LibrarianWench: Smart, Opinionated & a bit Naughty

Anime hammer!

2009-05-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

My boyfriend is so cool. He bought me an Anime Hammer! It was my favorite 'weapon' in the last 'Big Eyes Small Mouth' game I played, and it's provided amusing references ever since.

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Chattacon - the adventure (part 1 Friday)

2009-01-27T23:11:00.008-05:00

I've been attending conventions for the past thirteen years. Rivercon, Conglomeration, Marcon, ConCave, GenCon, and now Chattacon.

Steve and I went with some friends of ours, a married couple who had gone a couple of years prior. The trip down was a lot of fun, including a sign at Smithfield Farm advertising "Used Cows". Insert *several* jokes (mostly off-color) here.

We brought some movies with us, along with my laptop, and various cables and such so we could MST3K some movies if the Sci-Fi channel wasn't as obliging as it generally is. We shouldn't've worried however. "Merlin's Apprentice" was more than adequate fodder - one reviewer even called it "a horrible flaming poop-fest". I love my boyfriend - he has such a way with words :). But I'm getting ahead of myself - this post is just going to be about Friday.

There were the usual issues with convention-going that we've come to know and (ahem) 'love'. Hotel patios the size of postage stamps, and Pre-registration lines taking about an hour, hour and a half for us to get to the front of the line, only to be told we weren't in the pre-reg system. However, the last batch of pre-registrations were found and we were taken care of in the next 15 minutes.

Let me just say here, that having worked conventions before, and experiencing Murphy's wrath, that considering the length of time that this was taking, most people seemed to be dealing with it rather well, on both sides of the desk.

The next hurdle came from the badge printers. The badges were hard plastic with full artwork, "Prometheus Unbound" by Michael Bielaczyc of Aradani Studio.

The badges were sturdy, and beautiful, but apparently the printers were stuttering and it took another 30-45 minutes to get them. Time well spent in the very comfortable chairs of the hotel bar adjacent to Registration - good planning Ops! ;)

We ate at the hotel restaurant - which has a great buffet with a nice range of variety, all for $10. I'd never seen the Chattanooga Choo-Choo hotel, but I thought that the train-car rooms were cool.

Though the map we saw had the programming, dealer's room, consuite, and art show all spread out, the distance wasn't nearly as far as it seemed it would be. The map was even kind enough to mark where the Mundanes were.

And of course, after traversing 4 days of GenCon, NOTHING else seems like it's too far at a convention.

The Consuite was actually a large building with a curtain dividing the several tables for gaming, a stage area for the robot wars (not the best pairing to be honest, IMHO) and the food/drink area, also spread out over several tables. They had a few different beers, including Killians and Shiner Bock (both quite good), and they always had some kind of food there (real food - chili, hot dogs, Little Debbies). Due to State Law, there was no beer between 2am-10am, but there was soda.

The parties were creative and fun, and there were a lot of bids there, including Raleigh's for NASFIC in 2010 http://www.RaleighNASFiC2010.org.

I had the pleasure of meeting writer, editor, and one of the original Girl Gamers: Lee Martindale http://www.harphaven.net/ there, and had we not been pressed for time in heading back home, I would have been able to attend the reading of her latest sale and gotten an interview. Though I hope to contact her and arrange a phone or Skype interview soon.

There was a PJ party Friday night (which became the Willy Wonka party Saturday), but more on that next post. It had been a 6 hour drive, and though a great deal of fun, we were TIRED, and the night ended a bit early for us.

Part 2 coming soon...

I worked myself up...

2008-12-10T22:15:00.002-05:00

...and for nothing. Well, not for nothing, because there was the awkwardness of going over the actual numbers. But there were two very enjoyable hours of reconnecting, of laughing and bitching over TV and movies, as we geeks are wont to do. Vetching about work, and just generally catching up.

At times it did feel like we were talking around certain fragile things, dancing close to a few precipices, there are still conversations that we aren't ready to have.

But that's ok, it's ok because we laughed so much, before and after the reason that we were there. It was reminiscent of things past and sorely missed.

I have hope now that things can and will be, indeed are on the way, to being mended.

We worked out something doable for everyone. No one made me feel as if I were a bad person, I can't say I don't feel guilt, but I am not buried under it.

I'm not entirely sure I should have posted what I did on my blog earlier. It's not like I was really concentrating on work, and at least I got to work some things out. A little more publicly than I usually do, but hey, it's my blog :).

Those who read the post, thanks for getting through the babble. Those who think I'm a whiny selfish brat...thanks for getting through the babble ;).

I really do hope to have more interesting things to read and share in the future. I know there should be a game review of "Bounty Head Bebop" coming soon, ideally with an accompanying review on AGC. Secret Life hasn't gone either, we're just on hiatus right now.

Time for bed now...

Carol

Stop overreacting!!!

2008-12-10T14:42:00.008-05:00

I am scared. I have all the physical manifestations of fear. Rapid heartbeat, trembling feeling...I am afraid. Sometimes writing about it helps, so, here I go:

Now, I can be an excitable person. I *am* prone to overreaction. My boyfriend would say very prone, and while I'm annoyed at that assessment, I don't argue with it.

Case in point: on his day off he texted me to tell me to call him on my lunch hour. I immediately thought of 5 really bad things that could have precipitated that text and my heart started racing; I got that sudden falling sensation in my stomach that speeds up my back and through my shoulders, and then makes my head all tingly.

I had to call him back *right then*. He answered, and instead of 'insert-crisis-here' I get: "You could've waited until your lunch break honey, I just needed to find the letter from [his son's] school for his eye exam."

'Oh', I think, and lean against the counter in the break-kitchen at work, legs going a wee-bit wobbly from the adreniline bailing on me and going to find someone else actually *worthy* of evoking fight-or-flight in.

"You overreacted."

"You know how I get," I offer as a feeble excuse, and then tell him where the letter is.

And there lies my current problem: *I* know how I get, and yet the physical manifestation of fear and anxiety when I face a confrontation, or a problem I can't solve, or when I know that I have made someone angry...or when I've hurt someone, comes back time and again.

I know - counseling, Zoloft, that could help (and has in the past).

Right now my counselor is on medical leave and I have actually been doing pretty well with coping with problems that arise. I don't immediately turn into a quivering, crying, goo-person when the car breaks down, or we're playing "which bill can we not pay this week" so we can afford some unexpected expense (usually attached to the aforementioned car).

I had a $20,000 commission taken away from me (yes, that is the right number of zeroes) due to something beyond my control, a commission that would have made *so* many things in my life better/easier/taken care of, and I *didn't* have to get hauled off to the rubber room. (I did cry...alot...don't tell me *you* wouldn't have cried, liar!)

Yes, I was exonerated, was told that it wasn't my fault, but I can't go to the electric company and say "hey, they didn't pay me, but it's not my fault!" I can't complain too much, "not my fault" means that I still have a job...which I *am* thankful for.

And the important thing is I carried on, I wasn't paralyzed with fear and depression. I didn't give up.

I've grown as a human being. Yay me.

But here's the hard part. When I *have* fucked up, when someone gets to be disappointed in me, or angry with me, I still feel like it's the end of my world.

I haven't grown up enough.

I know the crux of it too. Growing up (without going into the whole memoir) you could roughly describe my household situation as "You're only as good as your last action".

"I got an A."
"You forgot to take out the trash, you're irresponsible."

Or:

"I did all my chores."
"You got a D, you're lazy."

Obviously there's more depth and nuance to how I was raised, and my parents are good people, and I love them. But...I have developed a bit of a complex.

Now, due to a *lot* of drama and crap that's happened in our group over the last, oh, 5-7 years or so, we're not so much "a" group as lots of smaller ones. Much like a universe contracting and expanding, earlier this year there was what one could call "A Big Bang". And, some of us *do* refer to it as "When-things-went-Boom".

As with any war, there are various interpretations of what is going on, and the further from the battlefield you are, the more your perspective changes.

I wasn't quite in the middle of the last blast (The Big One), but I was close enough to take a significant amount of emotional shrapnel. Some of my friends further away from it, and one who wasn't, staged what one could describe as an intervention. They thought I was getting into a situation that was not good for me, nor ultimately, for another person.

I didn't agree. In fact, rather than do what they suggested, I did quite the opposite. No, "quite the opposite" isn't correct, try *exactly* the opposite. Not out of spite, but because I felt I had to try, I felt that was what I needed to do to be happy.

To this day they haven't been proven right, but neither have I in their eyes. Me? I'm happy with my decision, very much so. It wasn't the easiest road, but I believe it was the best.

The problem with this kind of situation is that only time can tell - but how much time, and what evidence is accepted as "proof" is unique to the observer. So some people will never be satisfied that I made a good decision, even if it continues this way for years.

I am very sad to say that I think I lost a friend, and worse, I cost someone else that same friend. And another is a bit more distant these days. I really do earnestly hope that time will heal us all, because they are all wonderful, caring people. Most days though, I lack hope for that.

So where's the confrontation? The disappointment? Who gets to wag their finger at me? Why am I so afraid?

There were three at the intervention, which they had out of feelings of love and protection. One of them was someone very close to me, we were involved, and we had been very good friends. It just didn't work out with us as a couple. And, he had helped me out financially a great deal. Let me be *very* clear on this: A. *Great*. Deal.

I suck at finances. I'm getting better, but if ever "too little too late" applied, whoo-boy, yeah. As I said, I suck. Now, I don't buy extravagant things. I haven't bought any new clothes in probably 8-9 months, I go to the library or buy used books, I'm a coupon-clipping fiend. On our weekly shopping trip I bought 20 rolls of Cottonelle for $9.49 with coupons and I actually felt victorious...

(ok, that last part, pretty sad, I know...)

The point is: I wanted to pay him back. There was just always *something*. Another bill, the rent, the car, the new (used) car I had to get, student loans, medical bills, past (closed) credit cards with a balance, and on and on...

These are not attempts at excuses, but reasons why. There's no excuse. I should have paid him back already. I should have found a way. The commission job I have has not been paying well, I can't find a decent freelance job to save my life, and everything else has gone up. My parents are on a fixed income and cannot help. There should've been a way, but I didn't see it, or maybe I did and just didn't do it. I honestly don't know.

We're meeting tonight to discuss paying him back. He's got some new expenses (all for really good things, good reasons, he's doing really well and I'm very happy for him), and he needs the money back.

I feel tremendously guilty, and not because I can't pay him back. Well, honestly, I just don't know how much he's going to need right now, and I *may* not be able to give him all of it.

Point of terror #1. What will happen if we can't agree...

Now, it's still going to be very difficult, my boyfriend and I are trying to make some improvements that are going to cost some money to complete, it is fairly time-sensitive, and a lot of his money is currently tied up in child support and student loans. But this person isn't a monster, he's a *good* man.

I'm scared because of the judgment, because I have had conversations and confrontations in my head with almost everyone I know before the "real-life" meeting to discuss said confrontation. And the conversations in my head *always* go badly. There's crying, and yelling, and I usually deserve it.

Point of terror #2. I really am a bad person...I've caused people pain, and maybe even a friendship.

I'd love to say that writing this all out has made me feel like I don't deserve it, that I shouldn't be afraid. Or maybe I *do* deserve it, but I still shouldn't be afraid.

If you've read this and don't think I'm a horrible person who deserves the ire my mind says is coming, I'd appreciate some good mojo...

If you've read this and think I deserve to be hauled through the streets and publicly ridiculed, go ahead and comment too, I will probably not read said comments today, but no one can say I censor...

Carol

I voted today

2008-11-04T18:37:00.004-05:00

I voted today, and I am proud of that. I am the child of an immigrant (a legal immigrant - for the past couple of years I've had to tack that on to avoid being hated on), and a woman. I also know people - good friends - people I love - who have fought for that right.

I've always been taught that it is a precious precious right that we have to vote, and it is our civic responsibility to do so. Even if you think your state is "obviously" going to go for the other party,if you vote, you can still be counted. If that party sees that they didn't get an overwhelming majority, that sends a message. Do I think that either party is 100% right or wrong? No, of course not, there are problems inherent in the two-party system, but not voting doesn't fix those problems. If you can still get to the polls and vote, please do.

Blip FM

2008-10-01T20:12:00.001-05:00

New site - love it love it love it!!

Catching up

2008-06-30T20:18:00.002-05:00

You can best find out about my GenCon experiences by listening to the following "All Games Considered" podcasts:

Episode 58 - GenCon Part I
Episode 59 - GenCon Part II
Episode 61 - Indie Games

Work has been up and down, more down lately. Podcasting has been a little spotty, though we've got some news on SLGG coming up. Trying to get the blog back up off the ground. Stay tuned.

GenCon 2007

2007-08-22T21:56:00.000-05:00

I was privileged to attend all 4 days of GenCon this year - report coming soon!

Karl Rove RESIGNS!!!

2007-08-13T06:33:00.001-05:00

Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to the Bush administration, announces his resignation, says he will be out by the end of the month.

read more | digg story

A game of telephone

2007-06-02T22:57:00.001-05:00

It's been awhile (isn't it always?) and I've had all sorts of ideas for posts in my head, just not always the time to get anything but a few lines down before something or someone interrupts, but such is life.

I didn't plan this post ahead though. I'm writing off the cuff because I have something I need to get off my chest. I wish I could say that things are going just peachy, and for the most part I really can't complain. I'm still gainfully employed, have a roof over my head, food in the pantry, internet access, you know - the basics.

I just learned a good lesson in not speaking before thinking however, and I'm still pissed about it. I should say a good hard lesson, because the ramifications are still beating me over the head. Big time.

A little background is necessary I think to explain my level of frustration with this situation.

Several years ago, I was doing a fairly good impression of a doormat. I would apologize for everything, even things I didn't do (it was a thing with me. I tended to quash any anger I felt because I felt everyone had a side to a story and it was my duty to consider all sides to be fair and non-judgmental person. To be a good person.

Well, fast forward a little and my friends are working on getting me a backbone. To help me not back down when I think I'm right, to believe it's ok to express my opinions, even if others don't agree with them, it's ok.

I'm also a firm believer in free speech, but with the caveat that when you say something, there are always consequences, and you have to be prepared for those consequences. One of the reasons I didn't like to argue with people, I preferred to discuss things. I'd grown up arguing with my Dad, playing the blame game on several things. My ex-husband was like that too. It was all about whose fault it was. I hate that. There are reasons for the things people do, and to be an adult you have to accept responsibility for your actions, but no problems can be fixed if all you do is point fingers and blame.

Fast-forward further. Much of the naive patsy is gone. I still like to think of myself as a nice person, just a little more practical and a lot more realistic than I used to be.

Now, I've got some friends going through a divorce. It isn't a nasty one thank goodness, but any divorce is going to be tough. Emotions are going to run high, snap reactions are going to be made. It just is.

Both sides have legitimate gripes, and I'm trying my damndest to stay out of it, because they are trying their damndest to keep it civil for the sake of the kids. Kind of difficult since my new roommate is one of the pair, and I work and carpool with the other one, and I lived with them for a few years after my own divorce to boot.

Yeah - no complications there...

So, bring in friend C. She works with us too, and she's very close to the ex-wife. I'm closer to the ex-husband. Friend C and I used to be the sounding boards for them when they were a couple, and we would joke that we talked about their problems more than they did.

Ha ha, quite amusing. You'll see where it gets un-funny really fucking fast...

Friend C actually had some issues with the ex-wife for a few years. I won't go into them because other than the fact that she had those issues, it's not part of this story, just goes to background and character.

Friend C would rant a bit about the ex-wife to me, said some uncomplimentary things (I'm being really nice here), and I would listen to her kvetch and let her rant. That's what friends do - right?

And of course I never told the ex-wife about what was said by Friend C. It wasn't needed, and if they were going to work things out they would, in their own time, on their own terms.

They eventually did. I was very happy that they did. They had been friends for over a decade and it was distressing to see them not get along for the time that they weren't.

Money is tight for me, that has been my biggest problem since my divorce. I freak out about it sometimes. School is out for summer, my roommate (the ex-husband) has taken some time off from his new job to watch the kids for a couple of days. He doesn't get paid for it, and he can't miss any time for the next two weeks. It's a part time job that offers benefits for the kids, and he can't and won't pass that up because he's chosen to carry them on his policy. His choice. Please note that.

So, I'm tired Thursday morning, I've had no coffee, rent is due, and I'm in a mood, and I kvetch about the situation, how there's no other sitter (do you know how hard it is to get affordable, reliable day care? If you're not worried about the price, you're concerned about who is watching your children...), and she can't take off, she's already taken time off recently, and yeah, all he's got is a part time job but at least it covers the kids. Her job is a full time job, but the family benefits are just too expensive.

I sounded bitchy, I realize this. Friend C however, who I am kvetching to in the car, doesn't say anything, but later on tells the ex-wife, in such a way that makes it sound like I'm blaming her for everything. I find this out because she was angry, was talking to her ex-husband about it - and he tells me later (I worked late that night and didn't ride home with them).

I'm mad, I'm royally pissed, and the next morning I let her have it. But the ex-wife tells me that it isn't just this - it's the last 6-months to a year,and she's really mad at me, so much so that she can't even talk to me about it. Now, that I'm kind of perplexed about. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye, but if she had an issue I would have hoped she'd've said something to me. Anyway, I hope that eventually she and I will get to talk things out.

But Friend C. Yeah, I've got a problem with her. Her response to me when I asked her why? She said that things I've said have made her "uncomfortable". When I asked her why she didn't talk to me about it - she said she was going to. My response was when - after she twisted my words and told someone else?!!

I could tell everyone we know something bad that Friend C has said about any one of them. Not that she would care, because she would just write everyone who disagrees with her off. She doesn't take responsibility for her words at all. It's always the other person's fault, she's the victim, she's the misunderstood one.

So that's where I am. Friend C once told me that she doesn't like conflict, so I'm sure that I've been written off. We're not going to calm down and talk about this. Not like me and the ex-wife, I'm pretty sure we can work things out once she's calmed down. But Friend C and I - I don't know.

We were bridesmaids at each other's weddings, we've been through a lot together, and as angry as I am, I hope that we can eventually work this out.

Anyway, it's late. I'm tired. If anyone has any suggestions, or advice - I'm willing to listen.

~C

The WoW account is dormant...

2007-04-12T19:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally have some of my stuff together. I turned off the rest of the unnecessary expenses like the WoW account. And I'm doing things like fixing computers on the side to supplement my income - even working on getting a second job. So, I apologize for the mini-pity-party. I really should type these things out on the local drive before heading straight to the blog :).

While I will miss my adorable, yet lethal gnome warrior (engineering/mining), and her plethora of weapons taller than she is. I plan on eventually coming back when I'm in a better financial place.

In the meantime, the podcast is going really well. All Games Considered will be making a showing at both Conglomeration and GenCon Indy. I'm really looking forward to both. Ideally I will come up with interview questions that will not make me look like a total fangirl.

However, speaking of my perpetual geekness, we just finished recording another episode, and I am working on getting some of my "infamously thorough reviews" (you gotta listen to get it) here on the blog.

So, enough whining and on to more productive and interesting things :)

ABC's new show / Personal rant

2007-03-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

So, ABC is starting a new show called "The Great American Dream Vote", where the country (those who watch and vote) can make someone very happy. This is going to sound all kinds of wrong, but I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated that my ex guilted me into paying his taxes. I'm frustrated that I never could manage to get ahead on any of my bills. I'm frustrated that when I was asked for money I couldn't give it to my friends fast enough, but when I was expecting something (tax return, bonus, etc.) it was always *just* too late, and *just* not enough. I'm frustrated that the bills I paid when I did have the money were apparently the wrong ones. I'm frustrated that no matter what I do - it isn't enough. I'm mostly frustrated with myself for making the wrong decisions at the wrong time. I've tried selling things on ebay - it's not enough, I've tried selling my books at the local used bookstore - not enough, I work extra hours - not enough. I don't know what to do at this point. Suggestions are welcome.

Added more tech stuff

2007-03-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

On the sidebar I've added some long-neglected links to some of my tech resources. Of course the TWiT network is something I don't go a single day without listening to - at least the Daily GizWiz - and the man who needs no plugs (but gets lots of them ;)) John C. Dvorak's blog. And 43folders. More to come as I get more time to update.

Police, school get failing grade in sad case of Julie Amaro

2007-03-05T00:45:00.001-05:00

"Imagine you know next to nothing about computers. You're a substitute teacher for a seventh grade class. There's a computer in the classroom and, knowing you're going to be sitting there for a while, you ask a fulltime teacher if you can use it. He logs you in with his password and tells you not to shut it off because you couldn't get back on."

This hugely pisses me off. For many many many reasons.1. If a school cannot afford the license fees to keep their virus-scanning software updated with the latest definitions, sell some damn candy bars or get some freeware. It's not the *substitute teacher's* fault if a storm of pop-ups floods the screen. 2. Anyone who calls themselves an expert who thinks that every webpage or pop-up *must* be the result of actively clicking on a link needs to get their money back from the Cracker-Jack company, because you paid too much for that certification.3. The witch-hunt mentality that oozes from this case just goes to show that unless people are educated about what internet security really entails, that ridiculous shit like this is going to continue to happen.I'm glad that she's got a new lawyer, and I hope she is cleared soon.

read more | digg story

Sometimes it's the little things...

2007-03-04T23:17:00.000-05:00

My co-worker came over to my cubicle Friday morning, and in her sweetest little-girl voice says "How's my favorite person?" I had heard her talking to her husband on the phone a few minutes earlier and I put a few things together, so I asked her, or rather, made the statement: "Your computer's broke, isn't it?"

The answer, of course, was yes. So I agreed to come over and look at their computer. I like fussing with computers, and since I'm not in the field anymore, it's more of a fun if not frustrating-at-times hobby. The basic problem was that the computer would start to boot Windows (XP Home) and just enter into a reboot/crash cycle. That didn't sound terribly good, but I wanted to save their data, and so I brought a spindle of DVDs (note for the future...if you *have* a second drive *use* it for your data!)

Despite being held up by traffic (I'll save *that* rant for another post), I got there, and on the advice of another friend, her husband and I went to our local CompUSA to go get a drive enclosure, and a can of air (the can of air is very important).

We get back - and order pizza, the good kind, lots of toppings, olives, sausage, cheese. Strong Kona coffee - good IT food. My co-worker goes out with another co-worker (our pizza got there before their cab - not good since they live only a few minutes away from the depot!), and I got down to business of backing up 40GB of stuff.

Fast forward about 5 hours, through some good chat, good company, pizza, some cigarettes, coffee, etc, all in all a really good night - just a long and late one. In between backing stuff up, I cleaned out the tower, a small puppy's worth of fur got blown out of it. Did I mention they had a dog? A real sweetie, lots of fur...

About 2:30A.M. we finish. I put the computer back together and fire it up, ready to do a full restore from the hidden partition.

Can you guess what happened? Yep. It fired right up.

We laughed, we had to, what else could you do? Now the power supply didn't sound that hot, and the box is more than 3 years old, they may end up needing a new one. But still, had I just cleaned the thing first it may have been a shorter night. Still, I can't complain, it was a good evening.

Take three...

2007-03-04T15:27:00.000-05:00

So, back in October I decided to make a significant change in my life. Let me start by saying I never change jobs on a whim, I've been consistently employed since I was 17 and I tend to develop a high-loyalty quotient - sometimes to my own detriment. I couldn't stay in the job I had so I changed jobs and it was to a field that I didn't have a whole lot of experience in.

A solid month of training and another 4 at this job and I'm doing pretty well. But I haven't had a lot of time for much else. Add to that a host of other stuff - both good and bad going on, and the blog - weeeelll, as you can see, not much has been done with it, but I want to change that.

Bear with me folks - I hope to make a comeback :)

C

"Shaken Not Stirred" 12 Gaming Podcasts Randomly Mixed!

2006-09-21T09:25:00.000-05:00

A group of gaming podcasters from the Gaming Broadcast Network (http://gbncom.com) have announced a special Podcast Crossover Event. 12 podcast crews have been randomly chosen to do a single episode of another podcast throughout the two last weeks of September. Also check out our RPG convention coverage at http://conlive.gamingpodcasters.com

Full disclosure - as regular readers know - (all 2 of you) I'm a regular on "All Games Considered", who just did our mix with "Gamer the Podcasting". It was fun - all the 'casters did a great job.

read more | digg story

2006-09-18T11:21:00.000-05:00

Whose Line Rap w/ Stephen Colbert

Two of my favorite sources for entertainment. I love Whose Line, and Colbert has definitely grown on me :). This is one of the better music scenes and Colin as usual is so very...well - he tries :)

If I can get serious for a moment...

2006-09-13T10:10:00.000-05:00

This was supposed to be a game-type update but...I was perusing digg and found this story.

And it made me think - maybe this guy has a reason - a real reason other than name to be detained - but I really hope that he ends up getting treated fairly. And I feel for his family too.

It made me think about my situation as a child and grandchild of an immigrant. Don't ask how I got there - but the thought comes up a lot when I watch the news lately. Maybe it's because since my maiden name is also the name of an actual mafia family (we're not related - we're not related - we're not related - ok?) I heard endless questions about it - and since our house was singled out (on two different streets) for egging and other forms of vandalism, I'm sensitive about this shit sometimes.

My maternal grandfather was a LEGAL immigrant from Italy. (I feel like I have to add the LEGAL these days - I didn't used to feel I had to do that.) I have a lot of pride in my heritage, but I am an American first. Call me an Italian-American if you must, but I consider myself an American with a strong Italian heritage. That doesn't mean I don't know, understand, or appreciate the heritage of my country.

My father is also a LEGAL immigrant from Italy. He became a citizen when I was 10, and up until then he was a married resident. Always employed, supporting a wife and 4 kids with at least 2 (sometimes 3) jobs, he always paid his taxes, he even got a second electrical engineering degree from here because they said that his one from Italy wasn't good enough. So after graduating top of his class he started teaching and was a contributing, good, productive citizen, and still is even after retirement.

He withstood numerous insults (WOP was a popular one, especially since he came here when the first Godfather movie was out) and assholes putting him down because he has an accent. He never rose to the bait, even when I was letting it push all of my buttons when I witnessed things like that (and got my own fallout from the kids of these assholes).

He taught me the value of participating in the democratic process, and he taught me how lucky I was to live here and that I should never forget that I live in the freest nation on earth.

He also taught me that I should always ask questions, I should always look at both sides and make an informed decision. That I had a right to question my government and that questioning my government was going to keep them honest. That was the idea, anyway. He's far from perfect and of course has his flaws and I don't agree with him on all of his views. We can at least have thoughtful debates about our differences in opinion.

So anyway, imagine my surprise when I get an email passed on from a friend that originated with his Dad, who is very conservative, that basically says if your family hasn't been in this country for more than one generation - you have no right to talk.

It had several other points in it too regarding welfare and such, some of which I actually agreed were broken things in this country and needed to be fixed.

But that floored me. That really fucking hurt.

I try to be a more involved and informed citizen. I vote. I support my friends in the armed services those who have served and those still in service. I pay taxes.

I tried composing a response - as a matter of fact it isn't even on this computer it's such an old email - it's on another computer and if I can find it I will try to post it in its entirety. I don't want to give only one side of the story.

But anyway - I couldn't get past it - I don't even bring it up to him. It just occasionally hits me out of left field and this time I decided to write out how I felt.

So - hopefully I'll have more fun stuff to talk about later - thanks for putting up with the more serious stuff...

Libwench

Female Sunday school teacher fired for being a woman

2006-08-21T14:11:00.000-05:00

NOTE: CNN link here: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/21/menonly.sundayschool.ap/index.html

Link to site that digger meant to use: http://www.greenllama.net/blog/2006/08/21/female-sunday-school-teacher-fired-for-being-a-woman/

I actually heard that she had been teaching Sunday School for 11 years, but been a member of the congregation for longer.

Regardless: The minister is entitled to alter how his church is run according to his interpretation of the Bible. Just like each and every member of his flock is entitled to do one or more of many things.

They could find another congregation. Hard to do in smaller communities, and it does hurt to leave your church, especially if it is also a place for community activity and support. But if enough people want to leave, they can strengthen their community elsewhere.

They could hold a church meeting and if the minister is open to it (unlikely) they can use this as an opportunity to discuss scripture and how their community feels about that particular passage, and ones like it, in this day and age.

They could get a new minister. Again, something that might fracture part of the community, a sad sad thing. But I would not want this man as my spiritual leader (not that he'd be terribly interested in what I had to say I'm sure.)

The other thing that truly bothers me is that this woman was not even consulted or warned about this. I originally read about this on CNN, and in there, or I think on the actual community's news site, (I didn't bookmark them) and she said she had no warning, which is not the way you treat someone in your congregation.

read more | digg story

Overview of Dark Ages: Fae

2006-08-21T00:09:00.000-05:00

Some episodes back on All Games Considered I did a review for Dark Ages: Fae. Well, it turned out to be more of an overview, and I had a lot of help from my co-GM, who was also running a DA: Fae game at the time.

I’m going to start this review out the same way I did for Deliria. With what this game is not. First of all – this game is NOT Changeling. It isn’t meant to be. That has in my experience caused some people to really not like the game, but to them I say “give it a chance”. It doesn’t have as much in the way of a connection to the modern game, but the connections that are there are significant. It is, in fact, a different system than Changeling. You’re not dealing with the same kind of restrictions and powers that are in the modern game, and the reason is this: DA: Fae deals with what *could have happened* *before* the Shattering, a time that was never well defined in the modern setting book, which gave the developers great freedom in interpreting what that backstory could be. It doesn’t *have* to be what happened before the Shattering – but that’s the beauty of it I think.

That being said – they can be tied together of course. Because no one knows exactly how the Fae got from where they were before the Shattering. In Changeling, the Shattering is the series of events that caused the Fae to flee this plane back to the Dreaming and Arcadia and left those behind the choice between clothing their Fae souls in human bodies, or dying as human disbelief and distrust eroded them into nothingness.

DA Fae goes back before that – explores the Good Folk, the True Fae, and their half-human or human-adopted offspring (who were the Changelings back then) and the Inanimae – elemental, primal forces that walk and talk like men.

Concept:
First – the Fae: From the mists of creation came these fair folk, and they do believe they are the first – calling themselves the firstborn, they have no human or alternate mein and hence rely on their powers and the mists to hide them in times of danger. Sprites and other magical beings with enough accumulated power can become firstborn – the key here is that there is no human part to these beings. They live forever and believe themselves masters of the Realm of Flesh so much so that they believe they can leave it untended, in the hands of the humans they believe they dominate while they fight each other for dominion over the lands. Lands they didn’t want to damage – so while they fought elsewhere, their caretakers took over – multiplied, and the serfs became the masters.

Changelings have both a fae and human mein that they can switch back and forth to – not quickly or easily, but they can. They have some human in them – either through their being raised as such or being a human child stolen away to the fae lands.

Inanimae can break down to their component parts and reform them – this heals all damage and they can look human or – well – not. They are primal forces, men made of leaves and twigs who can trod upon the earth or fall back into its embrace.

All of the Fae made oaths with the humans – oaths which gave humans tremendous power over them. Certain sacrifices would be made by humans, in return for the Fae protecting the lands. Certain things, called Echoes now existed that the Fae could be harmed by if they didn’t fulfill their side of the deal. When they returned to Earth they found that these Echoes could be devastating. Throwing salt over your shoulder, a simple rhyme or incantation, or the sign of the Cross, and the Fae could be hurt, or banished.

They made a truce with each other that after the war ended they would not raise another army to fight each other until the sun went black. Roughly a century is thought as the timeframe, it’s agreed that it will come to an end pretty soon, so even though they haven’t gotten a handle on the humans – they’ll soon be free to fight each other too. Yay.

In the game you have the three kinds of fae and 5 courts. I’ve already talked about the types of fae, now the courts. Instead of the two courts that Changeling has (Seelie and Unseelie) there are 4 seasonal courts and the courtless court.

Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Solstice

Your court doesn’t ironclad define your personality. Your choice of court is more defined by the court’s purpose than by personality traits.

To tie this to Changeling, I think that the Spring/Summer courts could have easily – in my mind – morphed into the Seelie court, and the Autumn/Winters could have morphed into the Unseelie court, with the Solstice Fae falling into either.

Spring and Autumn are the ones most likely to work with the humans – seeking to understand them for various reasons – common reasoning is however that the humans cannot forget them. The spring Fae wish to change – they’re most attuned to adaptation – and they want to remain within this realm and preserve their ties with humans. Not to say they don’t feel superior to them, but they don’t see them only as pawns. The Spring Fae I played in the Marcon demo was forever trying to figure out just how the humans had changed during the Wars and sought to understand them more – partially out of the love of their mercurial changes, partially because she wanted to see the humans and the Fae have tighter bonds than before.

Autumn works more towards being the influence over humans that they used to be – there’s no need to cater to the whims of these ephemeral beings – but understanding is paramount if they are to subtly wrest control back and once again pull the strings. They also prefer to stay more hidden than their springtime cousins, manipulate, and gather information and power from the shadows. There’s no need to beat the humans over the head with their superiority, they can rule just as well from the shadows and dreams.

Summer and Winter are both pissy at the uppity mortals who think that simply because their masters were gone for a spell that they now had the run of the place. Summer wants to come down hot and furious upon their heads and remind them who their true masters are. Winter wants to frighten them into submission while they take over as the true rulers.

Because let’s not forget they warred not over if the Fae should rule the Mortals, but WHICH Fae should rule. Though there is a faction that believes that Rule should come with each Season, not all think that way.

Solstice Fae for whatever reason, because they didn’t get sained in time, because they were banished, or because they just didn’t fit – they are bound together by their outcast status. Allowing them more freedom with their powers, but at the same time at a higher cost. In the story, they generally hire themselves out as mercenaries, and most have their own agenda and feelings towards the mortals.

Building your characters.
I think they knew there would only be one book. I really do. The absolute stunning beauty in this game – in my opinion – lies in the endless possibilities of character combinations.
There are specific aspects: Features, Oaths, and Echoes. The book gives you ideas on what to do with those, but doesn’t define what you can and cannot use. The benefit in this is you can plumb the faerie tales of old and make your character one of those beings – or come up with something entirely new. A point where the players and storyteller can work closely with each other on creating characters that will really fit within the storyworld. Characters that will really help build it.

Mists and Weaving – remember – it’s not Changeling – there’s not any glamour or banality. In the DA times, there is the sliding scale of Magic Versus Reality. What is already woven, what is already defined so strongly in the human mindset, in their beliefs and dreams that the Fae cannot manipulate this as easily as they can the unformed potential of the Mists. Changelings have better chance with the Weaving – but less with the Mists than their firstborn kin. Inanimae are perfectly balanced between the two.

Cantrips are ruled by Weaving – you’ve done that abracadabra before – you know it works – but it can get a little boring. And depending on if it is your time of year, and the dominion you are using is your favored one – it might be easier to cast. There are cantrips in the book – but players and storytellers are encouraged to work together to create new ones.

Unleashing – you reach into the mists with an idea of what you want to happen and hope really really hard you don’t blow yourself up. This is one of those points where the storyteller and the player work together. The GM rolls for you – and you want them to roll low this time :).

You really should explore both – as going too far one way you loose touch with the realm of Faerie – too far into the Mists and the Chaos can destroy you – drive you mad with power, or just drive you mad.

Dominions – each court has an affinity with a time of day – Day – Summer, Dawn – Spring, Dusk – Autumn, Night – Winter. If you cast anything – cantrip or unleashing near your ideal time (shortly before or after sunrise for the Spring for example) and it is a dominion cantrip – then your difficulty is lessened – even more so if it is near your Equinox or Solstice (vernal equinox for spring).

However difficulty for unleashing can never go under 4.

Now – the dominions are self sufficient – one group doesn’t get cool mad powerz over the others because they all have a balanced set of healing and damage dealing cantrips. Other cantrips are closer to that court’s dominion, but I don’t think any one court is broke.

But, how does it play?
Like I’ve mentioned before, I got to play at Marcon with one of the Developers – Black Hat Matt. It was a lot of fun, and though I really love the Urban Fantasy genre – I love this exploration of where the Fae went and what preceded the flight back to the Dreaming and Arcadia.

Even better, because this isn’t Dark Ages: Changeling, there’s more open interpretation with what you can do with the game. Now, it can be argued that you can do that with any game, it isn’t required that the metaplot be followed to the letter. I’m just saying that it is easy to do so with DA: Fae. How it plays is up to the group – in my albeit limited experience – we had a great deal of fun just discussing humans in the forest and what we thought of them

Spring Court: “They’re so fascinating! How quickly they have adapted, I’ve been studying them for years and each one holds such potential!”
Inanimae “They’re there – and part of the balance though they grow quickly”
Winter Court “Lead them into the bogs and stumbling in the forest, their fear tastes just as good as their flesh”.

Then again – the hardest part as discussed below is getting a concept – it’s not that easy when you’re playing something without a human side to it. The Changelings might be the easiest ones – but the others – the Firstborn and the Inanimae – are sometimes too alien.

My Spring court character during the game was put in a situation where we had just started to sink a boat full of Inquisitors. She knew that they couldn’t be allowed to live to reach shore – they’d seen too much and their purpose for being there was suspect and potentially dangerous to her kind. She was a Firstborn mind you. So as fascinated as she was – she had them go to sleep in the water. It was an unleashing and it went surprisingly well – they sank peacefully and quietly to their deaths. And she wasn’t truly bothered by it. It was a shame – but she didn’t lose any sleep over it.

But, how does it run? My co-Gm has a game running right now and she had a few things to say about running the game, which she is allowing me to share in this review: I’m paraphrasing so most of this is her and my comments at times.

She liked the idea the being in a court or of a particular origin doesn’t force the character into an exact molds as it easily does in Changeling (Satyrs are horn dogs, Trolls are knightly, etc.)

The multiple plot lines offered in the book – you could have a game dealing with religion and humanity or a game dealing with the different courts and the upcoming war and the twain may never meet – just from information from the book.

She’s not as thrilled at having only one book, because there’s so much that could have and should have been explored more. The dominions are extremely powerful – she found that was overly much so in some circumstances. The Winter court coming straight out of the book can be too easily made into the baddies. Of course that is how the Unseelie can be interpreted as well, something that we have worked to change in our modern game.

Some of her general thoughts:

Character creation will take about a session to get through. In her opinion it is second only to Mage in complexity. The vague mechanics made creating Echoes and Oaths for her game a major speed bump. She said, and I agree, that the concept is easy enough to grasp, but the mechanics are lacking.

Another thing that we agree on is that it does require the storyteller to be extremely creative. Unleashing powers are left completely to the storyteller to describe, and to also define the mechanics of the result. The same can be said for Echoes and when humans see Fae in their true forms. Power levels were hard to deal with in her game, and the players she had created their characters straight out of the base creation rules – of course she had a highly creative group of roleplayer as well. When the enemy NPCs lost saving throws the combat was pretty much over. Of course her players also didn’t go automatically for the physical kill rather than powers like Atonement, which gives a “sense of extreme guilt towards the caster and with enough successes they will serve the caster for a full year to atone for their transgressions” to halt a combat.
Templates for some baddies – which a Storyteller guide might have done – would have been helpful. Overall though, she loves it, and her players enjoyed it too. It’s very different from most other White Wolf games. She doesn’t think it’s well suited to combat, but she and I both have issues with running combats :).

In conclusion – the rules are vague vague vague – but they are good guidelines that a dedicated storyteller and troupe can really turn into an incredible journey through the middle ages and the origins of the Fae.

Other mentions:
Another good thing to mention is that it *does* require the DA: Vampire book to use, because essentially in this, which is the DA series that starts the metaplot in the year 1230, makes DA: Vampire the core book, and all the other DA books were considered supplements. However there is a free core-rules download from White Wolf’s site, as well as a copy of the DA: Fae character sheet, which I recommend for download because the initial sheet printed is wrong – it has six dots, there should be only 5. Link here: http://download.white-wolf.com/download/download.php?file_id=119

DA Fae is also OUT OF PRINT. And White Wolf proclaimed that once that run was over it was over, there won’t be a reprinting, I realize that White Wolf is a business and must make business decisions, hopefully the new Changeling game coming out in 2007 even though it is a limited run, will give us a new spin on the game.

I still purchase WW products, I still enjoy games other than Changeling and DA Fae. They produce good games, I just feel strongly about certain decisions they’ve made regarding anything with the fae lines. I know I should be grateful we got what we did, and I again want to thank Black Hat Matt and everyone else who fought for ANY inclusion of a fae-game in the first White Wolf Universe as it came to an end. (Read Matt McFarland’s discourse on the End of Changeling and its short inclusion in Time of Judgement here: http://www.geocities.com/blackhatmatt/end_of_dream.htm )

Anyway – if you can find it in a game shop or online – that’s great – I have a copy of the book myself (pre-ordered of course) and I love it – however, it is available on DriveThruRPG.com for $20.99.

There are no official supplements to DA: Fae, however the worldbook Dark Ages: British Isles (print $21.95, also available on DriveThruRPG http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1484 for $10.98) is the perfect companion for a DA: Fae setting.

Wisdom of the Gamers

2006-08-18T00:26:00.000-05:00

Convention Gaming - or - How many people can I be in 48 hours?

This past weekend was Conglomeration, Louisville's Annual Sci-Fi / Fantasy convention. http://www.conglomeration.org. Usually I'm running around with little-to-no sleep, with every minute of my day booked and sometimes double-booked with panels to monitor, people to find, cajole and thank. Crises and fires to put out, rumors to hear and ignore, a kick-ass jam-session to go to - conquering stage fright as Willow in the Buffy Musical, trying to tape our fabulously successful improv show, and when I'm feeling particularly masochistic I'll run a LARP too (and rope my friends into the madness).

I am not the only person who spends her convention weekend like this obviously, there are many others who do this and more.

This year I decided to take a break. This year, I was proud to be cameraperson for our crazy and highly talented group of improv actors and their genre version of Whose Line, got little-to-no-sleep, partied to the point of embarassment, dressed up in my corset and skirt, got some compliments, socialized - looked at lots of pretty shiny blades and jewelry and books that I couldn't afford - and I ran games.

I even *ran a game* in my corset thank you very much - good for the occasional distraction when you need a moment and don't have a Twix...

I had three games planned for the weekend: Changeling (duh) (NOTE: new Changeling blurb for 2007 is at the current White Wolf site http://www.white-wolf.com/changeling), Deliria http://www.laughingpan.com, and Buffy: The RPG http://www.btvsrpg.com/.

As the Meatloaf song goes: Two out of Three Ain't Bad http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/meat_loaf/two_out_of_three_aint_bad.html.

Deliria - once again - didn't happen - but I *did* drum up enough interest and email addresses to run a one-shot, and Colin of the Louisville Game Shop
http://www.thelouisvillegameshop.com/index.php?page_id=2 has once again graciously offered to host it. I am determined dammit - it WILL happen.

Changeling was awesome - I had guys who were willing to listen to my introduction about the Changeling world that my players and co-GM and I built - the one that's actually older than my youngest nephew. They took on the roles of NPCs in my game - because I wanted to develop how the other half lived. I put them in a potential future for this world - let them be the heroes for once. One of my former players was there at the con - it was a surprise - he got leave at the last minute, and he played. They were all excited to play - some had never played even though they loved the game - they never had a chance to play.

Another one has played in all my LARPs and a couple of my tabletops, and another had heard of me from one of my regular players. The last player was only 12 when I met him and despite him making me feel rather old because he can vote now - he had never played Changeling but dove right in. It was high-energy, it flowed. We had two baby-breaks - friends who bring by cute infants always tend to grab my attention more than the Nocker who is trying to see if he can turn a sentient chimerical VW bug into an urban assult vehicle.

In Buffy, I used a version of a one-shot I ran for the RPG Buffet - a local group that samples different games every month. I used the same character backgrounds, and in both Buffy and Changeling I asked the players what kind of person they saw themselves playing. I got compliments on the backgrounds I wrote-and they weren't very long - enough to give each character an unique voice and a tie into the plot. This one had a mystery behind it - and all of their families had a tie to the mystery - we didn't get into that piece as much as I wanted to - but we did get through the modern day mystery - again with an icky end for the baddie. Definitely a take no-prisoners crowd. As con games are wont to be.

I didn't make them all buddy-buddy, but I did give them enough of a tie with each other that they didn't spend a lot of time explaining their actions. But not too much detail because I wanted them to feel open to taking the characters where they wanted to.

I did a binder for each of my games, complete with character sheets, backgrounds where appropriate, the set of rules I was using, a pencil, pens and scrap paper for notes. However, the games moved so fast that I didn't have time to really jot anything down. I would still suggest using notepaper anyway though, if nothing else to keep track of plans and initiatives.

I had my laptop for all my pdf resources and media - split up into different folders just for those game materials.

Have a few pictures or media pieces for your players. The pictures help with visualization. I stayed away from music and audio cues because even though we were feeling the hurt at times from being on the same weekend as GenCon, the game room could still be rather loud.

Allow yourself some breaks - even with a time limit - bathroom breaks are good. It also gives you a chance to assess what the hell is going on and decide at that point what you might be able to cut out and where the game seems to be flowing. Also - this is a good time for the players to head to the con suite and bring back an ice cold Mountain Dew for their lovely GM.

I didn't consult my notes all that much because as I mentioned - in Changeling it was the world I'm familiar with and with Buffy, well, I wasn't two-time Buffy Jeopardy Champion at Marcon for nothing - wow - I really just said that - I'm truly a geek.
Oh well.

I found that in cases where the players did stuff that I wasn't expecting I was far quicker on my feet than I expected to be.

That's another thing: be ready to discard at least half of your plot if necessary. If your players expect a 4 hour game and really don't want to go any longer - or - let's be honest - if you yourself have plans, be flexible with the plot - is there any place that they don't have to go - someone they don't have to talk to? Go with the flow of the game. Your resources are there to help you - but this is NOT a campaign (unless you've arranged with your normal group to run at con of course, but I'm not talking about that.) The best thing to do is let it go - there's always next con. You're all there to have fun.

What matters in a con game is not if you follow the outline to the letter - that's never really the goal of any game. The goal is to have fun. And in a
convention game, the fun is faster paced, it's figuring out your next move, bantering with the other characters, finding the bad guy and kicking some ass.

I had people willing to try new games and new systems - so I obliged by making the rules clear - but not heavy - and streamlined wherever I could. This way
they could get a better feel for the world, and a good idea of if they'd like the game or not.

I had fun, my players had fun, and I think I'm a better GM for it. It renewed my passion some for running games - and gave me the confidence that after the
final arc of my current game that I will still have the energy and creativity to run another game.

2006-08-07T19:53:00.000-05:00

Who's on Stage

This is why I'm going to save up to get the DVD set. I miss the Animaniacs...

Gaming Tips 7-4-06

2006-07-10T00:02:00.000-05:00

This is the draft that I used for my segment - I did have to record it because I wasn't able to make it to our "high-tech studio" on the 4th.

Problem Players - or -
Whose Story is it Anyway?

I struggled with this piece a lot - I've gone back and rewritten it, I've gone to my co-GM, and to one of my players and asked them for their advice and opinions. I'm not satisfied that this is a perfect piece, but I believe that this is a topic that I'll return to again, hopefully with your feedback and constructive criticism. That being said - I hope this is of some help...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Gaming is a social event. Friends (or at least people who can tolerate each other for one-day-a-month) get together and cooperatively tell a story in a fantastic shared-world setting, creating a rich and complex world with 3-dimensional characters, poetic conflict, drama, epic battles...whining, grandstanding, spotlight stealing, rules-lawyering, nitpicking, bringing out of game drama and slapping it all over your in-game world like a week old carp.

Let's remember - gamers spend a good amount of our creative power figuring out how to best other people. We tend to be competitive, creative, smart, and wickedly passive aggressive at times. And, we make a hobby out of *pretending to be other people*.

I'm not saying that this behavior automatically makes a problem player - but it can get out of hand, and it's very important for a GM to assess the situation and see if there is a problem that can be fixed, or if the situation is unsalvageable, discussing the player's exit before the game implodes.

Problem players don't go into it expecting to be a problem, at least I'd like to think that most of them don't. Some people are just assholes.

I have gathered anecdotes and stories and will talk about what I've learned, and what I think might work, because obviously, for those incidents that were under me as a GM, I didn't *stop* the issue, until it actually became a problem.

The first thing you have to do is to assess the situation before you label this person a problem player.

When does it become an actual problem, and is this just general friction and the competitiveness that comes out in a game, and the ideas that players think are good ideas, but do not quite fit into the mood of the story? Ask yourself is this situation a problem? Or is it the player? Or, is it you?

Ask your other players, or a co-GM if you're lucky enough to have one. Talk to said problem player if you can, and if you think the situation merits it, to find out if this is just a one-time thing, or if you are starting to notice a pattern. Take the time to talk to the player if you think it is becoming a problem, but do it with an open mind. As I said - the player may not realize there's a problem.

Problem Player #1:

The D20 Diva:

Every NPC wants her or is out to get her. She has an opinion about everything - and she's *always* witty about it. Every plotline simply MUST have a tie to her. Sharing the spotlight isn't in her nature.

Some players have trouble allowing for the normal ebb and flow of a storyline to encompass the entire group. It's nice to have the spotlight - it's nice to know that the GM went to the trouble to look at your background and work it into the larger tapestry of the world. And it can be hard to let that go. I've been the one in the spotlight - it was challenging and fun, now, every player got some kind of spotlight story - every character's background had some kind of tie to the overarcing plot, and that did help enrich the story as well as our experience.

I've also been the one whose ideas for ties to NPCs and the plots were set aside or glossed over because the attention was on another player.
The GM tries to get to you, but ends up saying things like "read such and such in the book" or "yeah - that sounds good - let's say it happened". Not a lot of fun.

I've also been the GM in a situation where a player has actually taken a nap on the floor because she was not getting the attention that she wanted. That same person also liked to go out on her own; not a problem in and of itself, but can become problematic when they want to do it all the time and you're only one GM.

The final insult - and the reason I made her leave my game (I was a very green GM back then) was when she told me she had forgotten about the game - and had actually opted to go out with some friends to dinner, admitting to them that she knew very well when the game was - didn't feel like going - and decided that it was ok to lie to me.

There were also personality issues between her and the other players. Remember at the beginning of this segment when I said that the players had to at least be able to tolerate each other? Yeah - that wasn't happening anymore. To save my game - I had to ask her to leave.

Problem Player #2:

"But it's what my character would DO!"

Roleplaying is great, it's creative, you get to be someone else, an ideal of yourself - or maybe someone completely different. And you throw yourself into that character for once or twice or more a month, and then you step out. At least - that's what you do in a healthy roleplaying situation.

Some players get so very deep into their characters, that the group's well-being and fun - and perhaps even their own - take a backseat to the 'truth' of the character they're playing.

Some examples that I have seen:

A player knows that the group wants to discuss something, they arrange to meet in the war room and they're going to set out just how they need to deal with the big bad. Said player has had his character be in an emotionally fragile place because an NPC he cared about was killed. He decides to agree to the meeting - and then doesn't show up - (character, not player) - doesn't tell anyone his character is going anywhere, and essentially causing a lot of "what do we do now?" and consternation. His reason? It's what his character would do.

I'm not a huge fan of metagaming, but there are times when you have to consider why your character would do something else than your first gut reaction. When the game stops being fun, there is a problem. It may not mean you have a problem player, but if the behavior persists - it becomes a problem.

Another situation: Same player - different game:

The character in question is a naive young druid, sheltered from the big bad world for awhile with one horribly tragic event in her life - yes - he was also gender-bending - not an issue except that I don't think he grasped the female psyche very well.

This druid has found out that one of the people that has hurt his character is in town - in a large town that they are attempting to seek haven in. He chases this NPC down and FLAMESTRIKES him in the MIDDLE OF TOWN. Needless to say - not very fun things ensued.

I know some characters are lone-wolves, self-absorbed, and can do just plain stupid things. Even when the player knows it's stupid, they do it because it is in-character. And conflict is good in a game. But if a player is consistently doing things like that and other players are getting upset, and the GM is tearing her hair out because she's trying to introduce conflict without having the group implode, then the fun goes away and the drama starts. And not the good kind of drama.

And, the other players may decide to ALSO act in character and eject the character from the party. Then the GM is faced with the problem of how to run a split party with possibly no chance of reconcilliation.

At that point you may have to ask someone to leave, and as someone who has had to do that more than once, I can say with all certainty - it is NOT fun.

Problem Player #3:

The Book Says...

I like courtroom dramas, sometimes. I watch CSI, and Law and Order, and Boston Legal is just an absolute joy for the sarcastic cynic in all of us.

But if you've ever been in a courtroom - you know that it isn't nearly as gripping, or witty, and there's no William Shatner to say something right wing kooky - but in an endearing manner.

Watching rules lawyers pick and prod the GM into frustrated submission is not fun. Every game book I've ever read states that the rules are just guidelines. However, if you need to change the rules, weigh that carefully. Capricious house-ruling jars your game just as much as Professor D&D can drag it into a quagmire. The players buy the books expecting you to at least follow some of them. I have learned through MUCH trial and error that while you may have an inspiration for a house rule - your players deserve some warning. I've even gone to my players - those more well versed in the White Wolf combat system than I am - for house rule suggestions for my Changeling game. I trust my players to understand that the rules are there to assure we have fun, and to help me make sure that things are as fair as possible mechanically. If you have a dark gritty world, or even just a good story where there's conflict from something horribly unjust and unfair happening to the characters, or to NPCs that the characters love, that's one thing. That's STORY. But if the mechanics are perceived as unfair - then the game stops, feelings are hurt, and players feel slighted. Unfair things can happen to the characters - that's just part of roleplay, but unfair things shouldn't happen to the players.

If you have a rules lawyer - let them know that you'd be happy to discuss the rules with them, but you're going to call it like you call it - and the game will move on. Unless you believe you ABSOLUTELY need to resolve it right then, always wait until after the game, or a break, to discuss a rules issue.

This last section isn't so much of a problem player as a situation when it's too difficult to deal with real life issues. When real life can't be left at the door, it is the job of the GM and players to work things out. Or, it's time to make a hard decision.

About 4 years ago my husband and I became quite estranged. We were separated, but trying to work things out. In an attempt to keep things as normal as possible - we stayed in our games. The only game I asked him to leave was the one I was running.

The tension between the two of us never went away, and though we tried to get beyond it - both of us acted out of character in certain ways. Me, to avoid being around him, and him - in a way that kept his character's mood very dark. When I decided that I wanted a divorce, our GMs kept both of us in our games. In retrospect, I probably should have either dropped the games, or the GMs should have asked one of us to bow out. There was always a level of tension between us, and it bled over into the games, not that they weren't still enjoyable overall, but it was awkward. One of the games ended before the divorce was final, and the other one - he stopped going after the divorce.

Sometimes it isn't possible to get past real life, and that is when the GMs have to be responsible and think about the integrity of the story, and the fun that they and the players are having.

The story is a cooperative thing, and even those problem players devote time and energy to its creation and growth. Therefore, Every player deserves consideration. If a player is having a hard time in real life, he or she may need a break from the game, or just an ear or a shoulder. No one should be dismissed without consideration and communication. If you don't talk to the player about a percieved problem, then YOU as a GM become part of that problem.

I'm not saying you have to be Dr. Phil, but while the game and its story needs to be respected, the players, the people, deserve the most respect.

If it does come to having to ask someone to leave, don't be mean about it. Highlight the contributions that the player has made. Let them know the reasons behind your decision. Nothing in a roleplaying game is worth damaging a friendship.

You can't expect the players to just follow the story - they're going to bring their own spin and ideas, and sometimes they're going to hit you out of left field and you're not going to appreciate it all the time. If you wanted a story that was completely and utterly under your control - WRITE ONE. But don't label something a problem just because you don't agree with it. It's hard to accept that something that you didn't think of necessarily is a bad direction, but it all depends on how flexible you can be in your storyline - how much control do you want to give up? It's one of those risks that might be worth taking because you could get a better story than you ever imagined. And you and your players could have so much fun, it could be one of those games that everyone looks back upon fondly and says "Yeah, that was a great time." And that's the kind of game you want to go for, no matter how long or short it is, that's the kind of game you want.

Gaming Tips 6-6-06

2006-06-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

Scheduling Hell...

You’ve got your game chosen.

You’ve got your players.

You’ve got a rich and lustrous world filled with twists of plots, nefarious nemeses, and valiant allies.

You’ve got props, pictures and dice.

What could *possibly* go wrong?

You’re all ready for you and your players to start your grand adventure…when suddenly…your personalized ring of the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer theme goes off…

Shakily you pick up the phone and answer:

“Hello?”

It’s the player that the hook for this game centers around…

“Uhh, yeah – hey – it’s me – look – I’m really really REALLY sorry – but I just found out I have to work today. And um, well, can we do this another time? Or – can you just run something for me separate?”

{Insert Scream of Anguish Here....}

Scheduling your Game – Also known as the tenth circle of Hell.

It’s often frustrating for GMs to schedule their games. We’re not all independently wealthy, so we can’t afford to take off days at a time, drop the kids with a nanny and just roleplay willy nilly in the South of France for a week…with your own NPC / cabana boy…*sigh*…huh? Oh – where was I – yeah – scheduling.

As I was saying – Scheduling is a necessary evil for any GM and SEVERAL factors feed in to how your gaming schedule can work – and how much flexibility needs to be built in to that schedule so that the administration OF the game does not eclipse the fun that IS the game. This, ideally, will be worked out before the game even starts. Unfortunately, if you don’t know you’re gonna run a campaign – sometimes you just have to muddle along.

When your cast of players change; or their job, location, or family situation changes, you have to be understanding. I’ve had a total of 13 people in the Changeling game (not at one time though) who have either moved on and one who went from NPC to co-GM – another who went from NPC to player.

But some kind of scheduling rules are needed so that the game doesn’t fall apart.

Factor 1: So, when are you free?

Some groups get together once a week, on a weeknight, sometimes on a weekend – but usually not for more than 4-6 hours. In cases like this it’s easier to miss a week or reschedule around things that come up for work or family or such because you’re playing more often.

Some groups – and I’ve been in both the player and GM in this instance – play once every two weeks – I’ve heard some players say it’s easier to stay in character and remember more of the nuances of the game that way. But after awhile I couldn’t really devote myself to multiple games twice a month, nearly all my weekends were eaten up by gaming, and while for a little while that was fine – it wasn’t a pace that could remain.

You might find that it’s better to go through cycles where for 6-months to a year – this every-other-week schedule works really well for them, and then the game either ends, or a new schedule is negotiated.

Then there’s the once a month game. This is how my co-Gm and I tend to run our game. With some flexibility built in so that if we have to cancel – we can usually run on another day.

Factor 2: In a Family way.
This doesn’t just affect those with kids, but…there are those of us in our late 20s and 30s who game, but may have *gasp* children! And *ohno* parents! And other family members who from time-to-time ask us to rejoin the real world and spend some time with them. This doesn’t mean you have to drop a game because Mom is trying to guilt you into coming by to meet the nice boy who is the son of her friend from work. But if you have family commitments, or your players or GM does – those need to be honored.

Players might not be able to find a sitter, so may have to bow out for a session. Or in some cases, the GM might have the little ones around and players will have to bear with interruptions as the GM has to trade his God hat for his Dad hat every so often. I’ll go more into gaming with children in a different episode. Because that in and of itself is quite a topic.

And – there’s always Family Drama. A brother or a sister or someone has a crisis – one that you might not think is a crisis – but they are family – and you do for your family. That’s just the way it is. So roll your eyes at the Drama if you must – but don’t penalize the player.

Factor 3: The Boss Called:

As I mentioned – I don’t know of any gamer who is independently wealthy and can just game all the time. And if you are one – well, good on you…and by the way, my email is carolatagc AT gmail DOT com .

People need to work to eat, to provide a roof over their heads, and for buying more game supplements and dice. Work can interfere – but it is important for players to LET THEIR GMS KNOW THEIR SCHEDULE. GMS – WRITE IT DOWN! I cannot stress this enough. More heartache and frustration has come of “the boss called” than I care to go in to right now.

Factor 4: School Days:

I put my game on official hiatus (though I had more than one “world event” session) while I was in Graduate School. My players kept up through some email and one-on-one sessions (what can I say – I’m weak – cataloging test vs. character development? Which would you choose?). And we were able to pick the game back up after my graduation. This took a lot of understanding on the part of the players and communication (mostly in the form of gratitude) on my part.

Factor 5: Location, location, location.

Are you going to play at the GM’s house? Are you going to rotate locations? What happens if the GM’s SO doesn’t want everyone there? Talk to your players. Try to have a standard location – unless of course your group is fine with moving locations and everyone knows who is hosting and when.

I have been the roving GM and I’ve had it at my place before. Having it at home does mean you have to pick up – but you have all your books and resources at hand. Moving requires a lot of heavy lifting (but that’s what big strong PCs and extra XP are for). And there’s always the chance you might forget something.

Also – with gas prices the way they have been, are, and seem to remain for the foreseeable future, you need to consider if all your players can afford the gas. Sometimes that in and of itself may necessitate cutting down on the frequency of your game.

Factor 6: The multiple personality player

No – I haven’t switched gears to problem players – that’s saved for another episode. No – I’m talking about the player that’s in 4 OTHER games besides yours, or the player who is also a GM of another game. They have schedules too, and it can be a stone cold bitch and a half to work around them. At one point I was that player. My schedule was as such.

Every other Saturday – D&D, Every other Sunday – a different D&D game. Every *other* other Saturday – Changeling, every month on Sunday – Star Wars. I was a gaming fiend – and I loved it – a little too much – but again – that’s another topic for another episode .

I really haven’t found a good solution to this one – there’s the possibility of a Gaming calendar for GMs who share players, or are in other games themselves, but all the GMs have to agree to use it – and that isn’t always going to be the case. But like with everything else – communication, planning, and coordination are the key things to remember. You have to plan, you have to communicate with your players and sometimes with the other GMs, and you have to put the effort in to coordinate.

Factor 7: The Gamer as Socialite

Gaming is a social activity. But it is not the ONLY social activity. And you may have the best of intentions that “Party before game” “Birthdays before game” “Any social event before game”. And then it happens. Your game falls on New Years, and you haven’t been able to play in months, or – to inject a little locality to this – Derby Day – and you just KNOW you’re expected at THE Derby Party (around here –there’s always a “THE Derby Party”).

It’s really up to the GM and the players. The GM may decide that nope – game’s not more important than hanging out, grilling out and a little judicious application of booze and music. Or – they may have the players take a vote.

So how do I juggle this crazy whirligig of life?

I am GM once a month and player once a month in another game. And honestly – that is almost all the time I have right now for gaming.

Not everyone is going to be happy with the schedule. Some people are going to want to play more often, some less. But you need to find a happy medium, and if necessary – put in some wiggle room:

Have your game planned out a few months ahead. It’s nice to say you’re going to play on the same weekend every month – but it just doesn’t happen. Plan pretty solidly for the next few months – but have alternate days waiting in the wings.

Have an email list – I find that this can be helpful for “In Game” announcements – but if for nothing else – scheduling the game – most email groups come with a calendar function – like Yahoo – and Outlook or Thunderbird can do the same thing with a distribution list.

Make sure your players understand the flexibility and just how bendy you are. Be understanding – but don’t be a pushover. More and more demands are eventually made – and when you finally have to put your foot down, you can generate more bad feelings and drama than you ever thought you would. Besides – it’s good practice for a GM to say “No.”

But don’t be too much of a hard-ass. If it is possible – break up sessions. Have a mini-session with half of your group one week and the other half the next. Mini-sessions are great because they have a more focused goal – cover a shorter span of time, and consequently don’t take as long to run.

The caveat for any of these factors though – is that the player has to be just as considerate. If something is affecting their attendance at every game – then you all need to talk. I tend to give players the benefit of the doubt. Not that I’ve not been burned by that – I have – but it’s better than getting angry at every schedule change.

Some of you might be saying why are schedules such a problem? It’s just a game! The thing is – since games are social events – and so much effort goes into planning stories and characters with some games – it is important to the GMs and the players. Just remember to prioritize your gaming like you do anything else in your life.

Run your game – don’t let your game run you!

Gamer Tips 5-25-05

2006-06-06T18:35:00.000-05:00

You'll notice that the date on the title is quite a bit earlier than the day I'm posting this. That's because as usual - I'm being a slacker.

Here's the tips article from the May 26th game.

Feedback is appreciated, as are suggestions for the title of the section :).

Gaming Tips: For the GM and Player
For this episode’s in-game tip I’d like to talk about: NPCs.

Non-Player Characters – they are those voices in your head that fill up your game world, the thoughtful filled out character sheets provided by the game publisher in player guides, gm manuals and – for you White Wolf fans – splat books.

They are the villains that your party must fight – cause goodness knows if they don’t have someone to fight they *will* kill each other.

NPCs supply good information that hooks the players if their backgrounds aren’t complete yet.

NPCs supply *mis*information that sounds like *good* information that leads them on that distracting goose chase because you’re not *quite* ready for them to be at point E when you’ve barely fleshed out point C.

NPCs are the friendly townsfolk that take the party’s gold/cash/credits, and can also throw them in jail if the party gets out of line.

They’re there to be saved, they’re there to fight, they’re there to love, they’re there to explain to your party the plot point that you’ve dancing in the middle of a table in a pink tutu singing Glaring Plot Points are Here Again because the party’s looking over a bit to the left going “I wonder what’s in that Gazebo?”

NPCs are the nemesis that hides in the shadows and throw endless reams of hired thugs and goons at your party – because as we GMs all know – thugs and goons have MUCH easier character sheets.

Because – let’s face it – NPCs are – most of all – a pain in the ass to make. Its one thing to pull out a nifty piece of artwork you found on DeviantArt or Elfwood and go “This is who you see.” And you have a name for them even, Eldena, or Ehlanna, Erica or Ezekiel – and you really have to make a note to yourself to think of another name that DOESN’T begin with E dammit. Anyway…, and you have a few key stats – you figure – you’ll fill out the character sheet later. If they become important (you fool – you named them – of COURSE they’ll become important!)

You’ve even got a few ideas of how this NPC fits in to the world – a little bit.

But they always ask that question: So – what’s their favorite color? Do they have any family? Is she free next Saturday night? That’s where quick thinking on a GM’s part (and a decent glare) can come in quite handy.

Just remember – when coming up with things on the fly for an NPC – take a second to jot down details you have to pull out of some other orifice than your notebook. Because someone else might be taking notes – and 8 months from now when you talk about their brother (because you had an epiphany two weeks ago that this NPC needs a brother for an awesome PLOT POINT) someone speaks up and says “But my character did an extended genealogy search and she doesn’t have a brother”.

As GM you of course have the prerogative to say “well, actually it’s this way.” I have a knocker NPC in my game went from 15 to 17, to 16 and I think he’s almost 18 now . Trust me – write it down. I haven’t compiled all my notes yet and I’m almost afraid to because of all the idiosyncrasies and secrets that have been divulged – but its necessary – after all – how are you going to keep their lives straight when I’m sure your own is hard enough to keep track of – at least I know mine is :).

So – to address these issues:

If you take NPCs from the books – be sure to either have the books handy – or copy the sheet – either by hand (if you’re going to make changes) or if you happen to have a scanner handy – that works too.

If you don’t make a full character sheet – know what abilities are going to come into play. If you have to make a roll for an NPC using a stat that you’ve not thought of first – think (briefly) about the character and pick something – then WRITE IT DOWN. Yes, you’re the GM, no – the players don’t know what the character sheet looks like – but if this NPC turns into a long-term NPC – trust me – they will notice if all of a sudden Bob the Sidhe doesn’t have Sovereign to control your enemies, but he did JUST fine putting their asses under Protocol when you first met.

So, have the stats in front of you – and if your players ask for their life story – have your NPC act within their personality (however much or little they have) to an intrusive question like that.

Now, the characters may not do that – they may just try to pry for more and more information – don’t let them rattle you – just because their characters ask a question does NOT mean they are entitled to an answer. Or that the answer has to be true. NPCs can lie – what is a bad precedent is for the GM to give one answer and then come back later and SAY the NPC lied if it doesn’t make sense for them to have done so. It’s one thing to change your mind and say mea culpa – they’ll respect you more for it.

It rattles the players’ confidence in you and you don’t look like you’re interested in the story if you’re always changing backgrounds of NPCs.

Be careful what you divulge – either know what you’re going to say, be enough in the NPCs head to know how to improvise, and if you have to improvise – jot it down for future reference. It will make your world more cohesive, and your NPCs more believable.

This is not the last word on NPCs – I have more to say on them – but since I should be a member of Ramblers Anonymous (still waiting for everyone to shut up for the first meeting to come to order) I’m going to end this piece here.

Feedback is very welcome either on the forums, or to Mark, or to my new AGC address…as soon as I make it.

Signing off – Carol.

Libraries cut back

2006-04-05T12:18:00.000-05:00

When I worked at a university library my friends could not believe that journals cost so much. "Five thousand dollars for a magazine?"

Routinely we were looking for ways to afford both books and journals in the (successful) attempt to become an ARL library. It was extremely difficult, and though I was but one of many staff, and didn't have the hugely difficult decisions of retention/cancellation to make, nor the responsibility to catalog all the books we were getting in, I was part of the execution of that process on the serials acquisition side.

Publishers have rising costs, and a limited number of subscribers to certain specialized journals. That's *why* they have to charge more. I understand that. Libraries understand that.

But publishers also have to understand that as customers, we have rights too. Sure, we have the right not to buy it - but who does that help in the end? Not the publisher, not the library, and certainly not the patrons.

Libraries are not vast conspiracies of illegal file-sharing either. I'm so tired of hearing that libraries cavalierly copy and lend information to other institutions and patrons without any checks or rules (biting back sarcastic comment about the audacity of a library to actually *loan* people books for free...the nerve! OK - maybe I didn't bite hard enough...).

It's as if we don't have to pay to the Copyright Clearance Center on articles copied and sent through Interlibrary Loan. It's as if we don't have limits on the number of times we can send an article to another institution before the borrowing institution has to look elsewhere for a copy.

Oh, and let's not forget that if an institution gets enough requests for articles from a particular journal that the librarians in the borrowing institution might actually decide to *buy* the journal for their own because Interlibrary Loan costs are NOT cheap.

But then of course the issue is "can we afford the journal?"

The creation of consortia to mitigate some of the cost is one reason that more libraries have access to journals both print and online.

I think that the direction that IUS has taken is the right one in this case. It's difficult to cut print journals, but if that is what it takes to widen access through online journals, then that is what is needed.

Though recent studies show that patrons still like print, more patron education and friendlier user interfaces for online resources can make the patron aware that online resources *can* be just as good as the print copy. Not that they always are by default - considering that there are issues of missing context when you look for a single article rather than browse through the journal.

Faculty who do not accept online resources as "valid" also need to be shown that the online content of journals is the same peer-reviewed, credible information as the print version. True, it *should* be cited as online content if nothing else to start giving institutions true numbers on just how often the online content is being accessed and used by students and faculty, rather than the frowned-upon, but oft-used process of looking for an article online - grabbing the information - and citing it as a print resource so their professors won't ding them for using questionable resources.

Database tracking through the OPAC can show an institution how many of their patrons are accessing the online content, but does not give a solid number on how many are *using* the resources once accessed.

Some publisher-caused obstacles in the way of the online-resource goal include the following:

1. There aren't any standards for licensing the online content. Each contract must be thoroughly analyzed and publishers can be as strict as they want to be, limiting number of concurrent users, downloading of material, how much can be printed, etc. Of course they have the right to do all that to protect their content, but some standards would help institutions evaluate which publishers and aggregators work best for their institutional needs.

2. Some publishers link the purchasing of print material to the availability of the online subscription. That's right - you *must* buy the print version if you want to *purchase additional access to online content*. So you don't have the option of just getting the online content.

Institutions already struggle with the decision of whether to get both print and online versions. Retention of information and the continued availability of that information is a paramount mission of Libraries. It is a little scary to know that after throwing out the paper copies of your title to replace with *access* to PDF versions online, that access could suddenly disappear if your institution, or the publisher drops out of the agreement, or changes in consortia cause a publisher to remove their content. I personally know of a hospital library that lost access to several years worth of a journal because a publisher pulled out of the consortia. As Karla Hahn of ARL says in the article linked below:

"If your research is working with patients, having to wait for access to an article is not a trivial issue."

But it should be the decision of the institution whether or not they buy both.

3. Package deals that include journals not necessarily needed by the population of the institution.

I can't go into specific numbers, but a subscription to a major publisher for several scientific journals can get into the tens of thousands of dollars - just for print. When looking into online options for serials I discovered that to purchase access, would require tens of thousands more. And this was a package deal. No opting out of journals that you might not want/need.

This article really saddens me. At a time when libraries need to provide more information, the funds are just not there. They need more cooperation from the publishers, not less.

*All opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of any of the institutions mentioned above.

Libraries cut back

Another All Games Considered

2006-03-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

Another episode that actually has Chris and I in the same room - with only minor injuries on Chris' part ;). We talk briefly about the game engine for Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot - which I think is one of the coolest game titles *ever*.
We talk about pulling together parties for games and an interesting discussion on boardgames - especially with how long games have taken.

Risus and its pronunciation issues :). Chris does a very in-depth review of the game.

I did not quite address the question of group character creation and thankfully we'll be able to do that in the upcoming GM recording - and I do apologize for some of my rambling, hopefully as I do more I'll learn to curb the digression and my tendencies to tell a few too many stories.

Some of the things that I was trying to get at that I explained with story rather than getting to the point were:

1. It's easier when your players know each other - even to a small extent. I started the Changeling game I run as a one-shot and I created one of the pregenerated characters for someone I knew was playing, but the other three were people I knew but hadn't created the characters for.

If the characters and the personalities gel, then even a pregenerated character can blossom into a fully-developed three-dimensional character that can interact with the other characters in a positive way. I don't mean that everyone agrees all the time - that's artificial and no fun. But that the conflicts are consistent with the characters' personalities - and ideally NOT the player personalities.

2. When you create your group - even if you're not creating all the characters at the same time, you'll have the tendancy to want to pull them all into the same external group. To an extent, you want that, I think. They have to have a reason to want to interact with each other, but those reasons can be many and varied.

Example:

They all report to the same authority figure (Commander/Captain/Baron(ness)) but in different capacities. One or two knights, maybe some are reluctant citizens, this can lead to interesting discussion and conflicts that don't mean a breakup of the party.

Allow them to switch allegiances - to use a Changeling example: Let one or two (or all of them if that's the way the game is going) go from Seelie to Unseelie. In the case of my game the Unseelie aren't the automatic bad guys so this led to a more in-depth exploration by the characters of the two sides and what it really meant to be of either court. Some incredibly great roleplay and plot twisting was the result.

3. Set as few "you have to have this in your character background" as possible. Your players *want* to play. They don't want to disrupt the game (and if they do - there are plenty of ways to deal with that as well). Give them several different threads with which they can tie a new character to the game. If you have a good gaming group, the other players will look for ways to integrate the new one.

I hope that helps and clarifies things some.

Forty million American employees trapped in cubicles. (Reading Digg)

2006-03-10T15:20:00.000-05:00

How cubicles escaped their original intention. If we didn't have cubicles, would we still have Dilbert?

read more | digg story

I have been in a cubicle for each of my jobs (not counting a brief fast food stint at 16 and my very first job at 14 as an office gopher). I almost can't fathom a different configuration, though as the article points out - more people are telecommuting. I've worked in a shared office situation at times in my current job, and also out in an open office kind of area - but I have to say - being able to go to my favorite coffee shop (NOT a Starbucks actually, but a locally owned shop not 5 minutes from me) that has free wireless and (yes - I know - unsecured - no WEP - shouldn't be transmitting company secrets) I use it to briefly check my email or get on my VPN connection, it's nice to be able to do that. I also like to be able to connect from home when I get that 11:30PM call to troubleshoot something. And I hope that more unconventional and flexible ways to work develop.

Stretch N' Bend Computers

2006-03-06T12:02:00.000-05:00

There was a story about flexible silicon on digg already (http://digg.com/technology/FLEXIBLE_CIRCUITRY), but there's a newer story on Wired building on the initial story. The new research suggests that not only the silicon used in e-paper can be used, but more complex circutry can also be manipulated physically without harming the performance.

read more | digg story

More AGC!

2006-03-03T14:52:00.000-05:00

Just a short announcement that I was on "All Games Considered" for the March 4th episode. After Chris' comments that suggested I bought Mark the annoying "Pimp: The Backhanding" game, we had to do our segments in separate sections, but that's OK, Mark is being the diplomat and brokering peace between us. I'm still holding out on the "No duct tape" ban though. Mark is a tough negotiator however, and I will probably cave in for the next episode so I can participate. :)

We talked about Convention games vs. Traditional Campaigns, and even though we only touched on certain aspects, I think it went rather well. Give it a listen and let Mark and I know what you think.

Music Genome Project & Pandora

2006-02-14T15:43:00.000-05:00

A couple of things:

First, I have just discovered the Music Genome Project, and Pandora. In January 2000 the MGP started as a way to catalog music in a very thorough, non-commercialized way.
Instead of taking a genre or a label and categorizing the artists accordingly, the project has gone out of its way to be blind to those labels and create their own based on vocal style, rhythm, lyrics, arrangement. Attributes inherent in the music itself, not in its packaging are used to categorize songs.

As someone who has a massively eclectic music collection, playlists for every mood, and the personal belief that life has a soundtrack, this project and Pandora, forgive the pun, spoke volumes to me.

There is a very organic component to categorization and cataloging. It is one of the fundamental aspects of humanity, to organize, even haphazardly and without clear understanding of what rules we personally are using to do so.

Pandora as a player has a simple and elegant interface. You start by choosing an artist/song and build a station off of it. You can start with just one, and Pandora will start streaming. You tweak using a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system, and an extra "Add to favorites" if you *really* like a song. The song then goes to a handy XML list on another page linked to your account. Thumbs-up/Thumbs-down is a little extreme for me - sometimes I kinda like a song, so I usually just leave it alone - pretty sure I'll hear it again and can make a firmer decision later.

If you don't want to listen to a song, and you don't want to give it thumbs-down, there's a "next" button.

Pandora is free to use, but a subscription option is available.

This was supposed to be a short post - and include some actual librarian stuff - but so much for plans ;). OK - that just means I'll have something to post tomorrow.

-C

Digg.com stuff

2006-02-01T10:46:00.000-05:00

So I added a list of digg.com stories to the sidebar. It makes things a little crowded, which means it's time for me to play with the template, but gotta find the time for that.

For those who don't know - digg is a social news engine. Stories are submitted by members of the community, and other members act as editors. Popular stories as determined by the community make it to the front page. The community acts as their own gatekeepers.

Former TechTV hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht host a 30 (or so) minute podcast every week called "diggnation". The show highlights the most "dugg" stories of the week. There is also much drinking of beer by the hosts :). There are both audio and video downloads available of the podcast available on Revision 3's site. Revision 3 started with Rose and now includes several ex-TechTV members. You can read about their history on the site.

I'm an information junkie, I admit it. As much as I love information, I'm also fascinated with the way it moves and flows. I also believe that the strongest mission of a library (stay with me here) is to provide information to their communities in order to make them educated communities. Of course this opens up the issue of what is a credible resource - but that's another topic. Sites like digg, /., flickr, del.icio.us, and wikipedia are all community efforts to build libraries of information. Are they always correct? No. But even wrong information can teach us something, and if there is wrong information, the communities do tend to police themselves. No one wants to hang out on a discredited site. If there's anything I've learned from my 10+ years on the Internet it is that people in online communities don't like to be wrong :). I really do want to write more on this - but I just don't have time right now. Suffice it to say there will be more on this later.

Where the hell have you been?

2006-01-27T16:36:00.000-05:00

OK,

I know I haven't posted in for friggin' ever. Life tends to get in the way. My wonderful Dell laptop's screen flickered one day and died. I don't have the $$ to replace it, so my ability to post on the go is limited :P. Also - work - bleh. More on that later if I deem that I won't get my ass fired for it.

I'm back to also running my monthly Changeling game with my co-GM, and planning on running Deliria in late Feb/early March at The Louisville Game Shop

Colin, the owner of the shop, has been *very* patient with me trying to schedule the game (that I agreed to run when we were at GenCon).

So please please please be patient with me. I have a lot of stories I want to talk about (gotta love digg) and I want to start writing more, about - well - frankly everything.

Also, I plan on doing another episode with Mark Kinney of AllGamesConsidered. Recently there was a flap over their "Ask a Gamer" segment. To be honest, I haven't listened (been so busy I haven't listened to ANY of my favorite podcasts in a looong time - just catching up), but I know that their intention was not to offend. I won't say anything else until I've listened to the episode.

Later folks

Wil Wheaton on Fandom.com

2005-09-19T22:23:00.000-05:00

Wil Wheaton did a chat on Fandom.com tonight. I like catching Wil's talks. From his reading from "Just a Geek" at Gnomedex 4.0 (available from ITConversations), to interviews/chats like the one tonight, to his audblog, and I'm sure I'll eventually buy "Teh Audiobook", I just love listening to him talk. I like reading his stuff too. I surprised one of my friends by using an Amazon gift certificate to buy "Just a Geek".

He's not pretentious, he doesn't whine. He's very real. I don't claim to be interested or understand the poker thing - but it's very clear that he has fun doing it. And - he's managed to raise about $125,000 for Katrina victims with his idea for a poker tourney.

He talks about his struggle as an actor, his breakthrough as a writer, his trials as a husband and stepfather. And all through it, you get the feeling that you're listening to a peer. Someone smart and funny and dealing with the same crap you deal with every day. As for the politics, well, I read WWdN, and then I read my friend's blog: Kadnine. Between the two of them I think I get a balanced diet ;).

I met a lot of very cool people in the chat - no trolls - yay! Thanks, Xen for the audio (hear the interview!), and thanks to Wally for bonding over the job sitch and all things Whedon. Lauren, I hope you eventually got away to go pee...

As these chats tend to do - if you broke away from the window for any amount of time there was the requisite frantic scrolling to catch up. We talked about 'Trek' and 'Stand by Me' and JELLO, and monkeys and fries ;). A few of us admitted to buying BOP magazine when he was featured, and feeling old when we had to explain that it didn't stand for 'Birds of Prey' (great show by the way).
NOTE: As I was going back through this and adding the links - imagine my surprise to find out BOP is still around!!!

So - if you don't already - read his blog, get to know this "not-a-former-child-star" actor, author, family man & geek.

[NEWS] Sci-Fi Fans helping with Hurricane Relief

2005-09-15T12:09:00.000-05:00

I know this has been circulating for a little bit now, but I wanted to spread the word. Though there has been a huge outpouring of donations initially, the recovery from Hurricane Katrina is going to take a prolonged effort.

Artist and Writer Larry Dixon created a touchstone site where fans can coordinate and organize efforts to help. The links are on the sidebar.

Even if you can't donate now, check back. As I said - this is going to take awhile, and help will be needed not just now, but months from now.

If money is tight - don't worry about the size of the donation. The Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon has pledges starting at $5.

Here are some other things you can do:

Spread out donations over time.
If your city has evacuees - and you can spare the time, volunteer at a shelter, or an information bank.
See if your company does matching fund donations, then donate through them.
There are also clothing/supply drives going on - again - check around town or if your school or employer is doing something like that.
Create a care box for kids - I know that there is an initiative for that going on in my area. Boxes filled with crayons, coloring books and toys for the kids. If you have kids - have them fill and decorate the boxes. It's a good lesson for them, and hey - you're spending time with the kids!
Give Blood if you can.

With everyone feeling some kind of economic backlash from Katrina as well, and having their own lives to contend with, it sometimes just isn't feasible to drop everything and help someone else, even if they are hurting as much as the evacuees are. But little actions add up. Doing anything is better than doing nothing.

[GAMING] Deliria Review

2005-09-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millenium by Phil Brucato
Laughing Pan Productions, Inc. P. O. Box 23834 Rochester, NY 14692-3834
http://www.laughingpan.com
322 pages, hardbound / Price: $39.95 / Copyright: 2003 / ISBN: 1-932115-00-5

“So, what makes you so qualified to do this review?”

I have read the book. I have gone to a seminar presented by the head of the Wayfarers (their Demo team), and I’ve played in one game. Based on those experiences, and my history as a 5-year Changeling player/GM, Urban Fantasy fan, and head-in-the-clouds Dreamer – here is my review. So take it as you will. This review is highly opinionated. Do I know everything? No. So feel free to disagree with me, I encourage debate – just be civil and constructive about it; because while most of my friends will say that I am a nice person, I can be a total mega-bitch when angry.

It might be easier to start this review out with what Deliria isn’t:

It isn’t out and out hack ‘n’ slash. To be fair – most games these days aren’t. It isn’t going to be an epic battle – at GenCon I was trying to summarize the concept in the seminar. “It’s not world changing but it does change somebody’s world.”
It isn’t the kind of game that should foster a GM vs. Player attitude. The GM is called a “Guide”, the players a “Circle”.
Character creation isn’t numbers first/backstory later (or even optional). You create your character, the person *first*, then come the statistics.

Now the hard part: there are a lot of things in this game that are open to interpretation, and multiple meanings are attached to some statements. There are fewer concrete aspects. There are more chances for flexibility – but correspondingly more chance for arguments. Because let’s face it, no matter how committed to telling a story your group is – there will always be arguments over the rules.

It’s such an innovative system, that I think there are going to be issues with interpretation and execution of the rules, but more about that later. I don’t believe it is a flawed system so much as it is a new system, and there are always going to be issues with new systems. Fortunately Laughing Pan has an excellent forum where you can ask questions.

The faerie tales we heard as children were meant to resonate with us. They were tales of life’s hurdles and obstacles wrapped within the fantastic. True stories that could happen to you – at least that’s what you thought. You could be the princess or the noble hero. Gender roles and perceived oppressions aside, those tales strike a chord of nostalgia within us; at least, they used to. The faster we advance technologically, the older we get, the less those stories seem to mean to us. Regardless of how universal the story, we identify more with a Red Riding Hood who is a latchkey kid, whose grandmother has moved in with them because Mom & Dad work, but can’t afford day care and grandma’s pension got ripped off by the big bad CEO.

Rather than having a faerie tale that you wedge the characters into, Deliria is a tale that resonates with the characters. It is a tale of the individuals’ journeys, and how their lives intertwine. How they impact and influence and embody the tale, and how they affect each other. Deliria means there is always change for the characters. Wherever they begin, even if their lives are on the fringe of twilight at the beginning of the game, they’ll be deeper into it and embraced it, or have gone deeper and run the other direction by the time that the saga is done. Even those never acquainted with the world of mystery can have that moment of revelation where the door is flung wide and you can’t forget what you’ve seen.

Deliria shows us that there is magic in the modern age. Technology doesn’t have to mean death of imagination. A quiet country home could be just as devoid of agreeable house-fae and a warm home-soul as an urban apartment is full of them.

The Mechanics:

The system hinges on an expandable/collapsible set of rules. At the heart of an expandable-collapsible system is that it can go from Narrative – pure interactive storytelling – to a bare bones Basic – using a few key statistics, to the Advanced system.

However no matter what system you use, all you need to resolve conflict is either a deck of regular playing cards or 2 percentile die (2d10). That’s right – you don’t really need dice for this game, but if you have to have them, there's a system for their use. The concept of the resolution is does your Prowess meet or beat the Challenge rating?

Challenge levels: difficulty of the thing you are trying to do. A deck of cards where you toss the Jokers and the Kings of both Diamonds and Clubs, is used for the element of chance. Percentile dice (2d10) can also be used.

For the cards:
Red – adds the number

Black – subtracts the number

Jacks – Null

Red Queen – Auto Success

Black Queen – Auto Failure

Red King – Triumph x10 to the total

Black King – Catastrophic Failure x10 to the total

The ranges of your skills for Basic stats are approximately such:

4-6 is the human average on a scale of 10.

If you fail by 10 or more lower than your challenge rating – you get a non-instantaneous disaster.

If difficulty is = or less than prowess – it is a gimmie – to do the system in chance with dice:

1^st die:

1-4: Black

5-8: Red

9 – Triumph

10 – Disaster

2nd die: if the 1st die is 1-8, add or subtract this number.

Basic mode – just using the Graces: Body/Mind/Spirit, and the Vocation keys on the left side of the sheet.

Advanced – Imagination, Wisdom, and the Vocation keys are far more specific. The PCs can be Advanced level in character creation, but the session could be contracted to Narrative and expanded back to Advanced when needed, or even Basic.

The first page of the character sheet is actually the background for the character. Written right there on the character sheet is the declaration “Tell me a story”.

Aside from your more factual background (where you’re from, do you have family, etc.), there are three aspects of your character that you should weigh carefully: Passions, Obstacles, & Secrets.

Passions – Your motivation, your beliefs, your hatred, what disgusts you – what are the things that severely overwhelm and drive you (at least 2).

Obstacles – You are your own worst enemy, what holds you back, what trips you up? (at least 2).

Secrets – No one (or very few) can know who you’re in love with, who you hate, what you’ve done (at least 2).

“Yeah, OK, so I’m not Bob the 2-Dimensional Barbarian, how do I cast Fireball?”

The magic system is challenging, and subtle, though some may find the vague parameters frustrating and lacking in guidance. The basic magic mechanics and some examples follow:

You start with Accords. Magic is funneled through Accords – but they are schools of thought on how to use the magic. They are more of paradigms than out and out rules. If you are familiar with the Traditions from Mage, the Accords are less structured than these.

Two Accords that stick out in my mind are Spin Crafting and Faerie Wishcraft.

Spin Crafting: Music-as-magic: you have to have the turntable and the crowd, however, there are possibilities with Remixing – creating some kind of personal magical effects with an personal MP3 player and a laptop maybe.

Faerie Wishcraft: “I want X and I will do these three things that are tangentially related if X happens” Dangerous – but effective. You don’t want a blank check – (because then they choose the effect) and you don’t want to offer “whatever” in payment.

Those two stick out because they illustrate both the acceptance of technology as a magical conduit, and the way that magic can be an integral, interwoven part of the story. What if you promised something you didn’t really want to give up? What if they came to collect? What if you ran? What if you got your friends involved?

This is not to say that “wow-what-the-hell-is-that” magic can’t be used, but actions have consequences in this game, as I’ll explain in a moment…

To do a spell: Declare what you’re going to do. Have the tools – actual components – on hand; unless you have the tools to do the Accords – you have only your Spirit score (A Basic stat) for your Prowess, which is your base number used to meet a challenge.

You can use other things like Passion to add if you do. If you have components and tools then you can use related supporting Spirit spheres and the Accord level. That gets more into the advanced system though.

You can also use your Vocation modifier if something applies. This is true regardless of whether you have tools. So you can use Spirit+Vocation if you don’t have tools.

Another aspect I like about Deliria is that you have Vocation skills. You put stats in things like Technology, Metaphysics, Domestic. Aspects of your character's life that could be aspects of your life.

Take the following example. I have a Spirit of 5 (average, the scale goes to 10), and and Influence (vocation score) of 2. One of the aspects of Influence I've chosen is Counseling. My friend is devastated because he broke up with a girl who won't leave him alone, and bad things keep happening to him ever since he left her. He thinks he's under a curse, or he's going crazy. Just talking to him won't work, he's getting more agitated and paranoid, if I let him leave he'll get arrested or put away for his increasingly bizarre behavior. He starts to turn on me, I want to restrain him without hurting him, so I use an Accord (say, Witchcraft) to quietly weave a spell of calm around him by using Spirit+Vocation, giving me a starting Prowess of 7.

Say the challenge to beat this aspect of the curse is 14, a rating of Difficult. You use the cards or dice to resolve this using the above scale.

Now, here’s a caveat that I had a lot of trouble with when I played at GenCon:

You also must have your own spell’s weakness built into what you declare. It’s odd and I don’t quite understand everything yet.

Echoes: If you cast – and it succeeds – the effect resonates out into the universe, so fixing the AC causes wind gusts in the hallway – it is always related to the effect that you want. So you may want to think long and hard before casting that fireball…

Deliria weaves every aspect to the game into the story. The story never becomes incidental to the mechanics, and the mechanics – used correctly – only serve to add layers and depth to the story and the characters telling the story.

The core book, the Prime Codex is a work of art in and of itself. The fiction inside adds to the mood, and the book also comes with a CD full of goodies including more art, music, and PDF character sheets. Character sheets are also available on the site. There's also an updated set of revisions and errata on the site, it's a PDF called the Compact Patch.

There are two more books coming out this year, a players guide called Everyday Heroes, and the Goblin Market book. Check out their store, Greyfalken's Emporium to order, or check with your local game shop.

[PODCAST] All Games Considered

2005-09-13T18:03:00.000-05:00

Hey - I'm doing my very first podcast - as a guest host on "All Games Considered". Trying to vocally express, without babbling, my review of Deliria. AGC is a funny, topical, gaming podcast that talks about news, and reviews many games - no matter what the genre or format.

I hope to do more episodes soon, assuming they let me back on - which they might if Chris keeps going on with his "Race Car Fan" bit... (you've got to listen to get it) they may need a new co-host...

Anyway, check it out :)

LibWench