Not Exactly a Blog

Ravings of a Textual Deviant is moving! Thanks to Dorothea, I have a genuine blog now. I'll leave my previous entries up here (too much trouble to move), but all the new ravings will be elsewhere.

I'm cranky today. You've been warned.

I do have a sinus infection, but it may or may not be Ed's. I saw the doctor yesterday, after spending 24 hours convinced that there was an ice pick behind my left eye. The good news is that the infection is in a sufficiently early stage that if I can get my sinuses drained, I might manage to pre-empt it. To that end, I have some pills to help with drainage. They're working really, really, well--I'm afraid to get more than 20 feet from a box of tissues. The doctor said it was too early to tell if antibiotics are warranted...but if my "drainge" goes technicolor, I should call him. The bad news is that I also feel drained in places other than my sinuses. I was awake for perhaps 7 hours total yesterday, and could happily have done the same today. But duty calls, and I have an overactive responsibility gland.

I think I've caught Ed's sinus infection. Damn and bother.

"Astronauts are like firemen," Rob said. "Everyone likes them. They're heroes." He paused. "Two shuttle accidents are too much for one lifetime."

"Three," Matt added. "I remember the Apollo."

This conversation took place at a party I was at on Saturday night. Normally, I'm not one to go out and celebrate on the day of a fatal accident, but in this case, I don't feel bad about it. It was a we're-glad-you're-not-dead party for a friend who (barely) survived a car wreck that killed a family friend and injured his mother. He's up and around, and more or less himself. Lots of physical therapy ahead, but (as I was told at the time of the accident), they did manage to save his arm.

For my part, I found it both interesting and sad that the text crawl at the bottom of the newscreen stated that the Homeland Security Department hadn't received any threats against the shuttle, and that the shuttle had been out of range of a surface-to-air missile. There's a post-9/11 fact of life for you. Israeli astronaut on board, and all.

I wouldn't want to be aboard the International Space Station now--probably for the first time in my life. NASA grounded the shuttle for over two years after the Challenger disaster, and although there is a return vehicle on the ISS, it's Russian-made. From what I've heard about the Soviet/Russian space program, I wouldn't want to risk it. (I used to know someone who had been at a listening post in Hokkaido during the Cold War, and the horror stories he used to tell about the Soviet space program's "mission failures"...yikes!) I've been a proponent of a vigorous space program for as long as I can remember. I hope that the Columbia accident doesn't put paid to the ISS. That would be a very poor tribute to the Columbia astronauts--the antithesis of what they'd been working for.

Ed is still sick at home today, and says he's feeling worse, rather than better. According to the nurse at his doctor's office, he shouldn't worry unless he stops coughing (gotta clear the lungs) or is short of breath. Ed says he's only short of breath while he's coughing, but that doesn't count. I don't think he's in any danger of not coughing; he did enough of it to keep us both up last night. He only gets two sick days a year, and has already used them up on this nasty bronchial infection. Grrrrr.

GAME WISH asks To what extent do you or your gaming peers use and develop house rules? Are you the kind of player who builds a system from the ground up, the kind of player who endlessly tweaks an existing game system to improve its performance, or the kind of player who uses a system out of the box? How does it affect your playing style? How does it affect the balance between rules mechanics and “pure” role-playing?

I don't have any objection to house rules, so long as everyone knows what they are, but I tend not to use them very much. I'm not much of a system mechanic, and I am very hesitant to do anything that throws game balance out of whack. This is the reason for one of the few house rules that I often use--if you miss a gaming session, you can "make up" the XP by writing up what your character was doing instead. This has worked out really well in the Teenagers from Outer Space game, and resulted in a running joke in one case (Altairian flu--ask me later). This helps keep the characters at more or less the same level. I hate what happens to game balance when you get too much of a range in levels in the group. It also keeps players involved in the game, and less likely to drop out. Doug, who runs the best games I've ever played in, inspired this rule via his method of coping with absent players ("they're taking care of the monsters that nobody else can see").

The other house rule I use frequently is giving XP to NPCs. This has had some interesting consequences in both the Grand Ellipse and Teenagers from Outer Space. My thinking on this subject is that the NPCs need to keep up with the characters if they're going to survive the increasingly challenging situations.

Ed is home sick for the second day in a row. He had a sinus infection that failed to sucumb to the first round of antibiotics and promptly took up residence in his lungs. He's got the mother of all cough syrups, plus an extra expectorant pill, to help him clear his lungs. They seem to be working, although as he says, he has yet to hit the jackpot in the lung lottery. The good news and the bad news is that at least he feels well enough to be cranky.

Maybe I got up on the cynical side of the bed this morning, but it occurred to me that most of the problems in the world today have to do with the lack of infinite resources. Therefore, the logical solution is to try and figure out how to acquire infinite resources. This is at least as productive as anything else I've heard, and in the unlikely event that someone actually manages it, a lot of problems get solved at once.

I suppose I'm well enough to feel cranky, too.

Role Call asks If we can agree that all roleplaying is really about telling a story, then how does system figure into it? Explain.

I think that the system provides internal consistency. This may or may not involve the setting (GURPS lets you play almost anywhere and anywhen, while Shadowrun and D&D dictate the genre, if not the specific spacetime location.) World-building is hard, and a good system handles that part of it for you. The system also--by use of dice, cards, whatever--introduces an element of chance into decision points. Character decisions drive plots, as do the results of the decisions. Introducing a random element can result in a change to the entire course of an interaction, a battle, or even a campaign. Finally, a system gets everyone on the same page. If you're playing in a WWII setting, you can be reasonably certain that aliens are not going to land and join the party. Unless your GM's a Harry Turtledove fan.

Dorothea's far more qualified than I to speak about role-playing as narrative, so I eagerly await her answer. (hint, hint)

GAME WISH asks Is there any addiction to the feedback gaming provides in the weaving of stories? Unlike traditional tales, gaming allows the input of the players and GM into going “other places,” depending on the interests and desires of those involved…but can that lead to feeding the audience too much of what it likes and not enough challenge? Where in that scale do you measure?

I'm a plot junkie. As to the question "can that lead to feeding the audience too much of what it likes and not enough challenge," I would have to say yes. There are all kinds of things you can do to run a game badly, and that's one of them. However, that doesn't mean that giving your audience what it likes and giving your audience a challenge are mutually exclusive. When I run a game, I like to let the characters develop as much as they players are interested--then use that character development to tailor a challenge to a character. For example--a strictly non-violent character finds out that she or he may have been targeted for assassination. The player has to figure out how the character is going to cope with that--and how to handle the potentially opposing viewpoints of the other characters in the game. How's that for a challenge?

I can't seem to stay healthy this winter. I've been congested and exhausted since Thursday. I tried working from home, which went well on Thursday, but I could only manage half a day on Friday. I meant to lie down for half an hour, and ended up taking a four-hour nap. Spent most of the weekend napping between various and assorted obligations. I finally pulled myself together to go into worj this morning, and before I even got into the building, things were going wrong. I had to cross the street from the parking garage to the office building in a hurry, because traffic simply wasn't stopping, or even slowing down--despite the flashing yellow lights, signs, and crosswalk. I had just made it across the street when I slipped in some slush, dropped my laptop (which is fine) and my lunch (likewise) and banged my right elbow and knee (not so good) as I went face-first into the pavement.

Grrrrrrrrr.

Parts of Antarctica are warmer than Indianapolis today. I checked.

Roll Call #2 asks In what genre do you prefer to game? Whether it’s fantasy, SF, or something else entirely, explain why.

Call me a munchkin, but I love playing a good cross-genre game. Give me gothic horror in a fantasy setting, or a good mix of magic and technology and I'm a happy camper. Time travel and alternate history games are to die for! I suspect that this is because I'm a cross-disciplinary person in general. I'm fascinated by the intersection of history and science/technology, the history of science and technology, and how culture and environment interact in a society. This is also a driving force in my reading, both fiction and non. Unfortunately, it's hard to find a good cross-genre game system. Shadowrun was a great concept with lousy mechanics, and maybe it's just me, but Rifts seems to have chucked even the pretense of game balance.

That said, I love running a comedy campaign. One of my current Teenagers From Outer Space players only stops asking me for a humor capmpaign when she's actually in one. Toon, of course, is a classic, but TFOS lends itself well to silliness, as does TMNT. I've had it in mind to run a superhero humor campaign for some time, too. On the other hand, this is coming from someone who would, given the opportunity, run Call of Cthulhu as high (or low) comedy.

I had friends from both near and far (Wisconsin) visiting for the long weekend--some of whom I hadn't seen since my wedding--and it wasn't nearly long enough. You can tell you've had a good time when you miss someone the minute they leave. It was a real treat for me to have such excellent company, and I'm already all a-tingle with anticipation of their next visit.

Before I delve into deep geekery, I want to send a heartfelt "you go, girl!" to Hayley Wickenheiser. She has a brand-spanking-new contract with Kirkkonummi Salamat (Lightning), a professional men's hockey team in Finland. Ms. Wickenheiser had a monthlong tryout on open ice, and won a spot on the team. She scored her first point on Saturday.

GAME WISH wants to know Are PBeM (Play-by-email) games actually roleplaying? Why or why not? How does PBeM differ from or approximate roleplaying face-to-face, or other activities that you feel it is similar to?

Absolutely, and I have megs and megs of email from theGrand Ellipse to prove it! And if you don't believe me, you can ask Dorothea. There is an element of collaborative writing involved, but it's not a letter game. (Letter games, on the other hand, are a collaborative writing exercise. Perhaps I'll get back to this topic at an unspecified future point.) The more I think about it, the more it seems as though there's a Cartesian plane out there, with roleplaying as one axis and writing as another. There are all kinds of activities that you can plot out on that plane, from improv theater (see below) to classic tabletop RPGs and wargaming with minis. If I had some free time, I'd give it a go. Unfortunately, I don't have any free time, so if you decide to try it, let me know how it turns out.

Roll Call wants to know What would be your answer if you were asked, “What is roleplaying?” Why do you choose to define roleplaying as you do?.

I love this question because I often get asked "What is roleplaying?" The best short answer I have come up with is "improv radio theater with rules and dice."

The longer answer is "improv radio theater with rules and dice" with some explanation tacked onto it. The reason I like this answer is that it gives non-gamers something to refer to--although radio theater isn't what it used to be, at least most people have heard of it. I think that the reason this description works is that people can relate to a theater group--the GM is the director, the players are the actors, and the game narrative that develops is the script.

I wish I could claim this as an original idea, but I can't. When I was in graduate school, a theater grad student I knew started showing up at and participating in one of the live-action RPGS that was going in town. He was studying us for his dissertation, and ended up giving a theater workshop for many of the people in the game. I never had an extended conversation with him about the idea of role-playing as theater, but it seemed obvious when he pointed it out.

At this point, I have to confess, I have a theater bias. I started in pre-ballet classes about the same time that I started preschool, and I had a lot of theater training when I was in elementary school. I did community theater, which is a great place for a kid who looks younger than she is to get cast in good roles. I was also cast in ballet performances (The Nutcracker, The Jungle Book) throughout grade school. I left ballet about 20 years ago, because we moved and there wasn't a good school available. I gave up acting for technical theater after junior high, but kept that up through college. Lack of time and other projects have put me on hiatus for the last several years, but I'm still an avid ballet-and-theater-goer. My mom gets all the credit for this--she is a professional actress, dancer, and choreographer, and she took me to work fairly often (much better than going to the babysitter!) I like to say that I grew up backstage.

The cool thing about role-playing as theater is that people who aren't and don't want to be actors can enjoy immersing themselves in a character. There are plenty of other kinds of enjoyment to be had in gaming, of course--solving problems, accomplishing goals, and so on, but I'll leave that discussion to others.

One of the many signs that you're a geek is that your idea of a treat is being able to read an entire novel in one sitting. I almost managed that with John Maddox Roberts's Hannibal's Children. I'm a frothing fan of alternate history, especially alternate history that isn't set in either the American Civil War or WWII. Those two settings have been done to death. Hannibal's Children opens in 215 B.C., with Carthage defeating Rome in the second Punic War, and sending the Romans into exile. Fast-forward 116 years, and the Romans are assimilating the Gauls and Celts up north. It's a cool--and believable--premise. Roberts is a nut for historical detail, but his characters are somewhat underdeveloped. I'm generally willing to give authors a lot of leeway if they give me a good story, and as Roman history is out of my area of expertise, I was willing to let a lot slide. My all-time-favorite alternate history is Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, but Roberts's work was enjoyable, if a bit flawed. I'll read the next book in the series anyway.

Also just returned to the library--Midori Snyder's Inammorati and Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, both enjoyable. Oh, and Jamie Oliver's latest cookbook, The Naked Chef Takes Off. Annoying layout in the introductory parts, but the recipes look both fabulous and doable. Definitely my next cookbook purchase. Up next, The Little Ice Age: How the Climate Made History 1300-1850 and The Ornament of the World : How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain.

I think I finally have an answer to last week's GAME WISH. As a GM, I like a limited-term campaign. I say "term" and not "plot," because I like to let the players wander far afield...so long as they go interesting places. However, I think it's easier to keep control of a game that has a definite ending or goal. That's not to say that you can't keep a plot arc going for several months; many GMs I know have been very successful at doing so. Personally, I don't think I could keep a game going indefinitely, unless it was a series of limited-scope adventures. And even if I could, I don;t know if my players could.

On the other hand, as a player, I love an open-ended campaign. (Especially if Doug is running it, but I'll save that for another time.) I appreciate the amount of work a GM puts into keeping the game challenging and fresh. Individual characters have an oppporutnity to get tons of good plot. Each character can star in his/her/its very own story arc. This probably stems from the fact that as a player, I am all about character development, and I don't mean the XP-spending kind. I like to get more out of a game then just a chance to slaughter imaginary monsters. (Some of my players and ex-players would probably tell you that this comes out when I run a game--my players get more points for clever solutions than brute force.) In fact, I can't get enough character development. (Hi, my name is Li and I'm a plot addict.)

The only down side to an open-ended campaign--for both the players and the GM--is that these campaigns have a tendency to peter out eventually. The GM simply can't keep up with the ever-expanding amount of work, or a player leaves the game, or everyone just gets tired of having no direction. A limited-scope campaign makes it easier for players to rotate in and out of a game, and gives them a sense of accomplishment. There's no reason you can't go on to a sequel campaign in the future, but you can also call it quits at a high point.

How did it get to be Friday so quickly? I still have so many things to get done...

Anyway, GAME WISH asks Do you prefer campaigns to be limited-plot, with a definite ending, or open-ended, so that they can continue indefinitely? What about things like “convention campaigns” where people meet irregularly to pick up old characters and game together? What are the pros and cons of each sort of game? Which is more common in your gaming experience?

Let me think about that and get back to you.

Update: I'm trying to think and nothing happens.

Congratulations to David Salo, for being the first player to officially knock me for a loop in the Grand Ellipse. I though I had his character backed into a corner, and he found a very clever and sneaky way out of it. Basically, when his character, Prince Deoraj, arrived in Madras, he found his fiancee waiting for him at the train station. She had already begun planning the wedding, and no silly Angrezi race was going to get in her way. I got the following email from David a couple of days ago--

Deoraj is busily talking to his friends and any scholar in brahminical law to see if there's any way he can get out of his wedding -- postponement? proxy husband? "It's not just the bloody wedding," he says to anyone who will listen. "It's the bloody purification ceremony. I keep telling them that if I have lost caste by crossing the bloody ocean there is not the smallest point in purifying me when I am just going to lose it again. Am I bloody famous because I am the bloody prince's son of bloody Jhalwar I ask you? Please not to answer before I am finished saying. It has bloody nothing to do with bloody Jhalwar and everything to do with the bloody Ellipse. So what is the point in hindering me from proceeding further? How am I supposed to do anything for India stuck in bloody Madras under the bloody watchful eye of the bloody Resident?" And at last, "Forget about bloody Calcutta, I want tickets for Rangoon ferry straightway hup hup!".

Princess Vandana woiuld have none of it. In her mind, that engagement was arranged years ago, the wedding plans were in process, and he was bloody well going through with it. In fact, I told him that there was "Nothing that Her Highness will accept. Unless Deoraj wishes to call off the wedding entirely, breaking the engagement that was arranged when he and the lovely Princess were mere children, thereby bringing endless shame upon her and effectively killing any chance for another marriage...thereby incurring her unmitigated wrath." I thought I had him. Until I checked my email this morning.

Dearest Maman, Papa and also Princess Vandana:
Homage to you and all your lotus-like feet.
Despite your doubtless best intentions in arranging for the perfection of connubial bliss betwixt the Princess and your obedient servant, it has recently become agonizingly transparent to him that the stars have set themselves against such an altogether otherwise commendable course. For whilst I did set myself in a meditation upon the multifarious remarkable properties of the Princess, there did come into mind the veritable image as it were of Sri Vishnu with a thousand and twenty-four arms, gazing upon the self with a most horrible expression. And then meseemed as it were that I understood him to be conveying the meaning that I had offended most grievously against his divine worship by consenting unto this marriage being as it were already married to the service of India.
In token whereof and in obedience to the puissant majesty of the deity, I Deoraj Ishwar Singh shall, by the time you receive this missive, have already in the presence of a number of most devout and diligent holy men, divested myself of my state and, giving all of my personal possessions away to the poor (but what I shall require to betake myself into well-merited exile), shall have taken upon myself the saffron robes and staff of a sunnyasi of the order of Shankar, whom, as you know quite well, are not permitted to marry. Of course I would be delighted if her omnipotent Highness were pleased to accompany me by entering into the homeless life together with me, but I leave that to her exalted and ever-correct judgment.
Namo-vah,
your son Deoraj
(Henceforward Ananda Das, Sunnyasi)

Mind you, the temptation to have Princess Vandana accompany Deoraj was almost overwhleming, but it would have been completely out of character for her. Therefore, I gracefully concede defeat in the issue of the royal marriage.

Of course, there is still the matter of Princess Vandana's unmitigated wrath.

I've been a technical writer for over five years now. It's a pretty good job, as jobs go. I joke that I write things that people never read--technical manuals and online help. It's not easy, and it's not Great Work, but I have the opportunity to help people out a little when they need it. The only thing I don't like about my job is that after sitting in front of a computer, writing for eight hours a day, it's not easy to sit down for another couple of hours to write my own stuff. On the other hand, I am a genuine professional writer, and it pays fairly well. One of the great things about the web, and the IT industry in general, is that creative people like artists and writers can get jobs that pay well enough for us to maintain a decent standard of living while we're working on our personal projects.

It's quiet...too quiet. Not that I mind. I could use a little "too quiet" this evening.

It turned out that Doug's game was on Friday night. Sort of. He hasn't been happy with the way the campaign was going, and after some debate, we decided to table it (so to speak) for a few months while Doug reworks it, and start over. Personally, I was having fun, but I have to admit that the plot wasn't going anywhere. The new game started off well enough, but there's not a whole lot of plot or character development yet. I feel rather unsettled about the whole thing, but I expect that will go away soon.

Friday night ended up being the start to a very tiring weekend. I spent Saturday morning in the lab, and Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning cleaning the house for the company post-holiday party. The party was in the afternoon, and then I had to clean up after the party--not that there was a mess or anything, but there was a lot of food to put away. By 7:00 on Sunday, I was too tired to even think about updating the Grand Ellipse. I hate to let my players down, but between the party and the migraine that's been hanging around since Saturday morning, it simply wasn't going to happen.

I'm not going to do anything next weekend.

I'm getting so much work done I almost forgot to write...

Instead of a 40-minute, traffic-heavy drive to downtown Indianapolis, to the Goverment Center and my usual disorganized cube in a noisy area, I'm working out of my co-subcontractor's office today, seven minutes from my house. I have a nearly-empty cube, and it's blessedly quiet! Not to mention the fact that I actually managed to get answers to a lot of the questions that were causing me so much frustration earlier this week. Unfortunately, not all of my questions were answered, so I'll have to come back next Friday. Darn shame, that.

It looks like Doug has cancelled our D & D game tonight, on account of weather. The actual weather isn't too bad; it's just that the streets aren't plowed well. Some of them aren't plowed at all. If you're from someplace like upstate New York, where's there's always plenty of snow, your roads are probably much clearer than ours. We've got splotches of slush over compacted snow and ice, turn lanes aren't cleared, let alone the shoulders. My neighborhood is one of those in which the streets don't get plowed, and the last few blocks of my trip home will be a fascinating exercise in vectors and friction.

I'm already in game withdrawal...after all, I haven't played anything since last year! Fortunately, Dorothea came to my rescue with a good laugh. I'm not sure if this makes me miss the game more or less--but it does sound awfully familiar in spots.

And, lest this week's GAME WISH be forgotten...

What are three movies that have inspired you as a gamer? Would you recommend them to other gamers, and if so, what would you tell them to look for and/or hope for them to get?

The first movie that popped into my head when I read this question was Dragonslayer. I don't know if it's even out on DVD, but it's worth your time whether or not you game. Ladyhawke was next out of the gate; Matthew Broderick looks a bit too modern to fit perfectly into his role, but the guy who plays the Bishop is fabulously evil. And while I think Ginger is right on with Big Trouble in Little China, she's already listed it, so I'm going to choose Men in Black for my third pick, tied with Hudson Hawk. So I'm bad at following instructions...

Last night, I added one more phrase to the list of things I never thought I'd say. "Sorry I'm late; I had to stop to kill the neighbor's dog."

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The neighbors a few houses down have a black, mediumish dog with the IQ of a moldy dishrag and a propensity to run into the street at approaching cars. I have seen it charge SUVs big enough to make a rhino think twice. I was certain that one of these days, it was going to a) cause an accident as someone tried to swerve out of its way, b) get itself killed in a particularly nasty way, or c) both. In the two years or so that we've lived in the neighborhood, I've developed a real dislike for that dog. I've been referring to it as the "Kamikaze Doggie" for months, now.

Several months ago, I had a near-miss with this very canine. I went to the neghbor's house, to let the dog's owner know that the invisible fence wasn't working. The woman assured me that "If anything happened, it wouldn't be your fault. I can't control that dog." I didn't find this especially reassuring, especially as the woman had several kids running around the house behind her. I called the president of the neighborhood association, and until last night, anyway, every time I saw the dog, it stayed behind the invisible fence. (Apparently, I wasn't the only one who had complained about the canine hazard to navigation.) Mind you, this didn't stop it from trying to chase cars, and it spent a lot of time running back and forth along the perimeter of the front yard, barking incessantly at anything on wheels.

Well, last night, after full dark, I went out to return a movie. I didn't see the dog charge out of its yard (it's not that big, fast, and black). My first clue that it was out was the loud thump by my left foot as I passed the neighbor's house. I didn't even have to think about it; I knew exactly what had happened. I had been going forward, and the dog had come at the side of my car as I went by; it's likely I wouldn't have been able to see it even in full daylight. I stopped the car and went to look for the dog. It had strategically retreated to the front yard, and was trying to look innocent despite its broken right hind leg. Of course, the neighbor, her kids, friends, and relations all poured out of the house at this point. I didn't stop to count, but there were probably twenty people on the front porch, spilling out onto the yard. The kids were completely freaked out, which was not surprising under the circumstances. The neighbor, on the other hand, was pretty calm about the whole thing. She told me that it was her fault, because she hadn't put the invisible-fence collar on the dog. She also told me to let her know if there was any damage to my car. (There is; a dog-sized dent in the driver's side door, near the front wheel well.)

I went back to my car and sat there for a moment. As I said, I've never liked that dog, and I was rather put out that it had chosen me to assist in its suicide attempt. I was extremely annoyed that this woman had let the dog out when she was fully aware of its bad habit. I even had a fleeting wave of annoyance that I hadn't finished it off. On the other hand, the stupid thing had to be in a lot of pain; even in the dim outside lighting I could tell that the broken leg was in bad shape, and it probably had internal injuries as well. I didn't want the dog to get hurt; I just wanted it to stop chasing cars. And I couldn't help but take a bit of satisfaction in the fact that it wouldn't be chasing anything for next few weeks, at least.