Holiday Vacation/End of 2006

I was able to get the week off between Christmas and New Year's Day this year, which is no small feat at my job, since everyone I work with has been at the company a long time and has vacation time to burn. The process of getting vacation time around the holidays is especially competitive. So, I'll make a few comments about the last week or so.

There's a lot more I'd like to have done, as usual. I have some friends I rarely see unless I take vacation time, and didn't see as many of them as I'd like. I didn't accomplish as much around the house as I'd wanted to. On the other hand, I've been absolutely burned out lately due to personal and professional stresses, so it's not altogether surprising that I crashed to the degree that I did, and simply rested much of the week.

I'll be spending far too much time in the near future with my new X-Box games. I'd only had three games before Christmas, including the racing game that came with it. Christmas doubled that total, and I've already spent too much time with the World Poker Tour game. On the other hand, I'm already a much better poker player now than I was a week ago. :-) I also have a DVD conversion kit now for the X-Box, which allows me to watch movies in bed. Very dangerous luxury, especially after I subscribe to Netflix!

I accomplished one goal, in that I finally got back to "A Slice of Blackwoods" and completed the setting summary handout for the players. Now it's just a matter of getting the GURPS Character Assistant running and making the actual character sheets. After that, all that needs to be done is a few refinements and a playtest to smooth off the rough edges, then I'll move on to completing "A Dance of Pairs" for Sorceror.

I've done a lot of spiritual reading toward the end of this year, including a wonderful book on Buddhism. I don't think I'm ready to actually become a Buddhist, but there are a lot of valuable ideas there. Hopefully I can take some of that to work with me and get my working year off to a calmer start than 2006.

My nephew has taken up my old musical instrument, the bass guitar. I'd been missing my old musical activities lately anyway, and digging out some of my old equipment to lend him has cranked up my longing even further. I don't have the time to invest in getting back into a band again, but I'd love to get together with some decent musicians once a month or so to have some fun and scratch the old itch. The problem would be finding people with exactly the same level of commitment, a modicum of actual talent, and reasonable similar musical tastes. I just don't see any way for that to happen, so the itch will probably have to go unscratched. Still, I think I'll get the bass back out more often this upcoming year, which wouldn't be hard since it's only been an annual event for the last several years.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, since they have a way of falling apart even before the end of January. That said, I'd like to do a better job in 2007 of addressing practical matters around the house. I'd like to be calmer at work. I'd like to do more creative writing. All of this boils down to better control of my time, and I believe the key to that is not getting as stressed out at work, since I think that the main reason I'm not more productive at home is that when I have a bad day (which happens all too often), I'm more inclined to indulge myself than to do something productive. 2006 has been a particularly stressful year, even by my usual high stress standards. Here's hoping 2007 is at least a little easier!

Brief Movie Reviews

Been busy with the holidays, which is why I haven't posted lately.

I've had a chance to watch some DVDs recently. I wouldn't bother to write a full blown review unless I come across something particularly special, but it's worth commenting on what I've seen. I plan to subscribe to Netflix early in 2007, and I'm sure I'll overindulge for a while with that new toy once I have it. I'm a story junkie in all forms, and when I'm free of the restriction of paying for individual rentals, I'm bound to take some risks in hope of finding the odd gem.

Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest - Not bad for a popcorn flick, though not as good as the first one. The filmmakers tried a little too hard to top the first one, with occasionally ridiculous results. It's still worth a rental if you enjoyed the first one.

A Scanner Darkly - This one gets points for style and credit for leaving the source material relatively intact, as far as I know, which is all too rarely the case. It's not a great film, though, and feels more like a character study than anything else. I wouldn't bother renting it unless you're a particular fan of one of the actors involved. Robert Downey, Jr. stands out. Keanu Reeves' popularity continues to mystify me. I liked him in "The Matrix" and "Johnny Mnemonic", but he was supposed to be relatively deadpan in those movies.

The Descent - Big thumbs up for this one! Highly recommended, if you enjoy horror films. The characters are more than cardboard cut-outs, and some of the most frightening scenes are the ones that could happen to anyone who went caving in the real world. There's a subplot with a subtle and satisfying payoff where most films would've hit you over the head with it. I'd seen one of the director's previous movies ("Dog Soldiers") and while it had elements I liked a lot, it was nothing to write home about overall. After this one, I'll be paying closer attention to his work.

Heroes

Wow! I don't watch a lot of network TV, but I've been watching this.

The only problem is the title. Would you call a TV series simply "Lawyers" or "Doctors"? Just a quibble.

And with television networks' tendency to copy anything successful, what do you want to bet that next season we'll see another show about people with special powers in a contemporary setting, except that it won't be this good?

Rough Week

I've been trying to make sure I post something at least once a week, but I've been too busy this past week to come up with much that I felt was worthwhile, so I'll just post a few odd bits that might be of interest.

Between increased obligations at work (which happens every year at this time) and the usual holiday obligations anyone has, it's a wonder I have five minutes to myself right now. I'm not a fan of the holidays, as it always seems to me to be six to eight weeks of people making each other miserable in a (usually failed) attempt to have a single great day. At least the retailers are happy...

The conceptual work on "A Slice of Blackwoods" is essentially done, and all that's left is the process of writing up all of the information for the players and quantifying a few of the NPCs. Some aspects of the player information can be interesting, though. The character sheets themselves are a snore, but the descriptions of what the characters are like and why can be fun to do, and sometimes inspire me to go back to the main story and change things. I also plan to do a one page summary of Yrth background information that people new to the setting would need to understand the situation, which is going to take some time to do properly without telegraphing every plot twist along the way. These are the things I work on at home right now when I have the time to really focus.

When I have some downtime (standing in line at stores, etc.), I'm working on some concepts for "Dance of Pairs", which still needs some serious fleshing out. Sorcerer tends to be about coming up with some interesting characters and a tense situation to set them in, rather than anticipating what the players might choose to do with that situation. If you construct the situation well in the first place, the excitement usually takes care of itself.

I just finished reading "Urban Shaman" by C. E. Murphy. The plot wasn't overwhelmingly exciting or original, but the writer did a nice job of making interesting characters and writing them in such a way that you come to care about what happens to them. I probably wouldn't read it again, but I liked it enough that I'd consider picking up her next book if the description of it is even vaguely interesting. Next up, Thomas Ligotti's "My Work is Not Yet Done", which is corporate workplace horror.

Here's hoping I have something more positive to say next week...

The Eureka Moments

In the last week, I've had two of these.

I had reached a point where I was stuck on "A Slice of Blackwood", and starting to worry that this one, too, would have to be shelved, and for similar reasons. Then while I was at someone else's house, the solution struck me out of nowhere while I was thinking about other things. It was the smallest shift in circumstances, and yet it made all the difference. There'd been no reason why the characters wouldn't just leave when things got dangerous, then suddenly there was.

A little later in the week, and I was working past the point where I'd been stuck when the next idea came to me. It was this idea that took the scenario from the fairly straightforward adventure it was to something full of possibilities that I'm excited to run next year.

These are the moments that keep me writing. Not only do I get to enjoy that lightning strike of creativity personally when it happens, but I get to see the players' reaction to that same key moment because I know when it's coming and can watch for it.

2007 Game Convention Plans

Yes, I know it's early to be thinking about this, but my convention schedule is going to change this upcoming year (causing me to make my plans far in advance) and I'm already writing the new material for next year, so it's on my mind.

I plan to GM at PoliCon in the spring, DexCon and GenCon in the summer, and possibly MEPACon in the fall. This means that I'm dropping the spring MEPACon and Southern Exposure to go to my first GenCon. It also means that I can write fewer events this year because I'm not running for the same likely attendees more than once.

I'll be bringing back "Rumspringa" (for In Nomine) and "Controlling Interest" (for GURPS Cabal) from this past fall, and writing two new scenarios, which will tentatively be "A Slice of Blackwoods" (for GURPS Banestorm) and "Dance of Pairs" (for Sorcerer). I'd planned to do one called "Herding Cats" for GURPS Space, with a Firefly feel to it, but I got stuck on a key story point and decided to shelve it for now until I figure out how to fix the problem.

Those four scenarios will constitute most of what I'll run at those conventions, except for GenCon, where I'll probably revive two of my "greatest hits" from prior years because nobody there will have played them before and it's a blast to run them. "Lilim Fair" for In Nomine and "The Great Lunar Race" for GURPS Steampunk are the most likely candidates for that role, though I'm not sure about the GURPS one yet. I could surprise myself and write something else that I'm so excited about that I just have to run it, or one of the new ones could get stuck like "Herding Cats" did, so we'll see what happens as the new year gets closer.

A Visit from the Grim Reaper

My sister allowed her four-year-old son to choose his own Halloween costume for the first time this year. He chose a black hooded robe and a double-headed axe, for his own sort of Grim Reaper look. This choice may be proof that he's related to me. I got a big kick out of the photos of him with other kids his age. Power Ranger, Power Ranger, Fairy Princess, Buzz Lightyear, New England Patriots football player, Mermaid ... then the Grim Reaper. My sister tried getting him a silver mask to lighten the effect, but a black hooded robe with an axe isn't lightened very much by a mask under the hood.

My sister went on to tell me about how she'd taken the kids (my niece was a more conventional fairy princess) to a local assisted living facility for trick or treating (for the kids) and to spread some cheer (for the residents). My wife then pointed out that a Grim Reaper costume probably wasn't a great choice to wear to an assisted living facility for elderly people, which hadn't occurred to my sister at the time. My wife went on to step into the role of a resident, looking down at the Little Reaper and saying "Somehow I'd always thought you'd be taller."

I couldn't stop laughing.

D & D at MEPACon

Allow me to preface this by explaining something. I started my roleplaying with D&D in the late 70's, as a lot of people did. It remained my game of choice through most of the 80's, at which time I switched over to GURPS (more on that another time). And relatively recently, I was pulled back to D&D (in its 3rd edition by now) by the fact that my stepnephew became interested in roleplaying, and that was the game he wanted to learn, so that's what I taught him (along with some others). My point here is that it's not as though I'm simply unfamiliar with D&D.

As I'd said in the MEPACon post, I chose to run D&D more to help the con than because I enjoy it. The scenario was purposely written with the idea that it would involve the sort of intercharacter conflicts I enjoy (which are considered unconventional in typical D&D play) while including the combat relished by most D&D players (and usually bores me silly now).

I had six players altogether, including two of my con regulars and four D&D players. Of the D&D players, I recognized one of them, though I'm not sure whether he'd played in something else I'd run before or if I'd just seen him around or talked to him before. The scenario involved three low born adventurers and three high born courtiers who have to team up to deal with a threat to the kingdom in which they all live. There are separate scenes for the two groups at the beginning, and as the situation progresses, they're brought together and have to learn to co-exist. Since split groups are uncommon in D&D, I'd expected the two groups to come together fairly quickly. I was pleasantly surprised to find that everybody got so involved in playing in character that it took some time to actually bring the two groups together in one place. There had been a minimum of combat up to that point, but it was obvious that nobody was bored (though I suspect one of them would've preferred more combat than we ultimately had).

We reached the climactic final scene, which did involve combat, and things went from lively to a screeching halt as the reference books came out. My usual approach is to keep things moving as quickly as possible, since you don't have time to carefully consider your actions when you're in the middle of a fight. The D&D players wouldn't tolerate that, and forced a slower pace so they could figure out what they were doing, and occasionally asked me to more specifically define the effects of their opponents' spells so they could try to figure out what level the bad guys were by what they could do. In the end, we had a satisfactory win for the good guys, one of the bad guys escaped (setting up the possibility of a sequel), and everybody seemed to be happy. I took it as a good sign that two of the D&D players asked me when I'd be running games at another convention, as they wanted to play in one of them again in the future.

On the positive side, everyone did a wonderful job of getting into character and playing off of one another, and everyone seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves.

On the negative side, I didn't enjoy the scenario design process as much as usual because it's just too damn complicated to quantify your own monsters and NPCs in D&D. There's always the option of using monsters straight from the book, but then the odds are that the players have read the books or seen them before, and will quickly figure out how to beat them. Then there's the way combat runs in D&D. My usual players were just rolling with the situation, doing the best they could on the fly, while the D&D players wanted to stop to look up the specific effects of each of their options in game terms before choosing an action so they could find not just any workable useful action in the fight, but the optimum action. They were also puzzling out the spells the bad guys were using so they could figure out what else they might have up their sleeves. In fact, I didn't have a preselected spell list for the bad guys; I'd just decided in advance what the biggest thing was that the bad guys could do and how many hit points they had, and any spells below that level that struck my fancy at the moment was available to them.

I'd considered it possible that I could enjoy writing basic fantasy scenarios, putting a little of my own stamp on them, and do the convention some good by offering a popular system without the players having to join the RPGA just to play some D&D. At the end of the day, there's just a fundamental style clash between the things I enjoy about RPGs and the things most D&D players enjoy about them. I want to see interesting character interaction, and while combat is an option to resolve your story, it's not necessarily the preferred option. Most D&D players play that system because they enjoy the details of combat in that setting. They consider knowledge of the rules to be a priority and a sign of a good player, while roleplaying ability is secondary. I consider an ability to play in character to be primary, and knowledge of the rules is secondary. There's nothing wrong with either preference, and while this session showed that the two camps are not entirely incompatible, they aren't entirely compatible, either. If I'd found a way to include a little more combat in the early part of the game and had been as interested in the nuances of combat as most of the players were in the last scene, this could've been a great session instead of a good one.

I don't plan to run D&D at a convention again because I don't enjoy the same things that most of those players do, and that's fine. I won't say I'll never run it again, because I'd thought I was done with D&D in the late '80s and ended up running it again over 15 years later. I run games for fun, and I can have more fun running something that fits my preferences better and still draw players (if not as many). I learned that perhaps our preferences are not as far apart as I'd thought, but they're far enough apart that it reminded me why I moved on to other games in the first place.

The Politics of Fear

For the last couple of months, I've been subjected to a steady bombardment of mail and phone calls (both live and automated) from both sides of the Jim Gerlach/Lois Murphy congressional election. Virtually all of it has involved the worst kind of mudslinging, and I had no idea at all about what either one of them really stood for until the local newspaper published an article about a debate between the two. The debate itself seemed to primarily involve mudslinging, but the newspaper conveniently summarized the two candidates' positions on the more significant issues at the end of the article, finally providing me with some real information.

At this point, I'm sick to death of both of them, and would vote for anyone who isn't one of them. If there's any third party candidate running against them, you can bet that's who is going to get my vote. It really doesn't matter, since one of them is going to be elected anyway, but I'm going to make my statement, for what it's worth. If either one of them had taken the higher road, that would most likely be the candidate who would've gotten my vote.

I have three separate points here. The first is that I'm tired of all the advertising done to tell us how evil the opposing candidate is. If any candidate is more focused on his/her opponent's flaws than on what they personally bring to the table, they've lost me already. I won't vote for candidates like that and I'd encourage you to do the same.

My second point is that there is no reason to spend millions on election campaigns. Wouldn't it be better to simply make a summary of each candidate's position on the key issues publicly available (the newspaper and a web site, perhaps) shortly before the election, and let the candidates stand or fall on the merits of their positions? Set a word limit for each of them (so they don't write a whole frickin' book) and let them focus their efforts on concisely and persuasively making their case. It would save a lot of time, effort, and cash, and not leave the candidates owing their souls to special interests just so they can have the money necessary to run for office. Maybe the way to go is to allow them three opportunities to do this. One could be a month before the election to make their initial case, another one week later to allow a rebuttal to what the opponents said the prior week, and one last time to say whatever else they feel needs to be said. Why do we need any more than that?

My third point is that I've had enough of the "two party system". There is no "two party system". There can be as many parties as there are opinions; it's just that two main parties have evolved, and I'm not happy with either one of them right now. There's a perception that you can't get elected in this country unless you sign up with one team or the other. There's a perception that voting for an independent is a wasted vote because they have no chance of being elected. Let's prove them wrong and elect more independents. I often vote for third party candidates just to make the point that I'm not happy with the existing parties. If enough of us do that, we'll get better choices. I don't want to vote for the lesser evil; I want to vote for the best candidate for the job. It would be a lot easier for good people to run for public office in the first place if they didn't need a party's support to do it, and it's only that expensive to do because we make it that way. I'd like to see that change.

MEPACon was a mixed bag this past weekend, though I had a good time overall.

On the downside, only three of my five offered events ran. My two GURPS events drew no players at all, though I was approached later about running my Friday afternoon event on Sunday, for some people who were interested but hadn't arrived until after that time slot. Unfortunately, I was already committed to running something else at that time and couldn't accomodate them.

The dealers' room had few dealers, but I found a couple of bargains there, including some books for the new edition of Paranoia at half price. I'd planned to write some Paranoia again soon, and while I don't really need those books to do it, they're helpful for inspiration and to add details I might not have come up with myself.

On the upside, my events that ran went well. My Friday night Call of Cthulhu event ("Fuel of the Gods") ran with four players, with my favorite moment being when the guy who'd failed a Sanity roll decided that all inanimate objects had wills of their own, and threw away his cell phone because he was tired of it always calling him.

My In Nomine event ("Rumspringa") filled, and tensions ran high in another of my "angel PCs vs. demon PCs" scenarios. The demons had the edge going into the climactic scene, but the angels reached the relic everyone was searching for first and used it as a power source to turn the tide. The ending ran longer than it should've, which I think I could've avoided by doubling the damage done in the fight at the end when I realized it was going to go on beyond the end of the time slot. I'll have to file that one away under lessons learned, so it doesn't happen again.

I ended the convention with a Dungeons & Dragons scenario called "Searching High and Low". I'd lost interest in D&D sometime in the late '80's, but had agreed to run it this time in an attempt to help attendance for the RPGs at the convention. Nobody twisted my arm; I just decided to do it. All in all, it was a good session, with a full house playing including two of my regulars and four true D&D fans. It went well enough to merit a sequel, and the main villains interest me enough to do one, but running it reminded me enough of all of the things I dislike about the d20 system to keep me from doing it, whether it helped con attendance or not. John suggested that I run the sequel in another system, but it'd change the characters so much that it's not really worth the work. I might just recycle the main villains into a better system and use them in something else entirely.

I also had the opportunity to try some new games, which is one of the main reasons I enjoy conventions. I played a test version of the forthcoming Munchkin Cthulhu with some of my fellow Men In Black, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I hadn't been sure that the style of Munchkin would mesh well with the mythos, but it worked surprising well. Some of us moved on to a game of Epic Munchkin in a Blender, which went on for hours, culminating in a flurry of cards from all participants with totals in the eighties or nineties determining the outcome. For those not familiar with the game, over 20 would be considered high powered. You get the picture.

John introduced me to Kenzer & Company's The Great Space Race early Sunday. For those who will recognize the reference, it's essentially Robo Rally in space. We had some room to manuever with a three player game, but managed to run into one another a few times even so. Collisions would probably be a fairly common occurrence in a six player game, but that might only add to the fun and unpredictability. Call it 7 on a 1-10 scale of entertainment value.

I'd been curious about the relatively new game Dreamblade, from Wizards of the Coast, and they had someone at this con doing demos in the dealers' room. I didn't personally play it, but watched others play long enough to get the feel of the game, and even anticipate some strategy. The miniatures are cool in a surreal way, but frankly, you wouldn't need minis to play this sort of game. I can imagine the conversation in the Wizards' offices, in which someone tells someone else that what they need is a new collectible game because Heroclix made a lot of money. They'd want something distinct from Heroclix, but would still want it to involve collectible miniatures, and this is what they invented accordingly. I know collectible games make a lot of money because some people feel they have to keep buying to stay competitive, but personally, I'm actively avoiding collectible games for exactly that reason. I might've bought Dreamblade if it was something like Heroscape, where you can buy exactly what you want, but I won't touch it as it is.

I already know I'm skipping the MEPACon Spring 2007 in order to afford GenCon. I enjoyed myself enough this time that I'm considering MEPACon Fall 2007 a possibility at this point, when I'd been ready to close the book on it. I'll see how I'm feeling by the summer of 2007 and decide what I want to do from there.