Game: Hope-less on the High Seas

 Grey Seas Are Dreaming Of My Death: A William Hope Hodgson RPG by Derek Sotak with Kevin Ross and J.R.Hamantashen, 2020

I've previously mentioned (ranted on) the idea that if you're going to review a game, you really should play the game. I didn't run this one, but rather was a player in our regular Saturday Night group, and the adventure was run by Steve Winter. He ran an adventure from out of the booklet itself, so there will be spoilers. 

William Hope Hodgson is not in the first DMG's Appendix N, but is the predecessor and influencer on a lot of them. Most of his work appeared in the first two decades of the 20th century, and Hodgson died in the fourth battle of Ypres in 1918. Yet he was very prolific, and wrote a lot of tales which would influence the later pulp writers. His Carnacki stories set the tone for the "Mystic Detective" character, and his "House on the Borderland" may have influenced the later D&D Module as well as being the inspiration for the pig-faced Orcs. 

But the game concentrates on his Sargasso Sea stories. Hodgson spent many years at sea as a young man, and his maritime experience comes to the fore in his stories. The Sargasso Sea is a region north of the Caribbean where the currents and flora create a region filled with seaweed (sargassum). In the real world, the seaweed is dense but not impassible, but popular imagination (including Hodgson's influence) transformed it to a haunted region of ghost ships, ball lightning, and stranded vessels. 

The game itself keeps the scope small - you are crewmen on a ship. - for our group we had a First Mate, Second Mate, Cook, and Carpenter, but there are other positions available, including Bosun, Cabin Boy, Jonah, and Fungal Human (OK, Steve didn't give that one as an option). Each position has a pregen sheet showing strengths, weaknesses, and a small bennie for that class. The GM acts in the role of Captain, which negates the arguments of who is in charge (mostly). 

The core statistics are Brawn (strength), Nimbleness (dexterity), Perspicacity (wisdom/intelligence), Physique (constitution), Seaworthiness (all ship-based skills), Salt (hit points), Backbone (morale/sanity) and Mettle (luck). Statistics range between 8 and 14, with about 10 being the averages.  Roll Statistic Checks in the game on a d20, rolling low for success, with a 1 being a critical success and a 20 being a critical miss. 

And that is pretty much it. It is not that confusing, though the rule set might make it seem so through extensive use of ALL CAPS and BOLDFACE, for important words, such that the last line of the previous paragraph would read: Roll STATISTIC CHECKS in the game on a d20, rolling low for success, with a 1 being a CRITICAL SUCCESS and a 20 being a CRITICAL MISS. So the system seems tougher than it really is. 

This was a Kickstarter, but we had three copies among the five of us, so we could check rules easily. In addition, most of us are fans of the Master and Commander movie and the various maritime novelists such as Patrick O'Brien and C S Forester, so we were well-positioned in talking a good game (though somehow most of our characters were all named "Jim"). Our ship, the Malandra, was caught in a storm in the Caribbean, and when we fought our way clear, began encountering the remains of ships that were not so fortunate. We found some flotsam. We rescued a half-drowned seaman. We took an abandoned vessel under tow. We found a ship with chanting, mindless cultists on it. And it gets worse.

And that's a thing about Hodgson's stories - they tend to build up slowly to the inevitable final reveal. Something unearthly happens, then there is an attempt to resume normality, then something even more unearthly happens. That's the case here. Kevin Ross, the designer of the scenario, did an excellent job not only capturing the flavor of a Hodgson story, but the pacing as well.

In our case? We all died. TPK. And it was a fair cop. We had access to materials that could have made the situation more survivable, but failed to recognize them at the time. Our GM/Captain is more than willing to allow us to mess ourselves over, neither encouraging or discouraging our decisions (curse you, free will!). However, it made for the an excellent one-evening session, and I would recommend Grey Seas Are Dreaming Of My Death to any RPG group that thrives on Cthulhian horror (before it was Cthulhian).

More later,

Game: Cthulhu at Seven

The Bifurcated 7th Edition

 Call of Cthulhu, Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft By Sandy Peterson, with Mike Mason, Paul Fricker, Lynn Willis, and Friends. Chaosium, 7th Edition, 2015

I've said (repeatedly) that to properly review a game you should actually play the game. Otherwise you are reviewing a meal based on the menu, or a movie based on the screenplay. Reviewing without playing can give you some insights, but will not take into account the full product. I will note that there are perils with reviewing RPGs even with playing, as each GM has their own style, and each gaming group has their own strengths and challenges, so one's mileage may differ even within a particular type of review. With all of that in mind, here is my mileage on the mechanics of the most recent edition of Call of Cthulhu.

I have a (mostly) regular Saturday group (when we don't reach quorum, we watch old movies), we have mostly done CoC in its various incarnations over the years, including long sojourns at the Mountains of Madness, on the Orient Express, and girding the globe in Masks of Nyarlathotep. However, we had a interest in taking a new product, Berlin, the Wicked City out for a spin, and that was written for the 7th edition, and I chose to run it in the new edition. We had previous dabbled with it in an organized play adventure, A Time To Harvest, before publication of 7E, but that was run by a colleague, and this was my first chance to run the system myself. 

Most of the earlier editions of the game have been pretty interchangeable - the differences being primarily in presentation and in the skill lists. The game mechanics were pretty well-defined, and old products could easily be run with later editions. I will leave Berlin itself for another review (I have opinions), but let's talk about mechanics of the current Call of Cthulhu. 

CoC 7 is a different animal than its predecessors. Each edition has been larger than its predecessor, and with 7th it has fully split into two volumes - an Investigator Handbook (Player's Manual) and a Keeper Rulebook (DMG). But the big change is how they evaluate ability scores/characteristics,  which in turn makes changes to combat, and the eliminates the Power/Resistance table. This is a fundamental break with the previous editions, and to the better of the game.

The primary ability scores of earlier editions all built out of a 3d6 roll, like D&D. Some abilities are 2d6 plus 6, but that's a variant. Secondary scores are derived by averaging existing scores, often (Sanity) by multiplying by 5, creating a percentage. Skills are also created as a percentage, and where a skill in not applicable, you multiply a primary score to get a percentage. 

The new edition inverts and unifies that process. You still have abilities in the 3-18 range, but you start off the game by doing the math and multiplying by five for the characteristic. That's your starting percentage. Then you take half of that value and finally a fifth (your original score). All of these numbers go on the character sheet. When you resolve a task, you determine the difficulty and roll percentile dies as before.

That's more numbers on the character sheet, but what this does is create more degrees of success. In 7E we have Regular, Hard, and Extreme degrees of success. This both allow the Keeper (GM) to set levels for tasks, as well as help determine the level of success. I found as a Keeper that I could more accurately describe ability successes in play beyond a binary success/failure. In addition, the player can "push" a failed roll to get another attempt. The push usually consists of some mitigating circumstance in order to allow it, and a second failure indicates something has gone horribly wrong. So we have critical failures, but they are player-instigated.

This is particularly good for opposed rolls, which previously used the Power/Resistance table when dealing with two characters in direct conflict. The Power/Resistance table was a full page table of numbers that could have been an equation (50 + 5 times (Active - Passive characteristic)). The resulting curve (more of a line) sloped off quickly in both directions, such that if your Active Characteristic was more than 3 better than your opponent's, you likely would succeed. Now, each side rolls for against their characteristic, and better degree of success determines who wins. It feels better than the bare-bones comparison of characteristics, and provides a bit more swinginess for evenly-matching opponents.

This methodology also applies to combat as well, and creates a more vibrant combat environment. As opposed to making a direct "to-hit" roll, you can make choices, and your opponent can make choices as well. For the attacker, they can attack, flee, or maneuver (a catch-all category that includes things like grappling, pushing, tripping, disarming and other non-lethal attacks). The defender can choose to dodge, fight back, or maneuver as well. Making the combat round involve decision-making from both combatants improves engagement without bogging too far into tactics. It also means that in some case you can take damage as a result of your attack roll, which some players did not care for, but I found sped up play more. 

Gunfire, by the way, remains as lethal as it ever has been, given the damage that guns inflict versus the weak hit points of the PCs,.

7th Edition also embraces bonus and penalty die, much like advantages and disadvantage in 5th edition D&D. However, this does create the problem that you're hunting for every advantage in every situation ("I have the higher ground, but you've got an aimed shot and has the salad at lunch')  D&D has an advantage in that one penalty die cancels any number of bonus dice and vice-versa, and I use that as a house rule in play. 

7th Edition CoC is like 3rd Edition D&D, where we shook the entire system up and standardized it with a regular (mostly) system. It moves itself further away from the D&Dish roots, but still a clear descendant of early RPGs - The call and response of a GM (Keeper) and players, hit point terminology, character classes, etc...

And in play, it worked out much better than I thought it would on first reading. The rules are very clear, and copious amount of tables (in particular the ones on the GM Screen) help with a minimum of page-checking. I found in play that combat moved fairly swiftly, and allowed me more latitude in describing combats as opposed to standard "roll-to-hit and roll-for-damage", and in addition gives the players more options with the general maneuver rules without requiring specialized rules. It definitely moves the system forward, and (I think) will allow for easy retro-fitting to earlier published adventures. All in all, an excellent job.

More later,

Top Ten

I don't pay attention (much) to stats and traffic on this blog, but we've just edged past 20 years, and I got curious. There have been almost 2500 posts on this blog, and over a million views. Most of the entries have had a very short shelf life, in that people catch up on them in the first couple days, then they go into the archives, never to be seen again by mortal eyes. But the platform does indicate which posts get the most traffic. 

This Spelljammer post is the all-time winner, with 12.5 k views. Spelljammer gets attention every so often (particularly around the new release of the setting), so it has perked up.

Here's a writeup of why I left TSR, which pretty much sums up to disappointment over a project that went south (Mystara), new opportunities, and realizing it was my time to move on.

Another big one is my announcement that I was leaving ArenaNet for Amazon Games. No hard feelings on this one - I had a great time and had a great time at Amazon as well (and now I am at Zenimax Online Studios, working on Elder Scrolls Online, for those who are keeping track).

Here's a review of the 5E Player's Handbook. At the time of release I had a credit as a Design Consultant, but the Design Consultant credits were removed from later printings because of ... stuff. That's cool. I have not been asked in on 6th Edition, and that's cool as well. 

I try to wrap my head around why layoffs for TSR and WotC always seemed to hit around Christmas-time. The image to the appropriate Dork Tower cartoon is broken, but you can still click on the space to call it up. Since the Hasbro acquisition, they seem to have calmed down, and now do layoffs and staff reductions throughout the year. So that's ... better, I guess?

I use this space to work out my own thoughts on stuff, and here's one about Tekumel, in which I try to work through the fact that good things can be created by bad people. Still thinking about the separation of artist and art.

The highest-rated non-game review is a book about games - Playing at the World, which was a detailed treatise on the origin of wargames and RPGs from the dawn of time to my first GenCon. Still an excellent book. Go read it.

This post is a reprise on the earlier post about the product that went south at TSR. It was an overview of the Mystara project that I had to abandon. I gave the original manuscript away to a fan who planned to make it available to others, but they ultimately could not get permission from WotC/Hasbro legal. Ah, well. At least I got the manuscript out of the house. 

Similar to the Spelljammer posting at the top, I did one on Marvel Super Heroes as well, giving a peak behind the process of creation. I did one on the Forgotten Realms as well, but that clocked in lower on this list. 

Finally, the sole political post on this showed up, and this one was complaining about advisory votes on the Washington State ballot. I have no idea why THIS one gets the nod - perhaps it caught an algorithmic wave. Ten years later, the legislature is removing these votes from the ballot. They are supposedly making the information available on a web site, but I'm not seeing any roll-out on this. Knowing what your representatives are voting on is good, but this particular process was just sad.

So what do I get out of this? Well, posts about gaming and gaming history seem to do well. Personal stuff is OK with major moves in my life. Missing are theatre reviews, local politics (mostly), and comments about commemorative quarters. But I'm still going to do them, since, you know, I'm doing this primarily for my own benefit. 

See you folks in another decade, maybe.

More (inevitably) later,

Twenty Years Before the Blog

Not a Hopper piece, but Van Gogh -"Two Crabs" (1889)
I just liked the way it looks.

Today, Grubb Street turns 20. The first test post was made at Thursday, 14 August, at 1:50 in the afternoon, PST, followed by this one, which talked about where the name came from (with more info about it here). And it is a surprise that it has lasted 20 years, particularly in such an ephemeral media as the modern Internet.  Other platforms for medium-length writing have blossomed and faded/disappeared over the two decades - Myspace, Google Plus, Livejournal, Twitter, yet this trusty little Blogger has survived (perhaps Google don't realize they are still running it). Though even this has diminished, as the practice of blogging has receded into the depths of hobbyist activity, like model railroading or HAM radios. Those hobbies are still around, but you never hear from them anymore.

Part this reduced throw-weight is Facebook. You look at the blogroll over to the right and you see a sudden drop about in entries starting in 2011. That was about the time I started in on Facebook, and those spur-of-the-moment bon mots that I dealt with HERE suddenly went over THERE. But mostly, I use Facebook to send people HERE when I make a new posting, chiefly because there is an easy link at the bottom of the entry to do so. Ditto X/Twitter. I actually only have a Twitter account because Stan! set one up for me. And I use it to send people HERE.

But I do pay attention to Twitter, even in its now-diminished times. There are enough people that I find interesting that I follow there, in particular Gail Simone, Jennell Jaquays, William Gibson, and Paula Poundstone. And I find the New York Times Pitchbot amusing (It does headlines you'd actually believe seeing in the NYT - "Cure for Cancer discovered - Why This Is Bad for Biden" plus REAL headlines that sound like the Pitchbot made them up) If they go away, I will probably go elsewhere as well. No, I would never pay for a blue check, and have so far been spared the whackos.

I do pay attention to Facebook, and do my part to train the algorithm. I've been liking every Edward Hopper painting I see, so as a result I'm getting more Edward Hopper (and other art) links. And every so often there are a raft of promoted right-wing links pushing books of dubious nature ("Slavery - think of it as a long-term internship") - they all get reported. I put this down at the level of weeding a lawn - mildly irritating but necessary.

I am paying attention to Reddit more as well. Their /news subreddit gives me different versions of the same story of the day. And I pay attention to subreddits about flags, maps, and leopards eating people's faces. There are two Seattle subreddits - /Seattle if you live in Seattle and like it, and /SeattleWa if you live in Bellevue and want to tell everyone that Seattle is dying. 

Will I join the new kids like Mastadon, Post, and BlueSky? No idea. They may join the roster of Dead Media like MeWe and Tapatalk or not. Haven't gotten a Bluesky invite yet. And I would still use it to post links back to this blog. 

In general, though, it feels like the environment of the Internet has gotten worse. The web pages are laced with pop-ups (which are a relic of the 80s) and adverts, crowding out real content. Useful content moves behind paywalls. Wikipedia and Internet Archives have survived, but seem to be under constant threat. Library access has gone up as a result. 

And lest you think I am just bagging on the newer tech, "traditional" television has pretty much died as well. I haven't been a "sit down and veg in front of the tube" guy for years, but when I do get on, there always seems to be SOME cable station that is running Harry Potter, LotR, or the Pirates movies. Those channels which used to have some sort of theme are all doing the same thing, and those that remain are just doing blocks of old content. I don't remember when the last time there was music on MTV or heres-how-you-cook shows on Food Network.  I still pay attention to television for sports, but even that has diminished with Apple+ taking the rights to Major League Soccer.

And when they split the cable feeds to create new channels, those feeds filled up with cheap reruns of old shows from the last century. Yeah, that's where the H&I, Retro, and ME TV stations came from. Cheap content. But, on the good side, Son of Svengoolie is back, who I haven't seen since WGN stopped broadcasting out here. 

I know, I'm sounding like the new age version of the old guy shooing kids off the lawn. So be it.

The blogroll has shrunk over the years. Colleagues and friends have slowly drifted off from media, but I keep them there only because they may sometime come back to life. I keep most of the other links available since I check on them semi-regularly. A lot of the local news links have soft gates - after visiting a certain number of times they cut you off and hit you up for a subscription. And the comics section is still there, though webcomics can be sporadic as well, since they're mostly run by the creatives. 

Does this environment have a future for me? I dunno. I'll probably keep going. I have a couple books in the till that need to be review. I do plays, book, and game reviews. I cannot avoid continuing my look at collectable quarter designs, which is something that I just can't seem to break the habit. Politics I tend to deal with in election season, and then keep it to stuff I can actually vote on. There are still SO many political blogs out there, so I don't think you need one more, and watching the GOP fall down the stairs yet again is SO EXHAUSTING after a while

And that's about it. I think I'm in this until they shut down the service, and doing this primarily for my own amusement. You're more than welcome to tag along.

More later, 

The Political Desk : Summer Rush Results

 I usually wait a day or three for things to settle before posting election results. Washington State has mail-in ballots, and requires postmark by election day, so things will filter in over the next few days, final numbers change, and often there is a late surge or position that is "hanging fire" - too close to call. Usually for this end of the state, all this means that late voters who trend younger and more progressive.

Over in Seattle proper, every candidate for city council that made it into the top-two November election was endorsed either by The Stranger or The Seattle Times. In fact, the Stranger's candidates received the most votes in five of the seven positions (for those keeping score). So the general election over there will be between a progressive-ish candidate and a central-ish candidate. So there's that.

And 22.5% of registered voters in the County voted. Which is ... not horrible for an off-season election, but still kinda sucky.

So, for the stuff that I am paying attention to, here's what I have:

King County Preposition No. 1 Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy -   APPROVED at 70%. Not bad for a popular levy already approved a number of times already that had no opposition. Of course, that means that 30% will vote against a levy on general principles.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 5 -  Incumbent FRED FELLEMAN (55%) versus JESSE TAM (27%)

City of Kent Council Position No. 3 -  JOHN BOYD (36%) versus KELLY WIGANS-CRAWFORD (23%)

Kent School District No. 415 District No. 415, Director District No. 3 -  LESLIE KAE HAMADA (49%) versus DONALD COOK (24%). Got a late mailer from Hamada's campaign which had a big globby typo on it ("Oustanding" instead of "Outstanding"), but that the only news there.

And with that The Political Desk is retiring to the back deck with a rum & cola. Be back in October.

More later,

Life in the Time of the Virus: Long Hot Summer

 So, how are we doing?

People in the Sun, Hopper, 1960

Not that bad, actually. The last time we talked about these things was back in March, and now we live at the start of August. The world has adapted and moved on - we're now worried about the fact that the planet is baking itself, the Atlantic Conveyor is about to fail, and the Mariners have moved from "This is the Year" to being happy that we're playing .500 ball. 

But, of course, COVID is still out there. Globally (per the World Health Organization) there have been 800,000 new cases and 4800 deaths over the past month, which is bad but not too bad (globally speaking). Official numbers so far are 6.9 Million deaths globally, which is horrible (globally speaking). In King County, reported COVID deaths have dropped below that of Flu deaths, and only about 2% of hospital beds are being used for COVID patients. The NYTimes is still tracking things nation-wide here. The numbers have been going down, with the note that we have fewer reported cases in part because a lot of people have stopped testing and, worse yet, stopped reporting. Further, as I dug through the numbers on this, different sites authorities report the numbers slightly differently. But by any metric, the numbers are going down.

But it is still with us, and probably will take a jot upwards as we move out of this particularly hot summer and into the fall, particularly in my age cadre (Senior Discount at the AMC Category). Facebook still reports people coming down with it. Every major convention I have heard of ends with a report of people hit with the virus. Numbers are small, the damage is miserable but lessened, but it is still present.

Media coverage has also moved on. I'm no longer seeing as much of the "I don't believe in masks"/"The person who wrote this has been intubated" duality on the 'net. I am seeing a tic upwards of the nutbar "COVID is a hoax"/It's the vaccines that are dangerous"/"My brother's dentist got vacced and died the next day"/"He was hit by a bus"/"But the BUS DRIVER had been vaccinated, which proves my point" discussions on the Internet. Oh yeah, and there have been sporadic reports of "Number of folk who don't believe in COVID are on the decline because a lot of them have died of COVID". But a lot of the COVID-deniers have swapped back to being climate-deniers, with similar results as their electric grid fails and they start slow-baking.

Personally? I'm doing masks rarely now, primarily because theatre season is over, but even there there people have returned to normal. I tend to be unmasked when shopping except when picking up prescriptions, but that's more of a solidarity thing with the people working the pharmacy (and the likelihood that someone picking up prescriptions will be, you know, sick).

We shuffle, now as the seasons change, towards flu season and the probable uptick of numbers. Get your flu vac and keep yourselves safe.

More later, 

The Political Desk: Summer Rush Edition

 So, the King County Voters Pamphlet showed up a few days ago, but I chose to wait to post only because I tend to make my comments based on what I actually can vote on, and only rarely (though occasionally) wander out into other jurisdictions. 

The 2023 elections are already being overshadowed by the 2024 elections in this state. That's not just because of the Presidential Election is next year (though Washington State is reliably blue), but because the Governor of the past 12 years is not running for re-election. As a result, a leading contenders on the Dem side are the current state's Attorney General and Commissioner of Public Lands. And as a result of THAT other candidates are leaving THEIR jobs and running for THOSE positions. In other words, it is like entire elected state government is a big Boggle Cube and we've hit it with a hammer. But that's not what I need to talk about.

Similarly, the City of Seattle is currently having a big thing this year in that they have 7 open seats, and so we have a raft (45 candidates) of newcomers vying for their positions. But I don't vote in Seattle's city elections, so while I will point you in the direction of people who DO talk about it, I have no further advice.

And FURTHERMORE, there are a number of seats on the King County Council that are up, but they are in even-numbered districts, and Grubb Street is an odd-numbered district, so, again, there is no election for us.

And this is why I DON'T like the idea of moving major elections to even-numbered years. From a marketing side, I want people to go vote. Without big-ticket elections, everyone else gets a short shrift. The biggest matchups I'm seeing this cycle are things like Port Authority. A lot of school board stuff, and council seats at the micro-local level. These are the solid, working, effective positions - not particularly glitzy, but really important. They just don't have the glitz.

Let's make matters even worse. The day for the Primaries is 1 August. So a lot of people will not worry about it because "it's next month" and then get surprised when election day goes zipping past them at high velocity.

So the bad news is that not of lot of people are paying attention here. The good news, such as it is, is that YOUR vote, should you vote, is worth just a tiny bit more than otherwise. So, you know, go vote. It doesn't even cost you a stamp. Fill it out and mail it back, or drop it off in a plethora of election drop boxes scattered around the county. That simple.

But the smallness of this election creates one further difficulty for the small-time elections. We DON'T have a lot of info on the candidates on this level. We have their Statements in the Voters' Pamphlet, and maybe see some yard signs and MAYBE read something about them in the hyper-local media. So the chances of people running under false flags or not being entirely honest with the voters is high. A few elections back we had someone running for Hospital Board who attended the 6 Jan protests (but not, so far as we know, the riot that followed).. And we had a candidate for School Board that sounded good in the Voters' pamphlet until he chose to reveal the horrors of CRT in the local newspaper. 

So let's keep our eyes open around here. Check endorsements (though candidates can be untruthful about those as well). See who is fronting the money (The Chamber of Commerce, while not an alarm, is a red flag). Take things with a hunk of salt.

Here are some other people's recommendations. The Seattle Times trends further right that most of its readership, is much more pro-business, and just fired a new member of its editorial board for tweeting that Hitler was not THAT bad a guy. The Stranger is a little to the left of its readership, and disappointed that retiring socialist Kwana Shawant is not running for every position. Neither one gets this far south. Here is the Progressive Voters' Guide for the City of Kent. Here are endorsements from Crosscut, which again concentrates on the big urban centers. The Capitol Hill Blog asks a lot of questions to the candidates for District 3 here. Here is covereage from the West Seattle Blog.  Here are endorsements from the Seattle Transit Blog which worries about, well, Seattle transit.  Here and here a couple from the various Democrats. And from the Republicans I have ... nothing. The one I checked said they were putting up a new web site Real Soon Now. 

So what about my recommendations. Well, my own ballot arrived, and it is ... scant. Four items only. See, I told you.

COUNTY

King County Preposition No. 1 Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy. This is the second renewal of a levy that has already done well in previous elections and has proved effective. No one showed up to argue against it in the Voter's Pamphlet - APPROVED.

PORT OF SEATTLE

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 5, There's always a good scandal at the Port, but of late its challenges have been mostly the result of their own success. The airport is too crowded. Traffic to the airport is a mess. The cruise ships dump thousands of tourists (and their vacation money) at Pike Place Market. Fred Felleman is the man on the scene, has a good environmental record, and wants to offload air freight to nearby JBLM to the south until they finally build a new airport. Yeah, re-elect FRED FELLEMAN

CITY

City of Kent Council Position No. 3. From the Voter's Guide, it seems like requirement for this position is children in the Kent Schools and at least one ancestor in Saar Pioneer Cemetery. All candidates want to make a better, safer, more unified Kent. All good things. I'm going with endorsements on this one and voting for JOHN BOYD.

SCHOOL

Kent School District No. 415 District No. 415, Director District No. 3. Again, everyone looks good on the Voters' Guide. No red flags or buzz words. Challenger Stephanie Lawson looks good, but incumbent Leslie Kae Hamada has not blown things up, which in these days is a definite plus. For this round I'm going to go with LESLIE KAE HAMADA

That is it for me. The rest of yinz are on your own.   

More later, 

Theatre: Turned to 11

 Hedwig and the Angry Inch Text by John Cameron Mitchell, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Trask, Directed by Eddie Dehai, Arts West, through 23 July.

Let me give you the bad news first - The sound volumes were a problem. Punk rock levels within a small venue. As a result, both the Lovely Bride and I lost a lot of the words to this musical. Which is a problem, if you expect the lyrics in a musical to help define the characters and move forward the plot. 

And it is a pity, since actors are excellent and their voices are both strong and powerful. Nicholas Japaul Bernard captures Hedwig's talent, ego, and anger in every motion, while Kataka Corn is stellar as suffering husband Yitzhak. Michael B. Maine fills out the trio on stage running multimedia and boards, acting both as quiet support and counterpoint to the leads. 

Here's the plot. Hedwig escapes East Germany by marrying a US Army officer, but to do so, must undergo gender-reassignment surgery, which is badly botched. A year later the marriage breaks up, stranding Hedwig in Kansas. Hedwig rebuilds a life as a singer, teams up with another man who goes onto greatness without her, and marries Yitzak on a European tour. 

And Hedwig is a jerk. Hedwig treats Yitzak as Hedwig had been treated, reducing Yitzak to a Renfield-like supporter, denied their own agenda as Hedwig sings, sashays, and rages their way into a total breakdown. Bernard as Hedwig quips their way through their personal history as their anger within them grows to the final psychotic break. Bernard's music and performance leans more to Tina Turner than David Bowie, and their jokes and asides lean heavily on Seattle references for the local crowd. Corn as Yitzak has the more powerful voice, ultimately, but that's part of the point of the musical. The live band has been replaced with multimedia, which is at its best when it supports and counterpoints the play as opposing to dominating it. 

Ultimately?  Great performances dealing with a limited space. The musical evokes such now-classic era rock operas like Tommy and Rocky Horror Show. The passion is in competition with sheer volume. And that sheer volume sometimes overwhelms and leave the audience battered as opposed to comprehending. It is a good production, but be warned.

More later, 

Book: All Hail the Great Macaroni

 If I Were Dictator by Lord Dunsany, Methuen & Co, Ltd. London, 1934

Provenance: This is from the collection of John Rateliff, better known as Sacnoth. It is a honest-to-gosh rare book, and John's copy is actually a hand-bound copy, photocopied, reassembled, and bound with a sturdy plastic clip. The original may be found in the University of Wisconsin library, and had been checked out all of four times, in 1975, 1976, 1986, and 1990. I'll put money on the idea that the 1990 check-out was by Sacnoth. 

Review: In 1933 E. V. Lucas, publisher approached a number of intellectuals in England with the question - what would you do if you were dictator of England? There has been something similar in a series of articles in America run by The Nation, but it's unknown if Lucas knew about it. The results came out in a series of short books in 34 and 35. Most of those who wrote things up were serious scholars in a variety of fields, and took their assignments fairly seriously. Dunsany? Not so much. Maybe.

Mind you, in 1934, Dictator did not have quite the negative connotations that it picked up during the war. (I found that Studebaker had a car called the Dictator at the time, with no push-back). The term Dictator in those days was closer to its initial Roman definition - an individual invested with absolute power to solve a particular immediate problem that would defy group consensus (like war). In cases of emergency, the Senate would take its hands off the wheel and let someone on the scene make the decisions. When the emergency passed, the Dictator would step aside. Not only the Romans did this - the Japanese Shogunate did as well, and the Native American tribes had "war chiefs" whose main province was battle. In the Roman Republic's case, they had 80-some dictators. Sulla, one of the last ones, grabbed power militarily, but even he stepped down after he re-orged the government. Julius, who was his student, decided to hang onto it full-time as dictator in perpetua and Rome moved fully onto its Empire phase. 

At the time this volume was written, the best-known dictator was Mussolini. Hitler and his Nazis were recognized as running Germany, but would graduate to full-fledge authoritarian Dictator-hood with the death of Hindenberg late in late1934. Dunsany probably had Mussolini in mind as his model for ultimate authoritarian, since he dubbed himself "The Great Macaroni" in detailing his plans for England.

And his plans? for the most part, pretty pedestrian, and in some cases advanced, all presented with tongue deeply inserted in cheek. Cars involved in fatal accidents should be confiscated and use for more peaceful purposes, Advertisers should be punished for false claims, people adultering products should be horse-whipped. The League of Nations? Briefly touched on as a good thing. But he's got a few things that makes one think he is pulling your leg - Fox-hunting should be permitted, since fox-hunting in inefficient, and without people would find more effective ways of killing foxes. The solution to the English in India is a modest proposal to remove all the English from India, all the Indians from England, and all the Europeans from America, just to keep things fair.

And here's an intriguing one" the solution to unemployment would be to remove all farm-machinery. Removing labor-saving devices would increase the need for labor, and send everyone in cities into the hinterlands to live richer, more fulfilling lives. I think this is meant in jest, but then, Dunsany is the 18th Lord Dunsany, complete with manor house and family lands in Ireland.

Finally, the Great Macaroni has declared that editors should not change the words or meaning of the original author. The Death Penalty, in this case, is reserved for those changing the words of  the Great Macaroni. In this, of course, he is being absolutely serious and should be implemented at once. 

In general, it feels like Dunsany is treating the brief as a bit of a lark, suitable for a late night comedy show. Indeed, it feels similar to his jibes on religion found in his early works on the Gods of Pegana. But I have to ask how much of are things that Dunsany truly believes, dressed up in amusing terms terms. 

Ultimately, Dunsany's If I Were Dictator is an interesting view into the pre-war years, where everyone is sure something bad is about to happen, but are still normalizing authoritarian views as being worth civil discussion. It makes me wonder how our era in turn will be so viewed. 

More later,

Recent Arrivals (North Texas Bonus Round)

 There are lot of hardbacks in this particular collection, but I did not buy the bulk of them. I've been a judge for several years for the Three Castles Awards, presented at the North Texas RPG Con. NTRPG is a really nice con dedicated to "old-school gaming" - earlier editions of D&D (and all of its retro-clones) and other classic games. They send me the candidates I and several other judges make our decisions under a precise set of guidelines, and the winner was announced at the most recent NTRPG Con. Anyway, my opinions here are untethered by those guidelines, and as such are my own. But let's do the ones that are NOT NTRPG candidates first.

Everyday Heroes (Sigfried Trent, Chris "Goober" Ramley, D. Todd Scott, Evil Genius Games, 464-page hardbound) This was an "author's" copy from the publisher. I worked on this project as a Design Consultant, helped them staff up, and looked over the various sections when they were in development. Even so, I was stunned by how HUGE this book turned out. It is a spiritual descendant of D20 Modern, and this particular edition echoes the original on the cover. Physically, it is a beautiful rulebook. Content-wise, it is incredibly playable. Recommended.

Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen's England (Andrew Peregrine, Lynne Hardy and Friends, Chaosium Inc. 224-page hardback) I could not find the anywhere from my local hobby stores, and ended up making a trek down to Olympic Cards & Comics down in Lacey with Stan! on one of our days off. There is a Cthulhu project for every era and genre, and this one drills down on the Austenian era (1811-1820) when George IV served as king for the increasingly crazy George III. The volume details changes to the skill and occupations for that era to the standard Call of Cthulhu (CoC) 7th edition rules, and the importance of social credit and standing as a tool for roleplaying. There's a typical country manor and village and a couple adventures. Presentation is up to Chaosium's usual standards.

Rivers of London the Roleplaying Game (Paul Fricker, Lynne Hardy, and Friends, Based on the novels by Gen Aaronovitch, Chaosium Inc. 400-page hardback). Also a result of the Olympic trip, I was surprised to find this one in the wild as well. I've never read Aaronovitch's books, but the Lovely Bride has and thinks they are good, as they are modern urban fantasy dealing with a London police department that deals with the supernatural. The system is a simplified 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu. Presentation is good, but I'm not a fan of the 3D models in some of the illos. Wondering if I can get the Lovely Bride to play.

Ruins of the Lost Realm (Gareth Hanrahan. Free League, 120-page hardback). One more from Olympic, this was a whim pickup. Have been cruising through The One Ring RPG, and want to take it out for a spin, but wanted to see the support project. Free League makes some of the best-looking products on the shelves today. This one deals with Arnor, a chunk of Middle Earth unvisited in any of the books. Pulls what is known from the trilogy and fills in the blank spots. Uses Tharbad as a launching point for adventures. The game does not do dungeons so much as sites and places of interest with general descriptions. Looks interesting if you don't want to be tripping over too many trademarked characters.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen (F Welsey Schnieder and 10 writers, Wizards of the Coast, 224-page hardback). This was a purchase from the Mox Boarding House up in Bellevue. And it is interesting that, except for a small tempest (Tiamat=Takhisis*) I have heard absolutely nothing about it. Which is a little weird since the adventure ties itself to the "war" part of the War of the Lance, creating an adventure that runs concurrently with dragon armies marching through Ansalon. And it is tied into a wargaming boardgame (the component-heavy Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn) so you can fight the battles as well. Plus has a lot of Dragonlance specific stuff (Kender, Gods, High Sorcery) for 5E. The book itself is WotC standard good in appearance, and for having a bunch of writers and editors on it, is coherent and cohesive, and tells an epic story without DL's well-known heroes. But since its release in December of last year, there has been mostly nothing in the 'net about it.

Necropolis (Mark Greenberg and Bill Webb, Necromancer Games, 240-page hardback). This is the first of the  NTRPG Three Castles Awards candidates. It is a further development of Necropolis, a Dangerous Journeys adventure by Gary Gygax (due credit to Gary inside, but nary a mention of GDW, the original publisher), which had a brief stop in 3rd Edition D&D over the years. As a refinement this top-notch, brought up to date for their Swords and Wizardry OSR Clone. It is an ultimate Ancient Egypt Adventure, and keeps the Gygaxian nature of brutal consequences for player actions (teleport into a room identical to the one you are in, but with all the doors missing). Updated and upgraded, it has improved art and excellent maps. Bonus - full-color poster map of the tomb. 

Dwarrowdeep (Greg Gillespie, 334-Page Hardback) NTRPG Three Castles Award Nominee. Greg Gillespie does Moria. Let me refine that further - Greg Gillespie, who does sprawling mega-dungeons like Barrowmaze and The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia (which my Monday night group is STILL moving through) and does so in a classic old-school D&D style, does a sprawling underground dwarven underground. Major sites are laid out, room-upon-room, Secondary locations can be built with tables and geomorphs. The cover shown here is for the "Special Edition Monochrome" which evokes the old, old style of the early D&D modules. Comes with a packet of maps for the main areas in the light-blue style of, you got it, early D&D Modules. Interior art includes pieces by legendary TSR artists. Very old-school.

Swords of Cthulhu (Joseph Block, BRW Games,128-page hardback). NTRPG Three Castles Award Nominee. This one made me smile. A lot of Old School D&D clones use the styles of early adventures, but this one comes very, very close to the original Unearthed Arcana I worked on all those years ago. So that made me smile. Added bonus - Cthulhu for D&D, Deep Ones as a PC race. Cultists and scholars as new classes. Spells that petition the Old Ones. Insanity rules, Mythos monsters and deities, and hints on running a Lovecraftian Game in 1e rules. Art varies from good to pick-up.

Corsairs of Cthulhu - Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy (Ben Burns, New Comet Games, 300-page hardback) NTRPG Three Castles Awards Nominee. Wait a minute, didn't you ALREADY talk about this? Yep, got a copy way back here. So when this one arrived for judging, gave it to a colleague and re-read it. And pretty much my initial impression stands. The opening bits about adapting Call of Cthulhu for the golden age of piracy (1650-1730 AD) is pretty solid. The adventure is, well, all the map, and then off the map and onto other maps. We get a great setup for a Caribbean set of adventures, then head for the Pacific, the Dreamlands, and times and places beyond, with guest appearances by most of the mythos' heavy players. 

Endless Encounters - Dungeons (Bill Barsh, Pacesetter Games, 280-page hardback) NTRPG Three Castles Awards Nominee. It IS a big book of tables, but it is also a good springboard for dungeon-building, whether you need just something for the spur-of-the-moment or building a larger structure for later use. Embracing the old school nature of dungeon levels getting higher as you go down in levels, the tables allow you to figure out what is there on in a shorthand version. What is the purpose of the room? It's inhabitants? Its treasure. The examples provided (one per level) demonstrate how those results can be fleshed out to a more coherently thematic dungeon. 

Jungle Tomb of the Mummy Bride (Levi Combs and Jeff Scifert, Planet X Games,146-page hardback.) NTRPG Three Castles Awards Nominee. Like Necropolis, this is an expansion and refinement of previously published work, and while listed as compatible with a OSR game (Dungeon Crawl Classics) can be run under D&D rules of various stripes. Instead of ancient Egyptianish undead, we are talking about ancient Central Americanish undead, and can be fit into any hellish jungle settings in your campaign. Of all the nominees, this one has the most fun with its presentation, and keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek as it names encounters  Clean layout and artistic maps.

And the envelope please? The Three Castles Award for 2023 goes to:

Dwarrowdeep by Greg Gillespie. Congrats to the winner and see you folk next year.

More later,

*I have opinions on this contentious matter. Maybe someday I will even share them.

Theater: Jeeves Takes Manhattan

Jeeves Takes a Bow Adapted by Margaret Raether from the stories of PG Wodehouse, Directed by Scott Nolte, Through June 17, Taproot Theatre Company

The theater seasons I pay attention to are coming to a close, but Janice Coulter and her husband, Sacnoth, treated us to this production at the Taproot up in Greenwood. north of the city. Our planned lunch place, the Olive & Grape, had changed its opening hours to later in the day, so we had lunch at Razi's, a pizza place that makes nice salads as well, and hunkered down at the Taproot's Jewell Mainstage for an afternoon of Wodehouse. 

The Jewell is, well, a little jewelbox of a performance space, the stage thrust out deeply into the main space and surrounded on three sides by the audience, who are also sprinkled overhead along thin galleries. It brings the audience right on top of the action (such that they warn the patrons not to put their feet on the stage, lest they be trampled), but has the downside that sightlines don't always work, and we were treated to a great deal of "back-of-the-head exposition".  Which is a pity, since the actors were all excellent. 

Long-time readers of this blog know about my enjoyment of Wodehouse's world. The plot of Jeeves Takes a Bow is pillaged from the Bertie and Jeeves canon, along with original material heavily influenced by the genre. Bertie Wooster (Calder Jameson Shilling) and his stalwart valet, Jeeves (Richard Nguyen Sloniker) have decamped from England for New York City, only to discover that Bertie's old pal Binkey (The oil-slicked Miguel Costellano) has been pretending to be Bertie, auditioning for a local theater production, and romancing the female lead, Ruby (Claire Marx). Ruby in turn is trying to elude her overly-protective producer, the wise guy Daniel "Knuckles" McCann (Tyler Matthew Campbell). Also dropped into the mix is strait-laced old girlfriend of Bertie's, Vivian Duckworth (Kelly Karcher) who wants to research the dens of iniquity in NYC, including speakeasies and, of course, the theater.

In other words, it has all the trappings and tropes of a Wodehouse production. New York is a regular venue for his stories, and the plot is a collection of colorful characters, mistaken identities, and travails for Bertie and solutions by Jeeves. The foolish master with the crafty, wise servant has been with use since the Roman Plautus if not before, and Wodehouse expands upon that fine tradition. And the plot in one familiar to fans of Wooster & Jeeves - Bertie gets into a tiff with Jeeves (in this case involving purple socks), then promptly gets himself in a jam which requires Jeeve's help, and Jeeves gets him out of the jam, but in a fashion that embarrasses and chastises Bertie.

Shilling's Bertie a likable mixture of good intentions and self-deprecation - he's aware of his shortcomings and leans into them, which makes him sympathetic as his well-meaning nature gets him more deeply involved in his predicament. Costellano's Binkey helps support Bertie in that Binkey is even more hapless and hopeless than Bertie. Marx's Ruby is pure brass, Karcher's prim Vivian is a delight, and Campbell thunders with just the right amount of threat as Knuckles. 

And through it all, the calm center is Sloniker's Jeeves, always there with a spot-on comment and chilled cocktail ready for delivery. Even in rough-and-tumble New York, Jeeves rises head and shoulders among his compatriots, and is the wise head that everyone recognizes and relies upon.

The lingo is completely 1920's argot, and you might find one or two lines among the Americans that do not reek of the era. The dialogue is fast and furious rolls through the entire stage as the actors throw themselves into the works and across the stage in bringing the page to life.

Kinetic, Frantic, Antic, Manic. Yep, that about sums it up. All in all an afternoon well-spent.

More later,   

DC: The Week That Was

So, I spent the past week in Washington. The Other Washington, as we like to call it in our corner of the Lower 48. The DC version of Washington.

 We were there because the Lovely Bride was part of a group talking to the various offices of Senators and Representatives. The LB is an Enrolled Agent, a professional tax preparer who is certified and approved to deal with taxes and the IRS. She has been in the past a big wheel in local tax preparer organizations (former president for a couple), and she still is putting together conferences and teaching people about tax law. The National Association of Enrolled Agents were looking for people to come to Washington and talk to government leaders (well, their staffs) about professional tax preparers and why they are good things to have around.

Me? I tagged along as arm candy.

We flew out on Monday and got to the the conference motel, the Madison just off M Street, late in the evening. Tuesday the LB had a training session, and Wednesday they met with the government representatives. The LB's team was a mix of out-type-of-Washingtonians and South Carolingian. So they met with the offices of Patty Murphy, Kim Schrier, Ric Larsen, and Lindsey Graham. Only Ric Larsen was available to say hello, and then briefly. Lindsey's meeting was in a hallway.

What I can show you.

While the LB was hobnobbing with people who actually can see the levers of power (if not touch them), I used my Tuesday to take a trip up to Maryland to visit the offices of Zenimax Online Services, who are the makers of Elder Scrolls Online and my bosses. I took a tour of the facilities with my immediate superior, Bill Slavicsek, and had lunch with the other writers in the new cafe. It was a really nice cafe, and it was the first time all the writers were in the same room. After the tour, Bill and I watched Quantumania (which was pretty much a family adventure film), and went out with the talented Michelle Carter to dinner a local place (Tarks) which had excellent food (I had the duck). Long drive back to DC.

Teaching moment.

Wednesday the Lovely B visited lawmakers and I went to the National Galley of Art. The American rooms were closed for renovation and the Vermeers were in the Netherlands for a big Vermeer retrospective, but I had a good time taking in the museum at my leisure. Favorites were a hall filled with Rodins, a collection of Renoirs and Monets, and rooms full of Calders and Rothkos in the newer, weirder modern art annex. Joined the LB at a tax preparers' reception at the District Wharf, which is a new upscale office and restaurant district on the Potomac. As I said, I was the arm candy, fetching drinks and making small talk. Nice work if you can get it.

Thursday through Saturday the LB and I walked around Washington. Well, took a taxi down to the mall and walked about. Our hotel was a few blocks away from the metro, so we our aged legs relied on cabs and the occasional Lyft. And for once I had excellent luck with taxis - about 9 out of 10 times I found one easily. 

View from the
Botanical Gardens 

Anyway our agenda over the next three days included the Lincoln, Korea, WWI, and MLB memorials, with an attempt to visit the new African-American Arts and Culture museum, only to find it swarmed by school groups and individual tickets booked out to the next Wednesday. Instead we took in the Freer Museum with its Asian Art and Whistler's Peacock Room. That was the first day. The second day we slowed down a little, sleeping in and hitting smaller museums.  We did the Spy museum on Friday, a private museum that was recommended by at least five people, and was very good - we spent about four hours there. Saturday was the Botanical Gardens in the shadow of the Capitol Building, with a trip out to the  Kennelworth Aquatic Gardens, a marsh and former aquatic plant garden run by the National Park Service. Lots of photos of lilies. Sunday we were up way too early to return to our Washington.  

We feasted on hotel breakfasts in the morning, then one large meal in the early evening. Mandu on K Street was a intro for the LB for Korean cooking like mandu (dumplings) and  bulgogi. Nama was a sushi place nearby. Del Mar was a sumptuous and expensive restaurant at the District Wharf. and finally, 

Jaleo by Andre Jose, which had some excellent tapas. And sangia. Kool-Aide pitchers of sangria. The weather was great and we dined alfresco whenever we could manage it. Despite all the walking, I gained a couple pounds this trip. Go figure. 

. 

So that was Washington. There was a great trip, and I would go back if the Lovely Bride chooses to go. We missed a bunch of stuff, but avoided getting that Thousand-Yard-Museum-State that hits when you try to do everything. Memorial Day was proved to be quiet (The former house-mates, Anne and Sig, looked after the cats while we were gone and did some serious yardwork), and I still feel a little exhausted, but ready to go back to work.

More later, 

Play: Trolling for Talent

Lydia and the Troll - Book, Music & Lyrics by Justin Huertas, Additional Music and Music Production by Steven Tran, Co-Created and Directed by Ameenah Kaplan. The Freemont Troll (shown right) was designed and built in 1990 by Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter, and Ross Whitehead. 

This one had a lengthy journey to the stage. It was part of the Seattle Rep season about four years ago, then pushed back to the following season, then COVID, and finally is making its way back to the stage. And it was worth the wait. 

Sarah Russell is Lydia - songwriter, podcaster, lapsed alcoholic, and would-be producer, on the verge of her big break - a record deal and a tour. All she has to do is write one more original song for the Judges at an audition in 24 hours. And she's hit a writer's block. She meets Jane (Janet Krupin), who is a fan, supporter, and is absolutely sure of Lydia's talent. 

Jane is also a troll. A real troll. In her original monstrous form she will turn to stone in sunlight, so she achieves immortality in 20-year chunks by crawling inside the skin of talented targets and letting them pay the price while she exploits their creativity. And she's got a deadline as well - find a new host or revert to her monstrous nature. And Lydia is her target. 

Russel's Lydia is a jangle of self-doubt and insecurity, an easy target. Krupin's Jane is a manic pixie troll,  happy in her own devilishness and effective in her temptations. The third member of the group is Pete (Adam Standley), Lydia's nerdish, needy boyfriend (nerdy down to the Amazon ID tag on his belt) who thinks himself as the hero but instead is the sidekick (and sometimes collateral damage). All three are strong, dynamic actors and singers, and while overmiked in places, are more than up to the challenges of the musical. 

Yes, it's a musical. The book and music is by Justin Huertas, who has become a local theatre landmark, the up-and-coming creative whose works have been rooted in the Pacific Northwest. Lizard Boy, previously at the Rep, was Seattle mutant super-heroes. We've Battled Monsters Before at the ArtsWest dealt with Filipino legend but set in the Seattle area. The Last Octopus Wrestling Champion, also at the ArtsWest took its lead from a PNW sport of ages past. And yeah, the Lovely Bride and I like his stuff. He lives in the "True Musical" genre (an argument our local group of friends has had a number of times) in that his stories are told through song as opposed to being supplemented by song (The argument is kinda involved, and has spanned numerous dinners). And yeah, we know his tropes and how he puts a song together. And it remains really, really good. 

Oh, yeah, there are puppets. The Lovely Bride HATES puppets in stage productions, but even she had to admit these were very good. Puppeteers Guy Garrison and Sophia Franzella  do a fantastic job with the puppetry, mostly shadow puppets on movable screens to handle transformations, secret appearances, and chase scenes. Yeah, there's a climactic chase scene between troll and Volkwagon, which ends up beneath the Aurora Bridge. And if you're a Seattle native, you know why that's important. Garrisona nd Franzella also fill in with bit parts as well, but the heart remains with Lydia, Pete, and Jane the Troll.

Lydia and the Troll took a long time to get to the stage, and it was totally worth it. It is an excellent capstone for a Rep season that was mostly hits and only a few weak spots. It is good to see the Rep recovering from the COVID desert and building a strong season. But if you're a local, yeah, you should go see this one.

More later, 

Theatre: High School Crushed

 Zach by Cristian St. Croix, Directed by Sara Porkalob, ArtsWest through May 28

First, a cranky PSA - We use a vehicle to get to these venues, and I recognize that the folk that live near the theater need their space as well, so I have no prob in paying to park in established lots. But the continual changes in paying for parking is starting to wear on me. Twice now in the past month I've shown up at a regular parking lot to see that the methodology has changed. I've adapted to the whole you-need-a-credit-card-to-park thing, but now you need to have an account with a particular app that you've never heard of before and must download right now if you want to park (and curtain is in 15 minutes). The end result for ArtsWest was that the usual convenient parking slots behind the theater (previously credit-card based, now app-ish) was almost empty last Friday except for a few other people trying to figure out the new method, while the side streets (usually used by the local folk) were packed with people seeking out street parking to avoid the lots. Good going, West Seattle - keep that small-community feel by discouraging outsiders from actually patronizing your restaurants and theaters while making it difficult for your actual denizens.

Sigh. Anyway,

Zach is a satirical comedy based on a 90s teenage sitcom. Being thirty-three in 1990, I didn't get the specific reference at first, but it tickled the back of my brain as the type of after-school sitcom found on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon in all their cringeworthy glory. Later checking on the Wikipedia pins it down to One Particular teenage sitcom, right down to analogist names and Character Archtypes within the high school ecosystem.

But without such knowledge, you still know what you're getting into, as the play segues between sitcom and realist portrayals. In the sitcom domain, we have the overplayed characters, the bouncy commercial bumpers complete with dance moves, and laugh tracks, but then things change and become darker as we move into a more realistic portrayal of the same universe. Here we're dealing with loss of loved ones, stress, class, race, and gender issues. We switch back and forth between the two universes easily, and for a while I was concerned with how dark it would ultimately go (the 90s were also noted for comedy sketches that would end with someone picking up a chainsaw).

Anyway, our primary protagonists are PJ (kinda dorky but athletic Hispanic kid) and Gina (African-american fashionista), who have been friends forever . Suddenly Zack (white, cis, privileged) arrives on the scene and makes them and their friends into a clique that suddenly clicks, as well as making them his minions for mean-spirited pranks that get other groups in school in trouble. In the sitcom universe, Zach is the merry, beloved prankster. In the real world he's an absolute scumbag that uses his privilege as his carte-blanche to get away with everything. 

It is a play with two actors and over a dozen characters. Michael Nevarez is primarily PJ, and Amber Walker is primarily Gina. The other characters are split between them, with them switching off, playing each other's characters, sometimes passing a character from one actor to the other in a single scene. And they do it effortlessly and naturally, keeping the core of their characters solid so you know who they are (which is a problem I had with The Endless Shift). Both actors are fantastic, capturing both the high energy of the sitcom versions and the more nuanced nature of their real selves. 

The set design is clean and evokes the era of the nineties, with its strong off-primary colors and lightning-bolt shades. St. Croix is owed this because his last play at the ArtsWest, Monsters of the American Cinema, was sabotaged by its own set design. Here it looks like the set of Zoom (which is  a show of an era which I can remember). 

Zach flirts with its darkness, but its ultimate resolution splits the difference between the worlds and resolves them both. Is it worth seeing? Definitely. Even if you have to deal with new, alien parking? Still Definitely. Good actors, good performances, good script. Well done.

More later, 

Evening At the Black Dog

 So, I was part of Playwright's Festival last Friday night at the Black Dog Cafe in Snoqualmie. And it went very well.

Backing up for a moment. Snoqualmie is a small town up in the foothills north and east of here. If you were a Twin Peaks fan, you recognized parts of it, especially the nearby lodge (now called the Salish Lodge) on top of the waterfall. The Black Dog Cafe is in the historic downtown of Snoqualmie, which is about a block long and faces the Railway Museum across the street (which has a lot of rolling stock from various eras). The downtown has a number of restaurants, cafes, a couple bars (wine and beer varieties), art galleries, and an antique shop or two. 

The Black Dog is a pleasant little cafe that specializes in vegan food and is the center for the Black Dog Arts Coalition.  Books by local authors are for sale, along with art from local artists. Rings made out of old spoon handles. There is space for a variety of events - bookbinding classes, crocheting groups, and performances. There's a small stage in the back of the main room. Wednesday is Open Mike night.

The Black Dog Arts Coalition put together the show/ We had seven plays presented, many of the playwrights part of the Iron Horse, a local Writer's group. A colleague with the Quills (my local writer's group) mentioned they were doing a Playwrights Festival up here and they were looking for submissions. So I sent them one of my done-in-one scenes, about 7 minutes long, and they accepted it. We did three nights of rehearsals, and I trekked up Rt 18 over Tiger Mountain to reach the Black Dog (and had dinner at a number of good restaurants up there in the process, and some really good ice cream from Snoqualmie Ice Cream.

And the performances were great. The actors for my reading were Ryan Hartwell and Kacie Lillejord (another playwright who was drafted into reading), and they had the pacing down perfect. I tracked from the side of the hall, and the laugh lines landed where they were supposed to. Our director, Bruce Stewart, did a wonderful job rounding up the cats and getting it all in a presentable order. The others plays, involving lesbian ballplayers, demonic fossils, and teenagers leaving home, were excellent as well. Great job by the actors and the playwrights.

I was definitely out of my comfort zone, playing the new kid at school, keeping my ears open and learning a few things. Would I do it again? Absolutely. It was a good time and a good venue and I endorse the Black Dog and its efforts to spread a bit of art and talent through the foothills.

More later,

Theatre: Mister Wilson's Neighborhood

 August Wilson's How I Learned What I Learned, Co-Conceived by Todd Kreidler, Direct by Tim Bond, Settle REP, through May14. 

The Theatre Desk has been quiet for a while, in part because of the transitory and ephemeral nature of live theater itself. You catch if for the moment, then it is gone. We had tickets to Between Two Knees at the REP, but has seen it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival years before and were not impressed, and could not give the tickets away. Then, Arts West Theatre was staging a play called On the Spectrum, but canceled it for reasons unrevealed, other saying that it was not up to their quality standards. They stated this in an email that we did not notice, and so arrived at a dark theatre on a Friday night.

And even this particular performance is a stand-in. The play scheduled for this slot vanished (reasons unknown to me - scheduling conflict is the official word), and this is the fill in. A one-person play, originally performed by Wilson at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Wilson passed on in 2005. Steven Anthony Jones picks up the torch and does a great job as Wilson, channeling the playwright through his memories of growing up in Pittsburgh's Hill District. 

My own geographical journey oddly parallels Wilsons. I grew up in Pittsburgh, in one of the upper middle class suburbs south of the city. Wilson moved to the Midwest (Minnesota) and produced some of his best-known work. I moved to the Midwest (Wisconsin) and built a lot of worlds for TSR. I first encountered Wilson's plays at the Milwaukee Public Theatre. He moved out to Seattle, and years later, I did the same. As a result, the Lovely Bride and I have seen nine of the ten plays in his Century Cycle, also called the Pittsburgh Cycle, since nine of them are based out of the Hill District. 

And Jones/Wilson comes out like a firehose here, bouncing from subject to subject, memory, old friend to old friend. He is continually in motion as he talks about aggressions against him (micro- and macro-) for the color of his skin as well as the community (musical as well a suddenly violent) that he was a part of. He shift through his early life and settles mostly in the mid-sixties, where he has a girl (well, several), a job (well, also several) and an apartment (sometimes). We don't get the process by how he became the playwright that he is best known for (his goal at the time to was be a poet), but we do see the fertile ground from which his stories came from.

This is a monologue, and it holds the standard monologue tropes - There's a table with a glass of water on it in front of a brick wall. But Jones is never seated at that table - instead he stalks through the rest of the set, interacting with the debris piled up along the sides of the stage - dancing, swinging, and swaggering as well. And that brick wall is Pittsburgh yellow brick, a pale golden made dingy by the smoke from the steel works, and is flashed with subjects to talk about. Each one sets Jones off in a different direction, but he pulls them all together over the course of the performance.

Its a long monologue, but much to my surprise, it moved swiftly and effortlessly. Jones, code-switches and tone-switches through dialects and characters easily. You hear the eloquent phrases of the poet, the repetitive word-choice of the raconteur, and the heart of the street. Jones does a fantastic job keeping up with Wilson's words and bringing them to a large audience. 

Well done. Recommended.

More later,

Coming Distractions: Playwrights Festival

A friend among the Quills told me about a Playwright's Festival up in Snoqualmie (Twin Peaks territory, for those who are not local). I submitted one of my done-in-one ten minute plays, and they accepted it. So we're going to have a reading. Here's the info:

      Black Dogs Arts Coalition

     Playwrights Festival

Friday, May 5th, 2023
7:30 PM

Black Dog Cafe

8062 Railroad Ave

(Across from the Railroad museum)

Snoqualmie, WA 

$  10 Recommended Donation.

More later,

Political Desk: Funding Redux

 So, how did things turn out? 

The King County Proposition No.1 Crisis Care Centers Levy passed by a handy margin from the initial vote count 55-45 (when this is written). The Approved vote had major endorsements across the board, and a lot of fliers that showed up in the mailboxes. So that's a good thing. Only like 25% of the voting population voted on this, which is not so good.

The Kent School District - Proposition No. 1 General Obligation Bonds, on the other hand, was rejected. One thing that was soft-pedaled in most of the discussions was the bond issues need a supermajority (60%) in the first place to pass, and this one did not even crest 50% (Current results 53-47 on the NO side). Possibly contributors to its failure is that there was another property tax increase on the ballot, the low voter total (about 20%) and that it was just a lot of money. This sort of thing has happened before in Bond votes, and what may happen is that the bond offering rethinks its ask, refines its message, and tries again on the general election. 

The State Legislature is wrapping up its session, and actually has been accomplishing stuff. In addition to getting the budget settled (which is their primary job), they've bounced out the push-polls on our ballots and strengthened gun safety laws (which will not totally eliminate people shooting school kids, but hopefully reduce the frequency). One thing they failed to do was come up with a unified comprehensive drug policy. The old one was bounced out of the courts a while back with this year as the deadline. A compromise bill grounded out on the last day, rejected by both progressives (who felt the bill did not do enough for treatment) and conservatives (who felt the bill did not kick drug-users hard enough). So we may see a whole slew of local measures with varying degrees of cruelty (Our conservative member of King County Council has already offered up his proposal).

And that's it until, oh, maybe August, when the primaries take hold.

More later, 

New Arrivals: Kickstarters and Conventions

It has been a few months, and more things have shown up on Grubb Street. Some of these are from Kickstarters, and a nice pile of them come from The recent Gary Con in Lake Geneva. 

Kickstarters continue to resolve, but the entire process has become less appealing over time. This is mainly because of shipping charges, which have increased on their end and as a result the buyer invests in the Kickstarter, then faces a increased cost for shipping, which can reach up to half the original price as a surcharge. One of the end results is that suddenly brick-and-mortars and conventions are more viable markets for small-market books. 

As always, these tend to be "first looks" as opposed to any in-depth response, and I will put the Gary Con swag at the end. 

Wingspan (Elizabeth Hargrave, Stonemaier Games, Boxed Board Game) Every year, I get a board game for the Lovely Bride, either for Christmas or her birthday. This one has been out for a few years, and has been recommended. It is a card-and-layout game where you put a variety of birds into different environments. European-style game, which means victory is by points and there are a number of ways to score. We've played it a couple times, and it is pretty smooth. Recommended. 

Pirate Borg (Luke Stratton, Limithron 166 page hardback) Kickstarter. Mork Borg (Dark Castle, which sounds more prosaic) was as heavy-doom-metal fantasy OSR release from a few years back, light on text, heavy on attitude. It won 8 Ennies, and has spawned a host of sub-lines for different genres. This one is about pirates. It follows a lot of Mork Borgian tropes - book-as-art-project, dramatic headings, lots of tables, but scrape a bit of that away and it doesn't fall TOO far from the D&D tree (classes, combat, dice, etc.) and looks pretty cool. It is art-school heavy, but there is a LOT here, particularly in ship descriptions, and the Kickstarter came with Dark Tides, a folio for hexcrawling (hexsailing) with your ship. Yeah, I want to try this one.

Flabbergasted: A Comedic Roleplaying Game ( Fluer and Chelsey Sciortino, Giga Mech Games/The Wanderer's Tome, 160 page hardcover) Kickstarter. Comedy is tough. OK, OK,  INTENTIONAL comedy is tough. RPGs are wide-open for Monty Python silliness. But to set out to make something funny, or even vaguely amusing - yeah, that's tough). Flabbergasted is set in a PG Wodehouse 1920s, where the stakes are low but important - social status and relationships. Set in the seaside town of Peccadillo, the art reflects a bright, breezy south-of-France sort of vibe. This looks like a book for actors (who really want to direct). Also one I would take out for a test drive.

Airship Campaigns ( Benny McLennan et al, Arcane Minis, 224 page hardcover). Kickstarter. This one is interesting in that it harks back to the very early days of the hobby, in which rule sets existed primarily to sell miniatures. In this case, the miniatures are flying ships from Arcane Minis. This is an expanded and printed version of something that showed up on pdf a couple years back. Nice production values, and they go with the idea of treating ships as large creatures, which was done for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and is cool. The Kickstarter version came with a map of part of the world and map tiles for a Rassen Assault Frigate.

Blackvale - A Fantasy Pittsburgh Campaign Setting for TTRPGs  (David Lasky30 page self-cover) Kickstarter, one of the ZineQuests from 2021. Fantasy but really post-apocalypse, this booklet would pair well with the 2nd Edition Gamma World, which used Pittsburgh as its setting. Definitely zine territory. A lot of local references - the good-aligned church is Saint Roger of the Neighborhood of Friendship. Some NSWF art connected with the Church of Ayn and the Self Made Man. Not too detailed, but a nice bit for the price (and shipping).

Wyst: Alastor 1716 (Jack Vance, Swordfish Islands edition, 282 page clothbound hardback) Purchased from publisher at Gary Con. I'm not a big fan of deluxe collector's editions, but the graphics and art is pretty cool, and  it has gold foil on the cover. And it's a Vance story I haven't read before. Goes onto the TBR (To Be Read) pile.

The Plaguewood Spider (Darryl T. Jones, Splattered Ink Games, 24-page self-bound) gifted from designer. We were talking about art in games with the reference to the Mork Borgs above, and this one is art-heavy, but has a more unified, professional and traditional fantasy feel. It is an introductory adventure for Seeds of Decay, a campaign setting that was launched on Kickstarter, and should be fulfilling soon. Looks good.

Fifth Edition Fantasy #4 War-lock (Michael Curtis, Goodman Games, 48 page saddle-stitched) This was in the goodie bag given to the guests-of-honor at Gary Con, along with a miniature, buttons, and some appreciated fresh fruit. A nice solid-looking 5E adventure involving the players trying to defeat an immortal warrior and his troops. Which sounds ... a lot like an adventure I've been running for 40 years at conventions. But hey, it's a trope.

Hamel's House of Oddities (Jon and Brynn Hage, Sleeping Giant Gaming, Folder with separate sheets) Gary Con promotional for an upcoming Kickstarter. Yep, this isn't even on the docket for Kickstarter, but I've  put myself onto the notifications list, and I never do that. And it is primarily the art that's attractive for that (and I realize that this particular write-up is talking a lot about that). What they have is an encounter that looks solid and and has visual backups. Yeah, this looks like it will be interesting.

Core  - A chronicle of M'Gistryn (Anastasia M. Trekles, Halsbren Publishing, 300 page trade paperback) Gary Con, purchased from author. The author came to my book-signing at Gary Con and told me that one of her inspirations to write was Azure Bonds. I stopped by her booth later and picked up the first volume of her series. Self-published, san serif typeface, better map than I've seen in NYPublished fantasy books (I'm not calling anyone out). Putting it on my TBR pile.

Ath Cliath a 10th Century Vikings/Celtic City Role-Playing Game Overview Book, (Ed Greenwood and Andrew Valkauskas, Pendelhaven Press, 362 page hardback) Purchase at Gary Con. Written for the Fate of the Norns Ragnarok RPG by Andrew Valkauskas, but really system-neutral, this is a block-by-block description of the Viking-era Dublin. Ed's voice comes through in all of this as he describes every building and most of the inhabitants. Excellent browsing book and a springboard for city-based adventures.

The Wrath of Brotherhood, Book One in the Brethren of the Spanish Main Series (Ozgur K. Sahin, self-published, 410 page hardback) Gary Con, purchased from author. Encountered the author at his booth - he had some of Wizkids' constructable pirate ships on his table. We talked about writers of the Age of Sail -  Forester, O'Brien, Kent, and other nautical authors, and I picked up the first book of his series. Pirate ship captain on a mission of vengeance. Sounds interesting. On to the TBR pile.

That's it for this lot - tune in in a couple months when another bunch piles up.

More later,