13) Powers volume 12 - The 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time: this is the last volume of Bendis & Oeming's super hero police procedural. The book has, over time, strayed very far from its roots while still remaining true to its fundamental concepts. Much as I have enjoyed it I am glad to see it end There is talk of them doing a reboot later, but if such a thing occurs I hope it is after enough time has passed and enough new ideas percolated to make the while thing feel fresh again. 

14) Invincible volumes 9-11: Kirkman & Ottley's unabashedly straight-up super-hero book gets a little rocky here, primarily due to the intrusion of a tried trope and some subplot kudzu, but the core plotline is still humming forward nicely and it's still fun to read. For those not familiar, Invincible the the teenage son of Omni-Man, this world's Superman clone. Unfortunately for our hero, it turns out the Vilrumites are not a race of benevolent protectors, but that his father was supposed to be softening up Earth for the eventual Vilrumite takeover. His father now in self imposed exile in space, Invincible is trying to carry on the good parts of his father's legacy while dealing with the fallout of this betryal being worldwide public knowledge. It's good stuff, but I just wish Kirkman would close some of these threads off. As it stands it's like reading a run of Spider Man where we have repeated asides to _all_ of his rouges gallery all plotting to destroy him. Surely everyone in the world can't hate this kid. 

15) Other Worlds, Better Lives - a Howard Waldrop Reader, selected long fiction 1989-2003: the companion to _Things Will never Be The Same_, this is more gleeful Howard Waldrop fun. Sure, "A Dozen Tough Jobs" - a retelling of the labors of Hercules set in 1920's Mississippi - is the standout here, but I quite enjoyed the others. Much fun. 

After I sent out the "invitation" (i.e. the objective for next session) there was roughly two weeks of on and off e-mail discussion between the players. Some of this was expected - they decided to fake Schiffren's death, for example - but some of it was not.

( more behind the cut )

The seemed like a good enough plan. The play at the table, and the Cards, said differently. But that's for tomorrow. 

I have had enough time, I think to digest the outcome of the first CFalk game (and have sent out the basic data on the second) and feel capable of discussing it here for comment. 

First off, my goal is to mirror the feel of the Mission Impossible TV show, which poses certain problems. I know from past experience that it takes about 4-5 hours of game timer to capture a 1 hour television episode. The problem here is that A LOT of the Mission Impossible plotting occurs off screen - we see Jim Phelps (or Dan Briggs if you're a classicist) get the outline of the mission, he selects the team and then they discuss the outline of the plan (obfuscated enough to keep the audience guessing). We never actually see them, ya'know, plan. Secondarily, asking the players to develop the entire plan gives them more agency then they are comfortable with (at least some of them) - they have an Objective and know that subtle strategies work in this setting better than violent ones, but otherwise they're on their own, which can be disconcerting if you're not used to it. 

To resolve these problems I opted for dividing the game into two parts: the actual play, and a pre-game epistolary PBEM in which the PCs get the basics of the episodes objective and a time frame in which they can do research, share the outcome of that research, plot, plan, develop one or two strategies and get a sense for the obstacles each carries. This would take a lot of time in table play, but since they have two to three weeks of PBEM time that isn't an issue. This lets us, in play, do the 'dinner party' scene and skip directly to the finalizing of the plan. Plus, it gives us all a lot of lovely in character notes and letters to keep CFalk's epistolary feel without mandating that anyone keep a journal. Finally, since people are directly posing questions or research to me I can support their decision making without reducing their agency - there is plenty of time for me to point out that one plan or another is not supported by the facts on the ground without being caught up in table momentum or groupthink, so the players hopefully have less fear on their plotting. I expect that will have to do less of that as the sessions go on. 

( behind the cut is the first invitation )

These have to be pretty carefully crafted, since I have to operate with certain ground rules for this to work: the information in it must be accurate and complete enough for the players to have a starting point (if I say that Tarkmann would let Liserl go under x circumstances but kill her if Y occurs, the players have to trust that); it has to suggest some genre appropriate courses of action (such as faking Schiffren's death) and discouraging non-genre appropriate ones (the indirect contact agents exist solely to make clear that killing Tarkmann will not solve the problem) without explicitly disallowing either. The second to last paragraph must absolutely and clearly state the objective to avoid confusion; and it has to give the players potential hooks for investigation and planning in the epistolary stages. It's harder than it looks. I'll discuss how this one played out tomorrow. 

10) The Graveyard Book: the latest thing for which Mr. Gaiman is being hailed, I found this enjoyable, but my main response to it was wanting to read the Jungle Book (how I managed to read Kim and Just So Stories without reading Jungle Book I am at a loss to explain). I don't know why, but I am finding much of Gaiman's work of late to be, well, boring. I can so clearly see where he is going before he gets there that nothing he's done since American Gods other than Coraline has really stuck with me, and American Gods is feels suspect in my memory - I was quite happy that I had figured out where he was was going with some mystery bits before he got there, but then it took him forever with many many more hints before he actually got there. Maybe I'm doing him a disservice, but I was sued to putting more work into his writing than I have to now. 

11) World War Z: Max Brook's follow up to the Zombie Survival Guide, I found this realistic take on the Zombie Apocalypse to be gripping reading. It was much less gory than expected (since Zombie movies usually don't stint on the gore), and that was a good thing to my mind. It did not, however, make me want to run an All Flesh Must Be Eaten game, but rather got me thinking about pitching a "disparate ordinary souls fight the apocalypse" story where I start the characters all over the continent and spend the first half of the campaign weaving them together. Said apocalypse might be zombies, or might be aliens, or might be something else. I'm afraid that it would end up feeling much too much Tom Burton's _Mars Attacks!_, which is a little more tongue in cheek then I'd like. 

12) The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet: The fifth of Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste novels, I had thought originally that this was to be the last of the series - instead there are more coming. It was another jolly good yarn and excellent depiction of the Spanish Empire in decline. This series has a strong influence on my Emirikol game in the importance theater in the social milieu and the swordplay (if not the politicking and intrigue), so I am happy to hear that more are coming. It might even make a good novel example of beat structures in serial fiction. Hrm....

 

 7) Liavek: I finally secured the first of this shared world series - strange since I like so many of the people involved. I have read one of these stories before (Wolfe's submission is included in Stories from the Old Hotel), and quite liked it, but found much of the rest of the book rather bland. It has its origins in a gaming campaign, and you can tell - there's the standard gaming explanation for gender equality (the presence of commonly available herbal birth control) and an abundance of Mary Sue characters - but the biggest problem is that nearly all of the stories were hung on the same plot hook: how Liavekian magic works. I understand that this was the most distinctive part of the world, but spread out a little guys! I also just learned where my old High School GM stole the Blue Chipmunk plotline from the campaign he ran prior to my joining the group. Question to the masses: should i track down the others? 

8) The Spirit volume 15: Ah, the full bloom and flower of Eisner's talent. This was a joy, with Sand Serif, Silk Satin, the Octopus, Hazel P.Macbeth  and Mr. Carrion all in one volume. Fun. 

9) the Spirit Volume 21: I had somehow missed that my relatives had skipped 5 books on my amazon wish list to get me this one next. It's quite a shock reading this one right after #15 and seeing how much Eisner's work had changed in the years between the volumes - his focus had shifted to the secondary characters or to individual stories, leaving the Spirit as almost a back up character in his own book. Still good, but not as good as the previous one. 

I know I promised more game discussion, and it is forthcoming. I'm still mulling over the outcome of the first CFalk Mission Impossible game. 

5) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century, 1910: The latest in the series, a little weaker mostly because i am not as familiar with Raffles and Karnacki as I am with Mina and Allan, this was a lot more fun when I realized that everything in the background was the Threepenny Opera playing out. Plus, the origin of the new captain Nemo was well played out within that.

6) The Return of the Black Widowers: The last collection of Asimov's armchair puzzle solvers, this contains both 10 "best of" stories, plus all the ones that had not yet been compiled at Asimov's death, plus two other people writing Widower homages. I have always quite enjoyed these pleasant little puzzles, and am glad that someone pulled the last of them together into one place. 

 Starting Over with the new year. This year I also hope to include regular gaming updates - both on the theory and practice of caper games learned running "an Invitation" and continued work on Mech & Matrimony

1) Jonny Quest (reread) : I pulled the entire 1980's Comico comic book out last week for something to read before Christmas, finishing the last one on Christmas morning. This is one of William Messiner-Lobes titles from the 80s, which are very character and relationship driven. We spend more time dealing with the relations between Jonny and his father (and of fathers and sons in general), Race and Benton, Jonny and Hajid, and the ongoing subplot of Jonny and Benton letting go of the grief over Jonny's mother's death and Benton starting to date and ultimately proposing to the social case worker who monitored Jonny & Hajid's home schooling. In the midst of this they have adventures - fighting Dr. Zin, exploring lost caves of Neanderthals or islands with living dinosaurs, but thos ebecome almost seconday. They also have current events issues adventures, usually involving Bandit being lost in the urban landscape somewhere so we can have a "very special episode". In this it is very much like Messiner-Loeb's run on the Flash, which occurred around the same time - intelligent, if a little preachy non-standard action/supers fare. One bit I did like was Benton's occasionally being roped in by his college roommate to clean up one mess or another while never actually appearing on panel - a clever enough use of a plot driving disadvantage that also underscored how Dr. Quest can be a bit of a softie. 

2) Fortune and Glory: Brian Michael Bendis' tale of his adventures in Hollywood, this is an enormous amount of fun. 40yearsagotoday recommended it to me some time ago and I finally got a copy for Christmas. It's the sort of thing that makes you weep for the entertainment industry while still laughing out loud. Find it if you can. 

 

 112) Rasl, volume 1 - the Drift: This is the first volume of Jeff Smith's SF Dimension Hopping Film Noir, which makes it about as un-Bone-like as possible. I enjoyed it - his line work is just as detailed and elegant as ever, the story makes wonderful use of visuals and silences, and looks like it has a lot of unfolding to do, but I have my doubts that it will ever see completion. I just don't think it with catch enough attention or eyeballs to survive to profitability. 

113) Fell, volume 1 - Feral City: This is the first volume of Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith's crime comic, and it is flippin' brilliant. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes the crime/detective genre, as well as anyone who just likes really good comics. The individual issues are all readily accessible without being bogged down with repeated information but the secondary plot threads about Richard Fell's relationships, personality and the events in his history that got him assigned to be one of only 3 1/2 detectives (one is missing both his legs) to cover a city that's falling apart move forward neatly in each issue. I don't normally comment on the coloring of a comic (and can't remember the colorist's name offhand) but I will say that whoever they are they perfectly capture the brooding mood, sense of desolation and occasional moments of light or shocking violence with true skill. This book is a keeper. 

114) Lords of Finance - the Bankers Who Broke The World: Recommended by the local librarians as a good audiobook, it really was. Author Liaquat Ahamed does a great job laying out the conditions leading up to the economic collapse of the late 1920s and 30's, focusing on the men who were at the center of it, the central bankers of France, Germany, England and the closest thing the USA had to such a person at that time. What could have been very dry was instead very engaging, and included such memorable lines as "that was when Lord Revelstoke saved the day by dropping dead." 

115) The Art of War: I hesitate to even put this on here as I know I barely absorbed any of it. Just a note - do not try to 'read' this in audiobook. If you do, do not listen to editions that try to make it sound suitably Asian by having the chapter breaks be gongs and flutes.  116) Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog!): Jerome k. Jerome's classic, I found this slower going than I expected. Still, it was very good, very funny at parts, and, conveniently enough, ends with a selection of Christmas eve ghost stories, making it a perfect place to end my reading count for the year.  116. Not bad. 

111) In a Sunburned Country: More of my recent Bill Bryson rereads, this is his Australia travelogue. I like this one specifically because his discussions of how the Australian ecosystem evolved - with lots of niche environments and nothing by way of outside competition - produces a locale full of plants and animals dangerous and mysterious enough for any fantasy game. It would be easy enough to mix this with the coral reef ecosystem descriptions I got from _The Word Without Us_ - apparently fully functioning coral reefs are one of the places where the biomass of the prey species needn't be significantly more than that of the predators, leading to lots of very big dangerous toothy creatures feeding on lots of little things - to make the sort of world I envisioned for my Earthdawn campaigns: where the PCs exit the Kaer into a world densely populated with dangerous things that nonetheless all make sense and can be rationally explained.

I'm a half hour away from the end of my latest audio-book, and have actually finished a couple of new graphic novels (but did so on Sunday so they're technically part of next week) so I should round out the year with well into the high one hundred and teens for books read. Not too shabby.

Twelve and half years ago I was living in Boston, where I had a group of friends who were and are more dear to me than words can express. We had very little money, scraping together enough for the occasional night out, but we did a lot of gaming, which is blessedly free. For my birthday that year they chipped in their funds and bought me a beautiful amber letter opener, which I have cherished ever since.

In the intervening years those friends have had a falling out, and while they all speak to me, they don't speak to each other. But I could always pick up the letter opener, finger it with nostalgia and both remember how things used to be and dream idle daydreams that they might be that way again. (these daydreams are, by the way, totally unrealistic.)

We've been using that letter opener to slice open the tape on the many boxes from our recent move, and while searching for boxes of Christmas ornaments it slipped from my fingers, hit the bare concrete floor of the storage space under our stairs and snapped in two. There's no real way to reconnect it, and it just brought home the finality that in objects, as well as in relationships, some things just can't be repaired. But I do wish that I could visit the Sunset Grill in Allston tonight and hoist a drink or two as a final good-bye to the past.

109) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 (partial reread): no great shock after reading the Companion last week. This is technically only a partial reread because this time - unlike all previous times - I got through every damn word of the Almanac. Man is that thing dense. Loved the bit on Allan's trip to the fountain of eternal youth, though.

110) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - The Black Dossier (reread): an excellent continuation of the series, though I do wish that they had waited on this until it was in chronology with the other issues. Still and all well worth reading - the Bertie Wooster meets Cthulhu is great, the Beat Novel segment is all but unintelligible.

106) Jack Of Fables volumes 1-5 (reread) Since i just reread Fables I figured I'd give this a shot again. It works much better when you read them in order all at one go.

107) The World Without Us: got this out of the library on audiobook as prep work for the possible Gamma World game. Some parts - the discussion of what happens to cities if no one is there to tend them, the cave complexes at Cappadocia, the theoretical end of Mayan civilization, the idea of the of the Serengetti acting as a starting point for new large mammal dissemination across the globe in our absence - were fascinating. Pity that it was buried amongst levels of "I'm more eco-conscious than you and every technological development since agriculture has been a huge mistake that will doom us all" that at multiple points nearly made me stop listening.

108) A Blazing World - the unofficial companion to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II: This was fascinating. Not just because of all the work tracking the fictional antecedents of the Almanac, but also for the interview with Alan Moore where he reveals that he never does second drafts. Everything is done in the first draft and many of the clever bits that really look like he'd been advance plotting instead emerge organically from the development of the story. Makes his writing style feel very much like Game Mastering, because once it's out there he can't change it, but can always work from it.

So far my efforts for 2010 games have been for the CFalk game "An Invitation...should you choose to accept it", because it is an easier system in a lot of ways, which means I have time for it right now during a busy period at work. To date I have four of the five primary characters in place, and some noodling around secondary characters - the players will be given the equivalent of Jim Phelps' "Tape Scene" well before the session, so they can decide if their secondary character would provide more to the party for this month's problem then their primary - my way of making sure that one of the players get left out of the action while leaving room for the Mission Impossible concept of Guest Stars with specialized talents.

The characters to date are:
Rachel will be playing the team's Cinnamon Carter character, a minor Swiss Noblewoman (rationality munchkinly chosen to give her fluency in French, German and Italian; my wife, I could kiss her) of breathtaking beauty and charm, with a solid education and acting ability. We're still looking either for a name or for some character from history or Victorian Era fiction whom she could be. (anyone with any suggestions of such Swiss characters, please provide them)

Heather is playing Juju, a Phooka with the ability to take the form of a cat. This lets her play both of the Mission Impossible half niches of Cat Burglar and "Big Strong Scary Looking Guy" as CFalk Phookas have exceptional fisticuffs combined with great physique and athletics. Juju is specifically the prepetually lost cat from Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog"

Diane is playing an escaped Tunisian slave who happens to be a technological genius. This gives is the all important Ubiquitous Black Engineer.

Jim is playing Charles-Marie David de Mayrena, before he became King Marie I of Sedang. Blessed with an astounding gift for blarney and staggering ability to inspire leadership, he plays the team face man - this could be either the Rollin hand or Jim Phelps role, depending on whther Tom's character ends up as a master of disguise.

I'm still waiting on Tom's character.

Possible secondary characters are Rachel playing a Marie Curie style female scientist with deep skill and dripping with gravitas (to convince the mark that whatever story the team is selling is legitimate), Heather considering a retired spy turned strict Governess and and Jim possibly playing Axel Lidenbrock from Voyage to the Center of the Earth.

So far the team is shaping up nicely.

A&E readers will get a more detailed breakdown of exactly how the voting went, but I can safely post the outcome here: I'll be running "An Invitation, if you choose to accept it" and "The Fourth Voyage of Captain Fasaad" over the course of next year. One of these is much more of an experiment than the other, so in some ways I'm happy that I don't have to try to juggle two games with a lot of game theory/table rules/player agency issues at once.

So I shelve the James Bond modules and Mage Rulebook and pull down the CFalk rules and the copy of Conan d20 that drcpunk gave me (to edit me 3E character creation spreadsheets for the low armor rules). Should give me plenty to do for the next month.

I was fighting a cold last week, so I went with some comfort books rather than tackling something new.

103) The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (Reread): Paul Malmot's debut novel held up just as well on a second read. I recommend it to all fans of the pulp era.

104) The Great Train Robbery (reread): To my mind this is the best of Michael Crichton's books. Pulled off the shelf to help with the upcoming CFalk game, I wonder if there's a way to use Mr. Pierce in my plotting....

105) Neither Here Nor There (reread): one of Bill Bryson's travel books, this one recounts his various trips bumming around Europe. Written in 1990 or thereabouts it is interesting to see how much Europe has changed just since then, though some of those changes - his discussion of how lovely Sarajevo is, for example - were not for the better.

100) Einstein: His Life and Universe: Walter Issacson's bio of the great physicist was just as well done as his previous work on Benjamin Franklin (but unlike the Franklin one did not make me feel totally stupid compared to the subject of the biography, since I can imagine that I might have noticed some of the stuff that Franklin did, but know that Einstein's physics are out of my depth by leaps and bounds). It made an interesting counterpoint to Power's _Three Days to Never_, but showed how much of a tissue paper of Einstein's life Powers used as the framework for that book. OK, it is really freaky that Einstein had a daughter that no one knew about until decades after his death that no one knows what happened to, I'll give him that. The book also reminded me how happy I am to be living when I am - I cannot imagine having to avoid my future wife and disappear our daughter just to have enough social respectability to land a job (or being a society that considered that the right thing to do). I also wonder about alternate Einsteins: the one where he hung around Zurich and helped Milena pass her exams (rather than leaving her to take a sound round of classes while pregnant and wondering if her boyfriend would ever land a job), where the two of them might have had a more co-equal 21st century marriage; the one where he accepted his father's offer to head his engineering firm and developed his ideas with more engineering; the one where he and his friends inadvertently spilled the beans about using atomic energy as a weapon to the isolationist, pro-German Charles Lindberg (which they damn near did). Each makes a good starting point for an alternate history. I especially like the idea of Albert, Milena, Liserl and Hans Albert travelling the world ala Johnny Quest.

101) Fables (Reread): Found this on the shelf while re-organizing and reread the whole thing in front of the fire over several nights (though War and Pieces, which, as I said before, is where I consider it done). Holds up well in one go, and I like how the solutions to the problem of the empire were foreshadowed in book 2. Nice forward plotting.

102) Thieves' World Graphic Novel book 3 (reread) this lovely piece of work, where Tim Sale illustrated three short stories from the books, weaving the plots together over the course of a couple of days, is something else that came out during the move. I need to hit amazon to see if I can score any of the other volumes. Tim Sale's art (familiar to you if you watch Heroes, as he did the artwork for Isaac's precongative pictures) is glorious in black and white, and the stories somehow have a lighter touch in this format.

This just got e-mailed out to my players today, but I thought I'd share it with the larger community. If you are part of the invite group, please don't post your votes here, for fear of influencing someone else's decisions.

( Games Prospectus 2010 )

97) Odd and the Frost Giants: I feel a little cheap putting this on here as it really is much more of a short story than a book, but since it was purchased as a bound single volume on it goes. Neil Gamin's little piece about Norse myth is cute and easily worth the short time it takes to read. 

98) Sin City - A Dame To Kill For (reread): Having reread Big Fat Kill I was compelled to pull this off the shelf. Just as good as I remembered. For all that I prefer Dwight, Marv is pretty damn funny in this book. 

99) Voyage of the Space Beagle (reread): some calculation tells me that I have owned 5 copies of this book during my life. I currently have 2, which means that when someone inevitably steals my reading copy I will have a backup. This reread brought home exactly how much of a Star Trek precursor this was, and several of the tales within can be readily repurposed to that end (although not the Scarlet Devil one, as it is now much too well known as a basis for Alien). 

 95) For Your Eyes Only: my last Bond book out of the house clean-out, this one is a collection of short stories, two of which were mushed together to make the movie of that name and one of which, Quantum of Solace, was used as the title for the latest Bond movie. The short story actually used the title term in a sensible way (it is the minimum amount of compassion required for a marriage to survive); the movie isn't based on that story at all. All 5 of the stories were very enjoyable - to my mind Bond works a little better as a short story hero than in the novels, where copious time is spent discussing what he's eating and wearing. 

96) Sin City: The Big Fat Kill: (Reread) Pulled this off the shelf to kill a little time. The beginning is a little slow, but the scene with Dwight and Jackie-Boy in the car is frikin' hysterical. I've always preferred Dwight over Marv as a hero - I like my protagonists a little more cerebral - and while this isn't as good as Dame to Kill For it was miles better than Family Values.