SortaCon

I'll be spending most of this upcoming weekend running and playing roleplaying games with some friends in northern PA. It's not a game convention, but it may as well be for practical purposes. I'll be playtesting my new Sorcerer and GURPS Cabal convention scenarios, trying out my own Fluid system with a new group of players, and playing In Nomine instead of running it for a change.

They're a lively group with a bawdy sense of humor (one of them told the funniest version I've ever heard of the classic "Aristocrats" joke), and experienced with a broad range of games, which makes them perfect for playtesting the comedy Sorcerer scenario. Should be a good time.

Tales from Dramaville (Part 4)

The fourth player character doesn't so much have his own story as he does link everybody else's, which works out very well. The player involved tends to prefer character roles to being a leading man, so to speak, so we use his character to bring the others together.

He plays an older man who spends much of his time sitting around a local park playing the clarinet and simply watching people and occasionally talking with them. On the surface, he doesn't seem to be doing much, but this Mercurian really knows how to keep his eyes open and piece information together from what he sees.

Tales from Dramaville (Part 3)

The third major storyline of the Dramaville campaign (for the In Nomine system/setting) involves a Bright Lilim serving Destiny protecting a special little girl. The little girl's Destiny is to be a great social leader, protecting the rights of poor people like those she knew in the neighborhood where she grew up. Her Fate would be to be just another casualty of those rough conditions. The Bright Lilim has chosen an unconventional Role to achieve her goal. She is an undercover police officer posing as a stripper to get access to information not usually available to the police, so her Role has a Role. And the stripper has managed to become the girlfriend of a local gang leader, which just happens to be the gang leader with the little sister with a significant Destiny. Got all that straight?

On one occasion, someone slipped the stripper a note while she was working, which said that they knew who she really was. So did they know she was an angel, or did they know she was a cop? She couldn't be sure, and still isn't.

This third major storyline may be concluding in the next session, as the Bright has finally persuaded the gang leader that the danger to his sister from the current heightened state of gang activity is more important than his duty to the gang he leads. Of course, the gang members are likely to disagree, and the Dark Lilim who is trying to turn the little girl toward her Fate isn't going to give up easily, so the next session should be lively.

Power Restored

After going quite a long time playing my bass through a 40 watt guitar amplifier, I've finally bought a new 150 watt bass amplifier. I'd almost forgotten just how much of a difference it makes, and how much fun it can be to rattle the windows of a building with a nice low B at high volume. I had to know just how far I could push the volume, and I think I established that it's got as much kick as I need with (very importantly) the portability I've always been missing in a bass amp. It's not as powerful as the rigs I used to use in my club heyday, but I can also carry it with one hand if I have to, and I don't really need that kind of oomph anymore.

I did find a useful instructional DVD for bass, done by Stu Hamm. I was able to pick up a few new techniques for playing funk bass, even if it's not the sort of thing I use very often. I still don't see myself getting practiced enough at two-handed tapping (the sort of thing Eddie Van Halen is best known for doing on guitar) to make much use of it on bass, but who knows what will happen if I keep working at it long enough? Hats off to Mr. Hamm for a good job of instruction, as he does a good job of starting slowly and working up to full speed. That should be a given, but it isn't. Some "instructional" DVDs are just a famous face saying "here's how I do it" and playing at full speed right away. Stu Hamm has another DVD that I'll be taking a look at soon as well.

Now that I've got my playing back up to speed, it remains to be seen what I'm able to do with it. The world isn't exactly clamoring for another amateur musician pushing fifty.

Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

I have to admit that the ads for this show weren't funny enough to get me to watch it. It was some very hot photos of one of the cast, India de Beaufort, that did it. But the fact is, the show itself was much better than I'd expected. It reminded me of what you might get if Mel Brooks GM'd a D&D campaign, but not quite that good. You know where they're aiming when one of the first things you hear is a reference to Emperor Zanus.

The writing isn't bad, and neither is the acting. They hit the stereotypes mighty hard, but I suppose that's to be expected in a broad comedy like this. My main question is actually whether or not they can sustain the humor over the course of a series with such thin characters. One of the main cast is very much a one joke character, and the joke isn't even that funny, so how am I going to find this guy funny two or three episodes down the road?

Still there are some fun bits, especially in the dungeon rescue sequence. I won't be going out of my way to see it, but I'll watch if I happen to be up that late on a Thursday night, or if Comedy Central starts running it at some other time. I'll certainly rent it in DVD if it makes it that far. Mildly recommended if you get a kick out of Mel Brooks' style of humor or particularly enjoy fantasy material and have a sense of humor about it.

By the way, read the name "Krod Mandoon" backwards, with a little modification. I was wondering why they used this name, and found my answer.

Meditation/Yoga

My yoga classes at work were cancelled (long story), but I've been able to continue with the same teacher by joining her classes at another location, so the faces around me have changed, but there's not a whole lot of difference in what I'm doing.

One of the things I've read about meditation is that your practice changes over time, and it doesn't always improve. I've found that to be true. I seemed to hit a peak back in February, then crashed badly when my wife and I were both very sick over a period of about three weeks or so and sleep was a lot more of a priority than meditation. Recent times have shown some improvement in results again, but I really don't understand why it can be so hard to improve your focus once you've been there. My expectation would be that, like anything else, you can get out of practice, but you can also get back into practice fairly easily as well.

I've been relatively regular about attending monthly group meditations. I couldn't tell you why, but doing it as part of a group does seem to help somehow.

Life in general has been easier of late, with my workload getting lighter, at least for the time being, and no other major stresses have popped up (knock wood). Time management continues to be a problem, if not a particularly stressful one, and that's not going to get better once the warmer weather hits and I have more to do around the house. I'm going to have to figure out more efficient ways to use my time (and I think I'm relatively effective now) or make some hard choices.

I have to admit that I've been posting less frequently and been less interesting when I do post, but a large part of the reason for that is that things in general are actually going pretty well right now. I won't mind if that continues for a while.

More Musical Obstacles

We were scheduled for another session of our musical project today, and sure enough, our guitar player situation remains unstable. Long story short, Bryan couldn't make it, and Bob informed me this week that he'll attend occasionally at best. And so it was down to Jason and I yet again.

We made a productive session of it anyway, fixing some of our rough transitions without relying on guitar cues, improving the set up so we can hear everything better, considering some new material, and doing a little improvising. For some reason we got off to a rough start, but by the end I think it sounded the best it ever has with just the two of us.

Still, I'd really like to have another voice to work with and would rather be playing bass. I'd had it in mind to play with people I liked first who happened to be musicians, but it looks as though I'm going to have to look further afield unless this is a fluke and Bryan will actually stick with us for a while. I honestly don't expect him to be a long term solution in any case. At the end of the day, there's a huge difference in age, tastes, and goals between us and I know he's going to move on, though it's equally obvious that we could help each other a lot in the short term if he does choose to stay. We'll try it again next month and see what happens.

Syfy

Sorry, but this name change for the Sci Fi Channel is one of the most ham-handed things I've seen done by a large organization in a long time. They insult their core audience in the initial announcement, then go on to try to explain why this name change is "cool".

Apparently, the real reason for the change is that you can copyright Syfy and can't copyright Sci Fi because it's in common usage. Why not just say that up front if that's the case? And why not change it to something less goofy if you feel a need to make a change?

And the tag line "Imagine Greater"? Sorry, that just sounds wrong and says nothing. Either the Sci Fi Channel people devoted surprisingly little time to something as important as the name of their channel, or some marketing people aren't very smart and really need to be replaced. I suspect that they didn't bother to ask any of their target market what they thought about any of these ideas.

Frankly, I won't be the least bit surprised if they change the name of the channel to something that has nothing to do with science fiction within the next three years, considering the direction of the majority of their programming, and eventually get away from science fiction almost entirely.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I started splitting music practice time between bass and guitar this week, to get back to improving my bass skills again. It's harder for me to get myself to focus on bass than guitar at this point, because it's harder to improve on bass after playing it all these years, while guitar is still new to me and there's an amazing amount of new territory to cover. It's also more fun to sing while playing guitar by itself than while playing bass by itself.

On the other hand, I can take on much more technical challenges on bass. I had the pleasure this week of coming up with a very new approach to practice that should leave me with a few new melodic tricks up my sleeve, once I smooth out some rough edges. After all these years, it's really refreshing to find something new to do that doesn't feel like a gimmick.

I tried checking out instructional DVDs for bass on Netflix, but didn't find much of worth to me. Most of it was too basic to be helpful, and the ones that weren't seem to leap directly to the other extreme of being the showy stuff that doesn't have much practical value unless you do a lot of soloing, which I don't. I already know how to slap and pop for the rare song I play that calls for it, and tapping seems like I'd spend a lot of practice time on a skill I'll virtually never use. I suppose it'd be good to have it available to me, from the viewpoint of general mastery of the instrument, but it hardly seems worth the time compared to learning guitar or keyboards. I think I'll give at least one of those DVDs a try, though, to see if there is anything I can use.

Sex, Demons, and Videotape Completed

Just finished this scenario today, at least until I get the chance to playtest it. I'm happy with the demons I've come up with for it, but it's hard to know whether or not humor works until you get players involved.

And I found out that "Clerks" actually came out in 1994. Another fun fact to make me feel old.

Now, on to "Tiger by the Tail", the sequel to "A Slice of Blackwoods" for GURPS.