The Crescendolls, Coming to a Game Near You

I am suddenly struck with the urge to run/play an RPG focusing on the Crescendolls, a glamorous, world-famous rock band. It would be an interpersonal drama, flavored by their professional lives, very much in the mold of Grey’s Anatomy or Felicity.

One Year On

Thought I had on the way to work this morning: Exactly a year ago, I had just finished my last shift at Badger Cab and was headed home to pack and sleep before heading to Gen Con the next morning. It would be the first time in nearly a decade to not start my Gen Con trip by working through the night and then hopping in a car for the ~8hr drive.

And I do mean exactly a year, since I got done with work at 7 am the tues before Gen Con, and for home some time after 8 that morning, since I had already moved out of my apartment and was stating with a friend. Today, I started work at 8, so I was on my way to work at almost exactly the same time.

Anyway, I was just reflecting at how different things are after a year. I’m still going to Gen Con, same as I have every year for 20+ years [I'm actually not certain which year was my first, but I think it was '91]. And I’ve still got roughly the same Monday-night game group as I’ve had for the past ~4 years.

But now we’re gaming via Skype from 3 different cities.

I leapt into a new city, with nothing there but my girlfriend, but after only a year I’ve got a good job and my sights set on a better one. I have plans and goals–and, more importantly, I see a path to them. I’m going to the gym regularly–I’d been meaning to get back to yoga for a decade–and taking dance classes again. My posture is finally making real progress, after decades of half-hearted work on it. And for the first time in a long time, I’m actually feeling energized about RPG work again. I participated in Game Chef last week, and had a blast (and a big confidence boost).

It’s amazing the difference a year can make. Oh, it’s not perfect. I miss Madison and my friends. I’m still trying to create a local gaming group. And I’m horribly out of shape so it’ll be a while until I land a suitable music group.

But isn’t the adage that nothing worth having is easy? Or is that doing? In this case, they’re both apropos. I’m way too good at being contented and comfortable. The majority of the time, it makes me happy and well-adjusted and easy-going. But there’s such a thing as too contented, IMHO, and pulling the rug of life out from under me has at least forced me to be quick on me feet. Or something like that–I’ll let you impute meaning to that, since I’m not entirely sure it actually works as a metaphor. Particularly because I have friends and acquaintances who really have had their lives turned upside down, and I don’t want to trivialize the very hard times they’ve gone through. It may have been rough for a while, but at least I had a place to live and a wonderful girlfriend–it was just hard to see my way forward on other fronts.

A year ago, Gen Con felt a little like my entry to the underworld, leaving behind almost everything familiar and beginning a journey where even the common things (like trash service) were strange and new. I go to Gen Con one year later as a celebration of friends and fun, and realize that I’ve made it through the underworld. My journey is far from complete, but I’ve changed and learned, and now I see a path. And Gen Con is no longer a bridge between things, but is once again just a vacation.

Orion’s Food

My Life With Doctor Horrible

We needed a two-session fill-in for our regular gaming group, and after some discussion settled on My Life With Master. When we sat down to discuss the characters, it was immediately said that it was obvious who the Master was: Dr. Horrible. Not Dr. Billy Horrible, of course, but his great great great great great grandfather, Dr. Jan Horrible. He, too, aspired to be accepted into the Evil League of Evil Gentlemen, but getting Bad Horse’s[0] approval wasn’t easy. So he hit upon the scheme of creating a freeze ray to bring down the local Lord Hammer. However, to do so requires horrible experiments on the local villagers and their cattle, among other things—which suits Dr. Horrible just fine, as they never listen to him, anyway.

Then we got to character creation. I forget which came first, the kid brother or the incestuous sister, but once one of them showed up, it clicked, and we settled on his minions all being family.

Story vs. Story Arc

I think I’m becoming disenchanted by Doctor Who–still love it, particularly the individual stories, but the story arcs are starting to be more annoying than wonderful. Which is very surprising to me. Either I want what I can’t have, or it is possible to have too much of a good thing. When I was a kid, the thing that most disappointed me about Star Trek: The Next Generation (and any number of other shows) was the lack of development—the way that the characters and setting didn’t seem to change nearly as much as episode events seemed to warrant. Sure, solving the problem of the week was interesting, but it just left me feeling unfulfilled. Ongoing development of the story and the characters is what made me love Blake’s 7 so much.

Who Gets to Rescue the Doctor?

I’m running a Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space game this weekend at Gamers’ Reunion, and the basic plot is a bunch of former companions, recruited by Susan, rescue the Doctor. If you were playing this game, who would you want to play?

There’s No Such Thing As a Tax-Free Free Lunch*

You are not allowed to simultaneously complain about property taxes, the condition of the roads, the availability and cost of parking, and the cost of parking tickets.

Look, people, that whole “no free lunch” thing? It applies to government services, too. The only difference is that we pay for a lot of government services through taxes, rather than direct payments or fees. And if not one, then the other. So, if you like well-maintained, regularly swept and plowed, well-constructed roads, you need to pay for them. They aren’t going to build and maintain themselves.

Now, Soon, Forever

As anyone who has lived with a cat knows, they sometimes understand time much as we do, but other times their perception of time is baffling. After extensive observation, I believe I finally understand the perception of time by felis catus.

For the average domestic cat, a very few events are set: dawn, dusk, in some cases mealtime. Stanley is about 90% consistent now on waking me up 0-10 minutes before breakfast time, for example. But, for the vast majority of events, cats rely on a scale of time that is significantly different than most humans’.

Now: Much like the human concept, but with less tolerance for delays. “Now” does not mean “as soon as you put your shoes on”–it means instantly, and any delay is unacceptable, because it is no longer “now”.

Soon: This is a loose translation—the wordier but more-accurate term would be “as soon as I’m done with this”. This is a very flexible unit of time by human standards. It means whenever the cat is done with whatever it is currently doing, and thus ranges from [in human terms] a minute or less (when using the litterbox) through a few minutes (when eating dinner) to several hours (when sleeping). But from a cat’s point of view, these are all the same unit of time.

Forever: Any unit of time greater than “soon” and still today is approximately forever from a cat’s perspective. An hour until dinnertime? Forever. Waiting 3 minutes to go outside? Forever. You’re gone at work for 9 hours? Forever.

Forever and Ever: Longer than “forever,” up to and including some time tomorrow.

Any unit of time longer than a day, or any event further away in time than tomorrow, is literally incomprehensible to the vast majority of cats, so they have no term for it. For them, units of time beyond “forever and ever” are simply meaningless–the proverbial third dimension for a flatlander.

Red Riding Hood Isn’t That Bad

We went to see Red Riding Hood last night. It’s really not anywhere near as bad as reviews–or the Tomatometer–would make you think. In fact, most of it was great fun. Oh, no art here–but the acting was actually pretty decent and the story mostly struck a good balance between cliche and surprise. However, to explain both what was good about it and, crucially, where they totally f’ed up, is gonna involve spoilers. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum, but it will give some things away. You have been warned.

Dreamthieves, Take 2 (part 3)

In this part 3 (of 3) of my analysis of a Dread game based on the movie Inception, I’ll look at how the scenario construction was different from most Dread games, and bring the discussions from all 3 parts together.