Magic: The Obsession, Wedding Anniversary, and Other Stuff

The actual name of the game is Magic: The Gathering, but periodically it becomes an obsession for me, and this was one of those times. For those who may not know, this is a collectible card game representing a wizards' duel with cards in the same manner that chess represents two warring kings and their armies. The difference is that with Magic, you get to custom design your own army.

My wife has observed that I spend far more time in deck building than playing the game, and that's true. I used to buy a bunch of cards every time the newest expansion came out, then spend huge amounts of time making new decks and integrating the new cards into my existing decks. Then I realized that there weren't very many new cards making the cut into the existing decks, so I decreased the number of cards I was buying and decided that I would only integrate new cards into existing decks after each block of three expansions rather than after every expansion.

Even that has proven too unwieldy to continue, as I've spent far too much time this past week integrating new cards into a collection that's grown to over fifty working decks (not to mention the cards that haven't made it into decks for one reason or another). Considering that I usually play only about two dozen games a year with friends, it all seems ridiculous, and yet I don't want to stop buying a certain amount of new cards because building new decks with the new cards is half of the fun for me.

And so I've decided to change the new card integration process yet again. Without boring you with all of the details, it comes down to that I'll update the existing decks when I play with them, rather than when expansions come out. I'll set up a system to rotate through all existing decks so I won't spend so damn much time on this process in one shot.

I've recently finished the book "Broken Music", an autobiography from Sting. Considering that he's a songwriter known for his literate lyrics, it's not surprising that he does a fair job writing prose as well. I was hoping for some insights into the inner workings of the Police, which I didn't really get. Sting doesn't appear to have any more of a personal relationship with Andy Summers than you or I might have with any co-worker at the office, though he does speak highly of him as a professional. His personal and musical relationships with Stewart Copeland get some discussion, but there wasn't any information there that you couldn't have gotten from interviews from the Police era. What is interesting is that you learn more about what makes him tick as a human being. He grew up in some rough conditions, which might surprise those with a more highbrow impression of him. You can take the boy out of the neighborhood, but there's always some of the neighborhood in the boy afterward, and it comes through at times. The book is worth reading, even if you aren't a particular fan. If you are a fan, don't expect anything deep regarding the Police, but you can expect a better understanding of what makes their leader tick.

I also recently finished "Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman. I'd recommend it if you liked American Gods, though it's not as strong or as sprawling. It's a more personal story.

I'm currently reading "Ethics for the New Millenium" by the Dalai Lama. Inspiring stuff. Reading this, you can't help but see the logic of his approach and wonder why human beings have such a hard time getting along when we essentially agree about the things that really matter. Even before reading this book, I've never understood the common human tendency to insist on dictating to others how they should live their lives. I'm not that far into this book yet, and might have more to say about it after I finish.

I'm still overindulging with Netflix, and we've picked up a DVD collection of 50 classic horor films, so it's been movie week. More on that another time.

I've had the last week off, and my wife had Thursday and Friday to spend with me. We usually take vacation time for the week of our wedding anniversary. We felt as though we should do something special for it, but the fact is that neither of us could think of anything special that we really wanted to do, so for the most part we just rested and watched movies at home. We didn't even buy gifts for each other, though we did buy a new ring for her while we were on a day trip. It's been a relaxing week for me, but the work week calls, and I have no choice but to answer.

We're usually well stocked with Christmas and birthday gifts by now (we have a lot of fall and winter birthdays in the family), but that's not the case this year at all. For some reason, the effort put into preparation to move seems to have taken all of that kind of energy and left us disinclined to focus on that area of life. We didn't even do any special preparation for Halloween, which is normally a favorite holiday with us. We're not going to have any choice but to try to catch up in the next month or so, so it's probably going to be a busy November.

I usually get a lot of writing done during the vacation this time of year, but that wasn't the case this time, primarily due to the Magic obsession. It was my choice, so I can't complain. I hope to get back into writing mode along with my usual routine this upcoming week.

Don't Rest Your Head

Don Corcoran guest-GM'd a session of Don't Rest Your Head for my local RPG group on Friday night. I'd bought a copy at GenCon and read it through, but this was my first experience actually playing it.

I'd been a little concerned that we'd spend a lot of time in character creation and not enough time actually playing the game, but that turned out not to be a problem. Don did a great job taking character ideas presented by each of us and tweaking them to make them more setting-appropriate and help us interact in more interesting ways. I have to admit that my own character worked well enough in terms of the setting, but it might have helped if I'd had a more specific goal. It might've been a better character for a long term game than for a single session. Mike H's character was similar in that respect. I don't think we got more than a glimpse of where he could've gone with that character over time.

We started with bits introducing each individual character, occasionally drifting into each other's stories. It reminded me of some Sorcerer sessions I've played. It works well enough as long as all of the individual stories hold the interest of the players who aren't doing anything during that time. Don used the device of having players play the occasional NPC, which keeps everybody involved and brings a bit more color to the NPCs than if the GM played all of them.

The true highlight of the session was actually because of colorful NPCs. Dana and the other Scott played a couple of street corner drug dealers who had us all on the floor laughing. I think I'll have to find an excuse to throw a couple of similar dealers into the Firefly campaign somewhere. :-)

In terms of the actual PCs, Jason gets the award for best start to his story by teleporting into a children's birthday party while on fire. That's hard to match, never mind top.

Don ultimately brought all of the PCs together at an all night diner, where we were collectively attacked by surreal beasties after building up to it by our finding a couple of corpses apparently left behind by said beasties. This ending reminded me of how Call of Cthulhu has lost a lot of power for me because I can recognize most of the commonly used opposition from the smallest hints. In this session, I had no idea what our enemies might be capable of, and in a horror game that makes all the difference.

The game mechanics were clear and simple, yet flavorful, and everyone understood how things were supposed to work very quickly. I plan to run Don't Rest Your Head at a convention sometime if I can come up with enough interesting characters to do a good job of it. It might actually be easier for me to come up with a group with interesting interactions than a single character.

So thanks again to Don for GMing a quality session for us. I look forward to seeing the horror game of his own design that he was telling us about after this session.