: The Nutmeg of Consolation.
3) I was once stepped on by a bear.
4) One of my front teeth is false. I caught a hard-hat in the face during a caving expedition.
5) My favorite bands in college were Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Jethro Tull. Be afraid.
6) My favorite performer when I was in high school was John Denver. Be very afraid.
7) The first time I voted in a presidential election, I voted for the Republican.

So chain-lettering this onward, I hearby tag the following poor souls (emails will be arriving separately).

Janna
Steve Schend
Colin
Jason
Stan! (I will accept seven doodles instead)
Frabjous Dave
Scooter

Chain letters away!

More later,

Wild, Wild Life

So, a bunch of animal stories:

- Last night I was working in the lower floor and heard what sounded like a large mouse thundering through the space above my head, between the floors. Due to the way the house is constructed (a tri-level with an additional fourth level added), sometimes wild things get into that space. I resigned myself to searching for obvious entrances and mayhaps investing in a trap.

- However, when I got up this morning, there was a dead mouse at the doorway to my office, presented by Harley and Vicky, who probably pummeled it to death (lacking front claws). The Iron Cats get full marks for presentation and plating, though I refused to judge them on taste.

- Yesterday went down to the Des Moines beach for very low tides, which meant a beach walk with the Sierra Club. Many of the usual suspects were unearthed (rock crabs and dungeoness, moon snails, sea stars and sea cucumbers), but saw some chitens and nudibranchs as well. Also a visit to the new fish ladder up the stream.

- In addition, I got back to the Black River a few weeks back to check on the herons, first mentioned in the journal way back here.
It was after the peak of the season, and the trees were starting to come it, but while there are still nests present, the colony is not as large as it was previous years. This may be due to the bone-headed development Renton allowed to be installed right next door, or it may be due to a pair of bald eagles setting up shop at the far end of the lake. That's the problem with nature - never gives you the easy answer.

- And speaking of eagles, we have one up on Panther Lake as well now. Neighbor across the street has a nest in his fir trees. On one hand I'm pleased to see the noble birds make a comeback from the 70s, when there was a risk of losing them entirely in the lower 48. On the other hand, they are getting to be almost a bit TOO common up here. Look for news reports on missing pets in the near future.

- And you've heard about the bee hive crash, likely - honeybees leaving home and not coming back, with potentially dire consequences. The thing that actually worries me is a sudden lack of ducklings and goslings at my place of work. Last year this time we were hip-deep in them, such that warning signs were posted at the buildings. This year, a definite reduction in population. I guess we could blame this on bald eagles as well, but it seems a little .... sinister.

More later,

UPDATE: Add to the other stories the sudden appearance of a barred owl outside our office. Like right outside, perched in one of the fir trees, eating a baby bunny. Barred owls are mostly nocturnal but can be found active during the day, particularly if they are feeding fledgelings.

Travel Stories

So I'm back from a week in Pittsburgh. My family is good, my father celebrated his 80th birthday, and springtime in the Steel City is much, much more appealing then at Thanksgiving. The trees are coming into leaf, the week was without rain, we actually got to see the city, and it was just verging on the summer humidity.

So the only real stories I have to tell are about the trip itself, and both of them stem from the current diminished state of the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport.

For many years, Greater Pittsburgh was the home of first Allegheny Airlines, then US Air, and had a lot of hometown pride for both. Trouble is, US Air started to drift away, its corporate offices first moving to North Carolina, then to Arizona. As a result, there were more and more demands on Greater Pitt, combined with reduced services. The city dropped from a Hub city to a Featured city to "City we go when we feel like it". Most recently, they even dropped the overpriced red-eyes from the West Coast.

So the airport is built for a nice mid-sized airline without a mid-sized airline being present, and its facilities are a little empty (want to film a movie in an airport? This is the place! Dogma did it). So we have to bounce through other hub cities to get to Pgh, and parts of those legs are on smaller craft belonging to the "commuter partners" of the big airlines. But the other services are reduced as well as a result of the lack of a hub.

Case in point, rental cars. Made arrangements with Hertz for an intermediate-sized car. Got there are there were (surprise!) no intermediate sizes (because, you know, why would they have a lot of cars at a secondary airport?). They were willing to bump us up to the next level. An SUV.

And we said no thanks. I've done that drill before, and found it a little boxy expensive and frustrating, particularly when I have a pair of hybrids at home. And the Terrifying Presence behind the counter (you know the one, the clerk that tells you that if you get a scratch on the car, they will have to rebuild it and charge you twice the value of the vehicle AND have to kill your children), informed us that we could spend more money for an even larger vehicle. Or we could take the SUV. And we said no, we asked for a mid-sized, we'd like one. And the Terrifying Presence suddenly seized up, unable to understand why we would not want to drive a Mammoth. And there was much glowering at each other, and the Lovely Bride suggested "Can you downgrade us?"

And the Terrifying Presence blinked and said, "Yes. Yes, I think we can". And we ended up with a perfectly acceptable economy (A cobalt-colored Cobalt). But if the LB had not spoken up, we would STILL be there.

The other travel story also stems from Greater Pitt's fallen status. Because it is no longer a hub, planes have to fly into Pittsburgh before catching an outbound route. As a result, the airport is dependent on getting those planes IN in the first place.

On the day we're leaving, we get to the airport two hours early. We have to catch a flight to Chicago, and from there on to Seattle. I notice that the plane that is supposed to come into our gate is delayed in Chicago. I do the mental math, figure we're OK, and sit down. An hour passes. A second hour. The plane is still on the ground on Chicago. More mental math. We're now just at the edge of "We're going to have to run through the United Terminal to make our connection" status, and the plane we need is STILL in Chicago.

I go to the podium, silent up to now on the matter, to find out what's going on. The airline folk are cordial, friendly, and frustrated. The plane they need is in Chicago (reasons unrevealed - mechanical, thunderstorms, pilot whacked out on mojoritas, I don't know). We're going to miss the flight out. They start checking other ways into Seattle. Anything else out of Chicago (no). Anything out of Dulles (no). Minneapolis (no). The young woman's fingers are flying over the keyboard looking for a solution to the problem. About this time they announce that the flight is going to be horribly, horribly late, and a line starts to back up behind me as this young woman valiantly tries to come up with the answer.

And the answer is - Delta, through Cinncinati, with a half-hour window for the change. And it will be leaving at three in the afternoon, which means we had a seven-hour delay in the Pittsburgh airport.

But (and this is the good thing) it all worked. Delta has a corporate image of "Git-er-done", and we were seated at the front of the commuter flight to get us OFF the airplane as quickly as possible, made the final flight with all of ten minutes to spar, and finally, after about 15 hours, got back to the house.

And I will say that there are worse places to be trapped for seven hours than in the Pittsburgh Airport. Free wi-fi. Comfortable chairs in larger-than-normal waiting areas. Classical music playing in the background. Short lines at the vendors. All signs of a place that once had seen a lot more traffic, and, if there is any justice, should see a real airline come in and make it a hub again.

Preferably an airline with direct flights to Seattle.

More later,

Mr. Baggins

Just a quick note, as I have just returned from Pittsburgh (more on that later). But I was delighted to find that my copy of The History of the Hobbit - Part One: Mr. Baggins by my friend John D. Rateliff has arrived from Amazon-dot-co-dot UK.

Color me delighted.

Spidey-Thoughts

So the Lovely Bride and I went to see Spider-Man 3 last night, and it was OK. The LB liked it more than I did, but it still worked on a lot of levels, and was the good, easy-going, action-packed summer blockbuster that media moguls dream of. There are few things I've noted, and I'll warn you about the big freaking SPOILERS right now.

1) Old People are Fonts of Wisdom: Every elder in this movie says the absolutely right thing at the right time, from Aunt May to Uncle Ben's flashback to Peter's landlord to Stan Lee to the Osborne's butler, for god's sake. All of them, wise sages with the perfect advice. Yes, the voice of the elder Osborn is evil and JJJameson is a fool, but while adults they are not in the elder category. With all that good advice on the loose, can NYC be anything less than heaven?

2) And this New York is New York of the sixties. Yeah, I know, they have cell phones and I-Pods, but the way everyone dresses and the demure nature of Times' Square and even Peter's scooter just screams the imaginary NY of 1967. It is the New York of "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "Bridget Loves Bernie", and "That Girl". I mean, I'm expecting to see Marlo Thomas as one of MJ's rivals, not Gwen Stacie.

3) There are a lot of weird time losses in the movie. The alien symbiote is grabs onto Peter's scooter and sneaks into his apartment in the first reel (to use the archaic phrase) then apparently hangs out, living off of cockroaches and old ritz crackers, before joining up with the body of Peter deep into the second act. Similarly, Peter and young Harry have a battle that wrecks Harry's appartment, and, despite having a BUTLER, nobody cleans up for a couple weeks as young Harry heals. At the time, you don't notice the long time jumps, but looking back, you say whathehey?

4) Peter was being a jerk BEFORE he got hooked up with the symbiote. Please note that. Really wrapped up with himself, to the point that he's not even paying attention to MJ's troubles. At the point where reunion is offered, and they reach out for each other, I want to shout "Run, woman, RUN! He's dangerous even when he isn't posessed!"

5) On the other hand, I want to use the alien symbiote excuse the next time the LB catches me eating chocolate ice cream from the container with my fingers.

6) And what's with this letting Sandman go because he didn't MEAN to kill the person he killed? The guy not only pounded the crud out of you, Spidey, and also kept all of NYC at bay while your girlfriend was threatened. I mean, you COULD have forgiven him AND brought him in for his crimes. Even if it is not murder one (and I think the case could have been made, happening as it did during commission of a crime), it WAS manslaughter.

7) Oh yeah, the biggest supervillain? The runaway crane. Out in Bellevue, cranes just fall down ONCE. Here, they whip around, taking huge gashes out of office buildings. Apparently construction cranes really, really, REALLY hate copying machines. (And I got lost in all the confusion and special effects - did Spider-Man ever rescue the Crane Operator in all that?)

8) And you know what I think? I think that May's old engagement ring is cursed. And she knows it. THAT'S the reason she wants to fob it off on Peter and not take it back. And indeed, in the movie, everything goes south for him as soon as he takes the ring.

So the movie has made metric tons of money, so they are going to keep going. The Spider-man villains' gallery has good but not unlimited depth, and with the resolution of the Green Goblin situation, there are still some options before you get to Rocket Racer and the Grizzley. Me, I would like to see JJJ get into his active phase against Spidey - Spider-slayers, creating the Scorpion as a competing hero, and the Jackal (complete with .... dare I say it? ... clones).

More later,

Jesus Has A Blog

Ganked from the Stranger (better resolution, but (often) NSFW):


The sound you hear is the entire Internet jumping the shark.

(Actually, from his blog the Big Guy sounds like the Geico Caveman, only whinier)

More later,

OYL, 52, WWIII

No, my keyboard has not thrown up - it just is the chance to talk about the care and feeding of a comic-book universe again. Previously I've talked about the Marvel Universe's recent Civil War. Quick Digression on that - is there ANY Marvel book that shows that the CW and the Initiative that followed it is a GOOD thing? The books that you'd think of as the pro-Initiative books show those in charge of the Initiative as Jerks, while those that would be anti-initiative books, well, they show those in charge to be Jerks, too. But, that's a digression - here's the past year of the DC Universe to look at.

When last we tuned into the DC Universe, its Infinity Crisis was screwing things up. In a nutshell, the original Superboy was pounding on the walls of reality, messing up the backstory of a lot of books and reminding us old-timers that it has been twenty years since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. Following that, the next month's books were supposed to suddenly make the jump a year in the future (OYL = One Year Later), to allow things to shake up. Superman depowered! Batman abandons Gotham for a year! Wonder Woman, well, I got no clue, since her own book was criminally screwed up following the relaunched.

Filling in the "missing year" was a weekly comic books series called 52 (take THAT, 24!) which dealt with a lot of lesser lights in the DC Universe (The Question, Booster Gold, Black Adam from the Captain Marvel stories, the Elongated Man, The Metal Men, etc ...). That one wrapped up with World War III (WWIII), in which Black Adam went on a super-hero rampage for about a week, killing everyone in the super-villian country of Bialya and threatened to do the same in China.

So working backwards, WWIII was a wet squib, four issues for a Giant-size story which was torn in two directions - one to resolve the Black Adam arc from 52, and the other to explain all the "strange happenings" that OYL came in with. And in the process it reveals not only that most of these changes were not that major, but that they have pretty much been plowed under in the year since OYL. Internal comic-book history is a plastic thing at best, what with dead characters bouncing back to life regularly, but most of the big changes have been undone. Supes got his powers back, Bats returned to Gotham, and Wondey is still wrestling to escape horrible stories (case in point, the just-launched Amazons Attack book, where the Amazons, removed from continuity in Infinity Crisis, suddenly come back and, um, attack. Washington DC, to be exact, But its Black Adam who gets the WWIII monicker. Hrumph!

That's not to say that OYL was bad - there have been some really nice stories in the past year - Paul Dini's work on Detective Comics have been a string of nice done-in-one books that tour through the Batman's villain pantheon. But did we really need a year-long break of continuity to tell these tales? Superman regaining his powers - he had to be gone for a year (yeah, and the "lead-in" from missing year doesn't quite match the story at the beginning of the tale, but that's part of working in a dynamic universe). As attention-getter, OYL was OK, as story-telling mechanism, it wasn't taken advantage of.

The weekly comic 52 was also plagued by being pulled in multiple directions. I could not cover effectively things happening in books-as-yet unwritten, so the Big Three had a problem with representation. But also, the tales of the characters grew in the telling, such that Black Adam had to be exported out of the book wholesale for his own limited series. In the end, it gave more change that the OYL itself - a new Question, Elongated Man slain and reunited with his late wife (killed way back in Identity Crisis) as ghost detectives (moving from Thin Man to Topper), there's a new Batwoman, an alchemical reformulation of the Metal Men, and a lot of semi-interesting characters who were created only to be killed, but will come back now that they are part of the continuity.

Oh, and instead of Superboy punching reality to change the past, the Captain Marvel villain Mr. Mind goes from catepillar to dimension-eating moth to destroy universes, and we end up with 52 DC Earths, a supposedly manageable number.

Yeah, but it reminds me that one of the reasons that we had Crisis on Infinite Earths in the first place was the fact that there was a Superman on Earth One and a Superman on Earth two, and people couldn't keep the JLA (E-1) and JSA (E-2). Now we have a JSA on E-1 AND a slightly-different JSA on Earth-2, which will make for even more confusion. AND as the Marvel Universe has so aptly pointed out, once you open the door, you end up with "Large-But-Finite" number of earths, as everyone creates their own revised realities for their stories.

So the end result? Multiple earths are back, but both probably more limited and more confusing. Some really nice playing with the minor characters in 52. WWIII will be forgotten as the shortest war in history, up there with the Pig War of 1859. Amazons Attack is dead out of the gate, coming hard on the heels of WWIII. Explanations of why something doesn't line up with history are now blamed on Mr Mind-Moth, not Superboy. And the wheel turns to the Next Big Thing, in this case a weekly book called "Countdown" which leads inevitably to the next big crisis.

More later,

LA, Again

So I went down to LA again, This time for the voice recordings for our new game. I went with Sound Guru Robert and Other Writer Ree. Both I referred to numerous times as "the Thin People", for whom a cheese danish is a hearty breakfast and the two miles between the recording studio and the hotel is amusingly called "walking distance".

Robert is along as a second set of ears, a more professional set attuned to the popping, gurgling, smacking, and growling that the human body is inadvertently capable of when it is placed near a microphone. Ree is the other game-designer-who-writes at the company, and she is along so that when SHE has to do this for her project, it is not like we're throwing her into the deep end of the pool in a burlap sack.

The taping went very, very well - there is a lot to be said for bringing together a crue of well-prepared professionals. Now Robert gets the odious talks of stitching it all together and seeing if we really made conversations out of everything we wrote.

These trips to LA have been surprisingly painless. Car to SeaTac to LAX to Hotel, the last by horribly expensive but generally capable cab. The hotel this time was the Sportsman's Lodge, a long-time fixture in Studio City because it kept most of its land while the rest of the area has been developed. Once the site of two man-made trout ponds, where Clark Gable fished off the back porch, it now is a nice hotel with a huge pool adjacent to a massive reception complex dedicated to weddings and reunions. The mattresses were firm, the walls solid, the hallway traffic light, and the showers adequate. No idea on the breakfast, because, as you know, I was traveling with the Thin People.

This time I DID manage to get to an above-average restaurant - the Marrakesh on Ventura. Moroccan food, which in our case meant quail, rabbit, lamb, and a chicken pastry wrapped in filo and topped with powdered sugar. Baklava, low tables, and belly dancers. The company may bridle at the cost, but it was worth it.

But I've been down to LA five times now in the past year, and have not given myself the chance to see friends or get to the Getty Museum. The last is a bit of a Holy Grail at this point. many years ago the Lovely Bride and I wanted to see it, but the region was hit by flooding and itw as closed. And each time since, my days have been filled with keeping my head down over the script and listening Very Very hard to the actors. Perhaps next time I will make the time for the pilgrimage. Or perhaps not.

More later,

May Day

So regardless of where you live, Spring is probably the nicest season, and the Puget Sound region is no different than the rest and better than most. It has taken a little longer than normal for spring to have sprunge, but the trees are now budding with a fresh, vibrant green that stands out against the darker evergreens that have been standing guard through the winter. The rhodeys are in bloom in the lowlands in a cascade of reds, pinks, whites and yellows against this background. And we have soft rain in the evenings and scattered cloudscapes during the days and the occasional rainbow.

And I've seen otters in the canal behind the building and a bald eagle on the campus. The geese are just starting to come back, and there are no chicks yet, but it is very, very nice.

More later,

Cthulhu's Gates

So, a busy weekend, filled with work and social obligations. The former included some material for the upcoming Die Seidlers 6/The Settlers 6 game from Blue Byte. The latter included celebrating World Tai Chi Day down in the International District with the rest of my class, and playing History of the World with friends on Bainbridge.

But the interesting part of the dweekend consisted of playing Call of Cthulhu with former-WotCer Charles Ryan, now living in England but over on this side of the pond on business. GMing was Sacnoth, who through great effort found an adventure that we had not all played/read/GMed. And it was pretty good - in addition to Charles and myself, we had representatives from the current WotC Book, Games, and Web departments, so it was old home week.

The adventure used pre-generated characters who were tied into the adventure itself, but they were a scattered group of individuals, some with little or no mythos knowledge, who come together to face horrors from beyond the stars. Over the course of the adventure, many of use discovered that the world was not as we assumed it to be.

And I started to make a list of how one's character passed through in a typical Call of Cthulhu scenario, moving from innocence and ignorance to deadly knowledge. This passage, these stations of the tentacled cross, are pretty common in a lot of scenarios, and where it works, the game seems to work, and where it fails, the game seems to be less grounded. Here's the list I came up with.

Why Do I Care? One of the early challenges for a character is "why ame I here?" If I'm a country vicar who collects stamps, why should I suddenly be involved in a set of mysterious lights over in the old mill? Curiosity can only go so far. In the case of the adventure, my grounded, realistic astronomy professor was dragged in by the disappearance of a lion in the care of my zoologist daughter. Upon resolving that mystery, I was done, but by that time I was comfortable enough with the other players to continue the adventure, but the initial engagement was key.

Who ARE these people? A gathering of random individuals confronted with the strange is one of the challenges of Cthulhu. In the adventure we ran, the pre-gens have connections with each other (often hostile, which threatened group cohesion). In other adventures, it is a Gms challenge to bring people together and keep them together. The "Tatters of the King" adventure I have been running has an odd group of player character (though I have seen odder), but keeping the med student, Texas antiquarian, German test-driver, former occultist, English fop and valet engaged and together has been a challenge.

How do I explain this? When confronted with the first mystery, coming up with a reasonable explanation is a challenge. As a player, I am steeped in cthuloid knowledge and know that I will be fighting eldritch horrors. But my character in the game is my rational scientist, and as such I cannot accept the nameless horrors and must look for other reasons. But there is an eventual point where you use the very language you have been denying and begin the slow slide into the abyss.

Why don't I just walk away/call the authorities? Another challenge point - if it is not your job to explore that sewer, why go down there? After the first brush with danger, why remain in (or worse yet, go back into) the old haunted house. Again, the player needs a good rational to keep him engaged.

Where can I get weapons? For those whose characters already have weapons this becomes: When can I start using weapons? At what point does my knowledge justify breaking and entering? Suddenly seeking out and carrying firepower? Using that firepower? Even if you don't know that the things you are fighting are supernatural, you seek out protection. Some characters (and players) hit this point surprisingly early.

The Monsters Are Real. This is where the psychotic break occurs, where deadly illumination dawns, and is often, though not always, connected with a sudden catastrophic SAN loss on the character's part. (in my case, my scientific professor launched into combat with an eldritch horror, bellowing the secret magic phrase that the crazy professor gave him). This is the graduation moment, when the character fully embrace the reality that the game presents, and from this point forward, you are willing to talk about Mi-Go and ghouls and other monsters. In this passage you are set apart from the safe, real world (noted by the sudden loss of SAN).

And often that's then end of the story, both in canned adventures and in mythos stories. Often because (with small adventures), we're usually on top of the final confrontation and the TPK (total party kill), but even after that the nature of the game changes - you are now part of the new world.

In the same way, all these steps are already taken into account in the "back-story" of Dungeons & Dragons. Everything I've talked about above has already happened before you start your first adventure. You already have your job (your character class) that is built upon the assumption that you fight monsters, are carrying weapons, have a reason for the others to be here (you are all adventurers) and set to some degree apart from the rest of your people.

This may be one more interesting difference between the more popular D&D and the niched-but-praised nature of CoC.

More later,