Room Service Completed/Another Mission from God

I've finally finished off my new Paranoia scenario, "Room Service". It's likely that I'll do some tweaking after watching a couple of Marx Brothers movies I haven't seen yet, but I could run it right now if I had to.

Next, I'd like to have a new In Nomine scenario ready in time for DexCon and to get my home GURPS Cabal campaign started. I have a terrific idea for a new series of In Nomine convention scenarios, but it's going to take some time to organize what I want to do for that, and I don't have much time right now. So I'm going to use the "Mission from God" cast of characters, put them in a tricky situation in a relatively small location with a truckload of colorful NPCs and a couple of plot twists, and that should be enough to get something workable together quickly. It'll be familiar territory for me, but hopefully I can make the twists dramatic enough to not repeat myself too much.

After that, I'll probably start the Lovecraftian installment of my GURPS Cabal series illuminating the secret history of a long running major NPC so I'll have plenty of time to get it right for DexCon 2011.

Plant the Seed

I was speaking with a friend at work today about a person who was trying to exaggerate a claim well beyond the point of fraud and didn't see anything wrong with it. We'd caught her, obviously, so she wasn't going to get away with it. I'd become very frustrated with the claimant and lost patience. My friend said that she was planning on having a conversation with her in which she didn't expect the claimant to fully understand that what she was doing was wrong; she hoped only to "plant the seed" for her to eventually realize it in her own time.

This struck me as a remarkably intelligent idea. Even if you can't convince someone that they are making a mistake or behaving badly at a point in time, you can make sure that you say something that might stay with them long enough for them to learn from the mistake later, after they've repeated it a few times (which most of us tend to do before we learn).

I've often gotten frustrated with people who clearly didn't want to listen to what I was saying and just gave up after a while. Thinking this through, maybe I'm not wasting my time if I can figure out how to at least plant that seed and benefit that person later, if not now.

Death Note

I just finished watching the two Death Note live action movies, which are really one story spread over two films. This story originated as manga, then as an anime series, and eventually as movies. An American remake is supposed to be in the works.

The fundamental premise is an interesting one. It immediately reminded me of the roleplaying game Sorcerer in several respects, though the parallel is imperfect, and I'm likely to borrow some elements for roleplaying material in the future. A young man named Light finds a notebook with instructions explaining that if he writes a person's name in it while thinking of their face, that person will die. Thinking of the person's face prevents potential mistaken identity or duplicate name situations. If he does not specify how the person dies, the target dies of a heart attack. If he does specify, the death occurs at the time and place exactly as described. Light's father is a police officer, and because Light is frustrated by the way criminals frequently evade punishment for their crimes, he begins using the notebook to deal out justice as he perceives it. Of course, power proverbially corrupts, and Light soon finds himself on very slippery moral ground.

His own father is part of a task force trying to track him down, and the task force is led by a strange genius known as "L". Most of the story involves the cat-and-mouse game between L and Light, so I'd be spoiling it by saying anything more. The actor playing L gives a memorably weird performance that is enough reason by itself to rent these two films. I felt that Light's moral descent plays out a little too quickly in the first movie, and my wife assures me that it works much better with the slower pace of the anime series. I don't have a whole lot of hope for the American remake, since it's likely that they'll downplay the suspense and build up the action and special effects, but they could always surprise me.

In the meantime, I'd highly recommend the Japanese live action movies if you can appreciate a suspense film with a strong supernatural element and don't mind the CGI "gods of death" who get a fair amount of screen time.

Room Service and the Marx Brothers

I've had a little free time lately and continue to make progress on the "Room Service" scenario for Paranoia. I've got most of the character goal interactions sorted out (the most important part of a Paranoia scenario as far as I'm concerned) and a good outline of likely events.

The player characters are based on the Marx Brothers, and of course, there aren't quite enough brothers for a six player game. I've used that to advantage in a couple of respects. The sixth character is based on Margaret Dumont, an actress who appeared in many of their movies. And of course Gummo never appeared in any of the movies, but that gave me a lot of leeway to play with. Anyone who knows me knows that Zeppo is going to have more going on than might be apparent from his movie appearances. I'm shooting for that chaotic feel of the better Marx brothers movies while still keeping it Paranoia, and I think it's going to work.

I've got to stay focused on finishing this whenever I can, as I'm running out of time to write another scenario in time for DexCon, and I'd really like to have one more, preferably something for In Nomine.

2010 Convention Plans

I'm again looking at a lean convention schedule for 2010, with only DexCon as a sure thing. I'll post here if that should change. My repeat offerings will be "Lives in the Balance" for GURPS Cabal and "Tiger by the Tail" for GURPS Banestorm. The definite new scenario is "Room Service" for Paranoia, which is finally coming together.

I'd like to offer at least one other new scenario, but time is getting away from me, and inspiration seemingly in short supply. The most likely possibility is something for In Nomine. I'm not going to throw something together just for the sake of offering something new; I'd rather simply do less GMing than usual and pay to get into the convention than do that.

I've been saying for some time now that I need to reprioritize my spare time, and that's going to be even more important now that I'm going to have less of it for the foreseeable future. My tentative plan is to put writing into the same rotation as playing music to see if that helps.

Hope Everybody Had a Happy Christmas

My Christmas isn't over yet, strictly speaking, as I still have a visit with one of my sisters to go, but the seasonal flurry of activity is substantially over. Overall, things were more low key than usual for various reasons, primarily due to time needed for my father-in-law.

Work was far less busy than prior years, thanks to some changes made by company management. It would have been a very tough season for me if that hadn't happened.

My wife and I had a wonderful Christmas visit with Dr. Aether and his charming wife-to-be. If I'm ever going to be able to talk my wife into a long trip to visit anyone, it will be to see the two of them.

Now I'm looking forward to finding a new balance going into the new year. I'll still have to spend a lot of father-in-law time for the foreseeable future, but will have fewer other issues competing for my attention.

RPG Projects - Let It Snow!

We're getting some serious snow here, and the plan is to stay at home for the day. We could go out if we needed to, but why risk it if it isn't necessary? It'll be a nice change from recent events, actually. My wife has a sizable project for work that requires computer use, so I'll have to find other things to do most of the day.

Taking inventory, I found that I actually have quite a lot I'd like to do, but since I've really been slacking on RPG writing, I'll spend at least a little time working on the "Room Service" scenario for Paranoia. I've done some work on this one in the last week or so, and the theme does hang together, though it rather overshadows my original intentions. That's fine as long as it works as a whole, and I think it will.

If I still have time and the inclination, I may also work on the local Cabal campaign that I haven't started yet, but other priorities will likely delay the start of that campaign anyway, so it's less of an immediate need.

The last time I remember being snowed in, it turned out to be a remarkably nice and productive day. I wrote virtually an entire RPG scenario in white heat while my wife curled up on the couch and read a book. And the system I was using for that particular writing session? Paranoia! This could turn out to be a good day.

Father-in-law's Health

Things are getting worse again. Bottom line is that I have little time for anything except work and getting essentials done right now, so it's likely that I won't be posting much, at least until after Christmas or so.

Conquering the Wild MP3 Player

My wife and I thought it would be a fine idea to get each other MP3 players for our wedding anniversary a while back. It was about time to move on from CDs to the next level of technology. Turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded, though.

We carefully chose a Creative Zen model after considering several options and decided it would make things easiest to get the same thing for both of us. I first ran into trouble when I tried to install the software that came with it. Turns out that the software was only compatible with one specific variation on Windows XP, which happened to be one that we didn't have. None of the advertising happened to mention this (all ads said only that it worked with Windows XP, period). We went back to all sources to double check after the fact to make sure we hadn't missed something. That information isn't even in the packaging that came with the software and player! Creative's own web site mentioned it exactly once, but that's the only place we could find other than their tech support people that says anything about it. The other annoying thing about the player itself was that it came with a bunch of crap already on it. There was music and a couple of audio books that I didn't want, which were presumably on the player to draw people to other businesses, which I will now be actively avoiding.

We found out that we could use Windows Media Player instead of Creative's software, and in fact a lot of people preferred that to the packaged software anyway, so we could still use the players. I started the lengthy process of converting all of our CDs to MP3 format. Having accomplished that mission (approximately 1900 songs), I started working with WMP and the MP3 player to try to get all of the music on the players themselves.

I've got to confess here that at this point, the problem becomes my fault. I made several mistakes in the process due to my partial lack of familiarity with WMP and complete lack of familiarity with MP3 players in general. I'll spare you most of the gory details, but the key mistake was relying on the automated syncing process that I thought would be a good idea because, hey, it's automated and I can't mess it up. I ended up with quite the opposite result, since it did several things that I had to un-do later, once I'd figure out how things actually worked.

I'm glad to report that I finally achieved victory today and should be okay from here. I hadn't been aware in advance that this would be difficult at all. Technology is so much fun when it works, and such a bear when it doesn't. And now to venture into the world of downloading music. Here's hoping that goes more smoothly.

Three Original Songs

They're only partially new, but they're mine and ready to try with Jason. The original versions date back to the late 70's or early 80's, and to be honest some (though not all) of the original lyrics didn't hold up very well. The first band I was in played two of the three semi-regularly, and even recorded the best, but I hadn't listened to them in years. So I rewrote some lyrics for two and added a new bridge to a third, and now I'd feel more comfortable playing them again, though it remains to be seen what anyone would think of them now.

I'd really like to write some entirely new songs, but this will do for a start, and hopefully the process of working on these songs will prime the pump, so to speak.