Kudzu Online

Books 112-116

2009-12-19T01:09:14Z

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.

Book 111

2009-12-14T01:36:39Z

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.

Sometimes when a thing is broke it can't get fixed

2009-12-10T00:39:59Z

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.

Books 109-110

2009-12-07T00:44:41Z

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.

Books 106-108

2009-11-29T01:06:56Z

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.

The Baron Sarkozy's address book

2009-11-26T01:01:06Z

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.

Prospectus Voting Complete

2009-11-22T12:32:03Z

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.

Books 103-105

2009-11-22T12:27:49Z

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.

Books 100-102

2009-11-14T20:06:38Z

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.

Games Prospectus for the 2010 Season

2009-11-08T18:09:38Z

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.

Game Prospectus 2010

Next year I’m doing an open prospectus of 10 campaign ideas for 13+ people. Given the changes in venue and other life events I’m hoping to get two groups of 4-5 players. My goal is a pair of monthly 9 session campaigns over the course of 2010. I am asking that you only respond to the prospectus if you are willing to commit to that timetable. If you think your schedule is too erratic to make it, or the drive might be too far, please let me know that.

The potential player group is Rachel Rogers, Kristen Keegan, Stephen & Asha Shipman, Karen Bruce, David Bicking, Heather Tebbs, Jason Dressel, Rebecca Stevenson, Dave Twiddy, Tom Ladegard, Jim Cambias and Diane Kelly, with their daughter Emily welcome to participate if she has interest a campaign with her parents. I will try to accommodate married couples child care issues while putting people in games.

You have 20 points to split between the following 10 campaigns. If you give something a 0 it means that you would rather not play next year than play in this campaign. Scoring of 1+ plus means you are willing to ‘buy into’ the campaign concept; more points indicating greater interest. Each campaign has some color text, followed by a description of how I expect the campaign to run in terms of structure, feel and amount of initiative I expect the players to show in shaping the direction of the campaign.

01) Beyond Her Majesty’s Secret Service

As the Cold War rages on, the British Secret Service, known as M.I.6, fields a small cadre of highly skilled agents to defend the interests of the Empire and occasionally the safety of the world. In addition to the ever present Soviet threat they face criminal cartels, secret societies and the occasional megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. The agent's weapons? Unbreakable wills, stunning charm, the genius of Q brand and license to kill.

This is intended to be a straight up James Bond campaign. I will be using several adventures that are tweaked versions of the movies as well as ideas from other sources. I want the game to cover several decades worth of activity (so that someone isn’t trying to take over the world every 2-3 years), so there will be time gaps between each “movie”. I expect each movie to take 2-3 sessions to complete.

To keep with the proper Bond movie idiom (and I am much more influenced by the movies than the books) the PCs will get an assignment, visit Q branch for equipment, do preliminary reconnaissance, and then be drawn into the thick of things. While Bond generally moves from there to angering the suspect over gambling, seducing the suspect’s paramour, avoiding at least one killing attempt, breaking into the suspect’s base, getting captured to have the villain explain his plan, escaping and ultimately victory (and, to be fair, the James Bond 007 RPG game mechanics are weighted to this plan), PC agents will be able to develop their own idiom… as long as it involves fight scenes and chase scenes.

02) An Invitation, Should You Choose To Accept It

Once a season the Baron Sarkozy of Paris sends out invitations to a select group of people – invitations whose contents self destruct thirty seconds after being read. Invitees are experts in their fields, exception for one soul with a thorny problem that must be handled with the utmost discretion. It is suspected that the Baron is an agent of the Bavarian crown, but even if this is true King Ludwig would disavow any knowledge of his actions.

This is a Castle Falkenstein game with a Mission Impossible theme: For those not familiar with CFalk, it takes place in a world where all of the characters of late 19^th century fiction overlap with the people of our own history, as well as being populated by faerie, dragons and sorcerers’ cabals. For those not familiar with Mission Impossible, these are a series of short “capers” where ideally the target never knows that he was played, and even if he does he has no idea who did it. I expect each such caper to take two sessions. (In the classic MI structure Mr. Phleps has already done all of the leg work and investigation prior to assembling plan, but I want to give you time to research and concoct your own cunning plan.)

To keep with the proper MI feel any actual gunplay (or combat where the odds are not stacked heavily in the players favor) indicates that something has gone seriously awry. To keep with the proper CFalk feel the characters should act as proper Victorian era individuals, with the emphasis on nobility, honor and civility that characterize the literature of the period.

03) The Zorcerer’s Apprentices

The land of Zo is ruled over by the beneficent but mysterious Zorcerer, who is never seen to leave the castle of his emerald fortress. This year he has selected a group of citizens from across the four realms to make a grad tour of Zo in his name and report back to him on their findings. These citizens so selected were apparently at random, with each laboring under a curse or burden that would apparently make the assigned task more difficult. But the Zorcerer works in mysterious ways, and one can only suspect that there is more here than meets the eye.

This is a fairy tale game using the Zorcerer of Zo setting and mechanics. The tone is upbeat, and nay darkness will be leavened either with humor or with the ultimate victory of all that is moral and just. Play will be episodic, with each session being the apprentices' entry into a new community facing a problem that they will resolve, and, we should aim for the resolution of all of the apprentices personal problems by campaign's end.

The ZoZ rules are very narrative and relatively easy (even if they might a little difficult to grasp by those used to a more realistic simulation). Characters can be anything in the Fairy Tale style – lonely princesses, neglected stepchildren with animal friends, talking animals (anthropomorphic or not), clockwork men, noble brigands, plucky tailors, lucky seventh sons, and so on. The only campaign rule is the inclusion of a curse or other background detail that must be overcome.

04) The Astounding Cases of Judge Li

That most worthy individual Judge Le has recently taken his seat in a distant province of China and tasked with upholding the law. In the classic Chinese legal system, the judge also serves as the detective and prosecutor, surrounding himself with a small body of legmen (traditionally made up of martial artists, reformed con men, pathologists, venerable sages and even hedge sorcerers) who assist him in discerning innocence or guilt, and perhaps even of the existence of the crime. One quirk of Chinese law is that the Judge may accuse anyone, but can only convict with a confession. While the judge can use torture to force confessions from those he knows to be guilty, any tortures he inflicts in error will be visited on him, so better to use craft, guile, evidence and threats to attain actual confessions once the Judge is certain of his accusations.

This is a series of murder mysteries set in a decidedly non-Western venue, using the rules of the Chinese Mystery genre (which predates its European counterpart). To capture some aspects of this genre I am hoping to do a series of braided mysteries, where new mysteries will arise before old ones are resolved, which will add some complexity to sorting through the clues. Another feature of genre is a “Colombo” style structure where the reader/audience knows who the killer is and the enjoyment is in watching the detective’s battle of wits with the criminal. Again, I might try this, which should cut down on some aspects of clue confusion.

My current thought got system on this is GURPS 4E, to keep a high degree of ‘realism’ while at the same time allowing for characters to have things that are allowed in the Chinese mystery structure, like spirit communication, dream interpretation etc. One player will be the judge while the others are various lieutenants.

05) The Fourth Voyage of Captan Fasaad

Gather around this most humble storyteller to hear the ongoing adventures of the merchant/explorer Captain Fassad and the diverse crew of the Daud during the reign of Haroun Al-Rashid. Explore distant lands, get drawn into mysterious adventures, overcome fell sorcery, face Ray Harryhausen style monsters and occasionally even make a profit. Captain Fasaad has travelled across the Arabian seas, into deepest Africa and, to the Indian subcontinent and even the lands past that. Who knows where else the Daud might visit?

This is a continuation of two previous Captain Fasaad games, requiring only that Karen Bruce be present to play the title character (if anyone from the previous games is also in it they can carry old PCs along). This is a mostly light-hearted Fantasy game in the Arabian Nights style, with nested stories within stories. The moral rules of the Captan Fassad stories will continue – vows must be upheld, hospitality is required and mercy works.

This is in D&D 3E, with some modifications taken from the Conan d20 game to better emulate the light armor of the setting. Characters will begin play at about 7^th level, and likely progress to 9^th by the end of play – for those who don’t do D&D speak, they will spend their time as experienced adventurers rather than as novices or world-shakers.

06)Sudilitas – the Last City:

In the distant future a combination of radiation, environmental changes, and genetic manipulation has led to a time of punctured equilibrium gone mad: mutated humans and animals exist in dizzying diversity, with biological modifications and even psionic powers that might last but a generation. Human civilization has collapsed, recovered and collapsed again, littering the landscape with relics of technology from swords to molecular rearrangers, and other devices inexplicable or indescribable. The imperial instincts of Napoleon the Bear, who once brought peace via force of arms to an area that would takes weeks to ride across, ended with his recent death. Now his Ranks of the Fit are falling back, consolidating their holdings and leaving their more distant outposts to their own affairs. One of these is Sudilitas, a community that had become a center of industry and technology in the rugged, almost barbaric North. Can Sudilitas survive, even thrive without imperial backing, or will civilization once again fall on the great northern plains?

This is a Gamma World game where I’m trying to merge the settings more ‘wahoo’ aspects with a degree of social realism: yes, the players are mutated people, animals and plants, but many of them are unique, meaning that the only legacy they can leave behind are their ideas, works and culture. The tone of the campaign will depend on the character ideas – the characters can be part of the chaotic web of cruptical alliances that scramble for power, a technology gathering/trade expedition trying to secure Sudilitas’ diplomatic protections or a revision of Arthurian myth with the Ranks of the Fit as the Romans and the League of Genetic Purity as the Saxons (never mind any number of mutated non-sentient animals as monsters), or something else entirely

While I'm using the Gamma World setting, I am developing a new rule set, borrowing elements from all editions of Gamma World, Twilight 2000, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness, the New Sun supplement for GURPS and Reign. It will be pretty simple, with the dice rolls determining not just if you succeeded in an action, but how and how much, combined with some Schtick elements to cover mutations.

07) Ghostbusters - Hartford of Darkness

“The franchise rights alone will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.” The number of Chargeable Haunting Incidents in Connecticut is rising. Now is the time for an intrepid group of scientists, engineers, salesmen and just plain folks to buy into Ghost Busters International and take the Nutmeg State by storm! It won’t be easy, what with prying reporters, wary politicos and competition from the Warren Exorcist Group. Oh, and ghosts, whose frequency rates are disturbingly high, and rising. Could some unspeakable evil be menacing the Insurance City? It's unspeakable, so we won't say….

This is designed to feel like a Ghostbusters television show, where each session will be one case. The PCs are the owners, investors and technical staff of the GBI franchise.The underlying theme of the campaign is "Small Business Is Hell" (just like the theme of Buffy was "High School is Hell" - Buffy is a strong inspiration here for seasonal plotting), so the problems of each week will mirror, in a humorous way, the problems of keeping a small business running. Combat will be proton pack battles against ghosts and monsters, which much room for humorous collateral damage, but there will be equal parts research and gadgeteering to overcome problems and blarney to confuse competitors and keep clients.

The system is the Ghostbusters RPG, which is rules light. Inspiration is Ghostbusters (1, not 2; 2 never happened), the Real Ghostbusters cartoon and some of the funny episodes of X-Files. This is the third time I've put this on the prospectus, it should be clear by now that I'm not giving up on it!

08) At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Magic is the ability to rewrite the world to your will. Unfortunately, on the grand scheme you have to compete with the will of everyone else, and everyone else has been convinced that there is no wild magic left in the world. The Technocracy holds sway, and whatever good they did for humanity is now outweighed by the oppressive rigidity they now embrace. By their calculations, in a decade their control becomes absolute and the world is reduced to pure soulless clockwork precision. Can you representatives of scattered old and new magical traditions forge a new paradigm for humanity before it’s too late?

This is a Mage: The Ascension game where I'm presenting the default conflict brought front and center. We're dispensing with all the time of your PCs being lowly apprentices, and all the time of being on the run from the Technocracy, and opening things with the decision to band together and strike back. The method of striking back is up to you, but if this is selected I will be working up some detailed information on each magical tradition, what their operating rules are, things their elders think might work, and just for balance, what the world would look like if this tradition were in the Technocracy's shoes right now.

The base game engine for this is Storyteller (familiar to anyone who has played Vampire: the Masquerade and various other systems), where I'll be using a lot of default successes and minimal rolling. The characters should be flexible, powerful and all committed to working together (albeit with a little friction: possibly we could have one character who is on the knife's edge of either redemption or betrayal, but not one who will stymie the groups actions through obstructionism because that gets boring real quick). The plan should be audacious - there is no room for incrementalism! - and I'll pace the story to see it completed by year's end.

09) Mech and Matrimony

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good Mecha must be in want of a wife. Welcome to the world of Chancery, a colony world of the Earth Parliament. With the crash of hyperspace, Chancery developed into a cluster of powerful nation states that maintained their mecha (i.e. giant robots) and colonies under their gentle dominion. The greatest of the nation states is Albion, whose island home shields it from its continental rivals. Troynavant, most commonly known as "the Town", is Albion's political, industrial and financial center, which makes it the center of the world. There young women of eligible age strive to find husbands with suitable fortunes (and Mecha) to marry, while honing their skills in honor duels with other families and the occasional small colonial war.

This game's goal is getting married. Heroines hope for love, but must consider their status and limited options, or risk spinsterhood, penury or positions as a governess. The trick is finding a good husband and getting access to his family's giant robot (clearing the way for your younger sister or brother's wife to claim your family's). Mech & Matrimony has three themes: first is Obligation. Mech pilots hold the honor of their family line and are bound by a web of social restrictions, even in combat: if you reduce a sneering provocateur to smoking patch on the ground then you cost your family its mech, and therefore everything. Second is Sacrifice: pilots are expected to sacrifice things, perhaps even true love, for their family's fortune and honor. Finally, Suitors have Secrets. Our Heroines don't have past scandals (to be properly Austinian their disadvantage is that they are poor, and must avoid scandal). Few of their suitors, however, will be all that they appear to be. Discerning those with pride in the best sense from those who are the worst of libertines is the game's mystery aspect.

I am building a unique set of rules for this campaign, in some ways similar to those I built for Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw, with the added aspect of Scandal Points and the ability to sacrifice character aspects to avoid truly negative repercussions. There will be no rules for non-Mech combat, as that is something proper women just will not do. There will be rules for cutting remarks, gossip and other social combat. And, of course, for giant robot battles (which are intended on a certain level to give the players a stress outlet from all of the chafing social restrictions under which their characters suffer - though even Mech combat has firm social rules).

10) The Avignon Cache

In 1930 the eccentric millionaire film producer sent an expedition into the Amazon for unique footage required for an upcoming movie. The veracity of the recovered films is contested to this day.

That's all you get. OK, You also get that I'll be using the Basic Role-Playing system (which is the basis for Call of Cthulhu, though don't read too much into that), and that the PC group should consist of cameramen, technical experts, actors, scientists who are tagging along to explore the Amazon, rugged trail guides and perhaps the eccentric producer himself, should anyone care to play him (if not, he will not be present). The game will have horror elements, but also hopefully some sense of wonder. You will have significant ability to shape events within the context of a deep jungle expedition - i.e., no turning around and running home after session 2. The build up for the campaign will be a little slow, with the weird-o-meter clicking up some every session.

Books 97-99

2009-11-07T11:27:03Z

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).

Books 95-96

2009-10-31T23:00:21Z

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.

Books 93-94

2009-10-25T13:37:15Z

93) Thunderball: as promised, I gave Ian Fleming one more try, and this one was better - it wasn't against American mobsters, so the espionage worked a little better. Plus I liked the facts that a) Bond spent a chunk of the book second guessing his instincts and not reporting up the chain for fear of looking like an idiot and b) that he was often utter exhausted from his activities. Both made him feel more human.

I have a strong urge to run a James Bond game, not just because I have several of Victory Games well done modules that haven't seen use in decades, but also because the opening single of the new Michael Buble album makes "Cry Me a River" sound like a JB movie title track and because I now have not one but two good names for Femme Fatale's in the Bond idiom. If I do pitch one I will likely give the player a choice between being a team of equals or a hero and backup - the former is more common in gaming, but I'm sure i could extrapolate parts of the Buffy rulebook to make the latter work. I might also ratchet up some of the scenarios to give things a bit more of a "Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD" sense, but I'm not sure if that would break the Bond idiom too much, or just enough to make the campaign distinct.

94) Methuselah's Children: I was surprised by how little of the book's content matched the back cover text (which was all about the protagonists being forced to wander the starts; in actuality they don't leave Earth until about the final 3rd of the book and, in so doing, visit a total of 2 other planets). I have little issue with the content, which was classic Heinlein, just the ad copy. At least the image on the cover could be extrapolated to attach to concepts in the book, which puts it ahead of a lot of books produced around its publication date.

Books 89-92

2009-10-20T00:55:36Z

There will be a slight delay while we move into a new house.

89) We Have Always Lived in the Castle: More Shirley Jackson, well worth reading. She does great POV of Crazy People.

90) Hollywood Station: a Joseph Wambaugh novel about the Hollywood police precinct, it's kind of a police procedural, but not really. More like a slice of life story about police officers that also follows the participants of a single crime as POV characters. It was OK, but not thrilling.

91) The Bielski Brothers: Peter Duffy's account of the three brothers who lead a partisan movement against the Nazis and set up a Jewish community in the woods of Belarus. Another account of these events was recently made into the movie Defiance. I don't know how good the other account was, but Duffy's book was gripping and honest, showing what ordinary people can do in the face of evil.

92) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: John Brendt's true crime novel about both a murder in Savannah and the city itself during the 1970's to 1980s. I had seen the movie, but had forgotten enough to keep the book fresh. Recommended.

I've already finished another novel this week, so it's looking very likely that I will hit my 100 book goal for the year. Now I just have to find my gaming supplies, as I really want to reread the MAGE rulebook, as well as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG. They're in a box somewhere labeled "Books". We don't have too many of those around the new house....

Books 87-88

2009-10-10T14:45:23Z

87) Confections of a Closet Master Baker: a lightweight little memoir from Gesine Bullock-Prado, who went from being the lawyer for her sister Sandra's production company in Hollywood to being a baker, shopkeeper and macaroon mail order guru in Montpelier. She's got an engaging enough style, and each chapter is, by tradition in cooking memoirs, bracketed by a recipe. It was frothy and fun, but I suspect would mean more to people who actually, ya'know, baked. Rachel enjoyed it as well.

88) The Selected Works of T.S. Spivit: Rief Larson's book about a 12 year old boy who compulsively maps making his way from Montana to Washington DC to accept a prize from the Smithsonian, the book has glorious marginialia that maps various aspects of Spivit's family life and journey. I got a little concerned when the book started following the standard 'novel' tropes (or hero has a metaphorical descent into the underworld rough 3/5ths of the way through, and gains knowledge that will make it hard for him to return to his old life), but it righted itself well enough in the end.

Serial Fiction Novel/Movie Recommendations

2009-10-05T23:28:02Z

Several people in A&E have suggested that I write a game supplement on how to mirror serial fiction from other media in gaming. it's a topic that is near and dear to my heart, so I am seriously considering it. For examples from existing media I can readily draw on

Super-Hero Comic Books: Chris Clairmont's first few years on X-Men (for an example of a good extended arc, devolving into subplot kudzu); Paul Levitz's last few years on Legion of Super-Heroes (likely the best example of braided plot structures in the genre), and Grant Morrison's run on Justice League (to show the transition from the 12 issue annual story to the more recent 8 issue story better suited to trade paperbacks), plus a few others.

Television: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for seasonal length stories with asides to the villains); X-Files (for an ongoing story with no asides); Star trek: The Next Generation (for episodic stories linked by repeating subplots [Borg; Lore; Worf's Family Honor])

Movies: Star Wars (The original trilogy, which breaks down neatly into 12 sessions, counting the preludes for the main PCs)

Books: The 87th Precinct novels; Various Diskworld series (the watch books and the Lancre books).

Obviously I want more in the movie and book departments, but I don't know what to add. I want the examples to be well know, well done and still accessible to the reader. They should also lean to what people consider 'gameable'

I suppose I could include the Harry Potter books, but I also wanted something currently ongoing that didn't have as strong an end point (likewise, no Amber). Are the Dresden Files worth reading in this regard? The Anita Blake books? I don't want to start something that everyone acknowledges turns to trash in book 3+. I'd consider the Vlad Taltos books, but the achronological order of them makes it harder to examine beat structures and character growth over time.

As for the movies, I don't want things that were one successful movie followed by a couple of unprepared for sequels (such as the Indiana Jones films), and I obviously want to avoid things like the LotR adaptation.

Any advice or suggestions of where I should apply my analytical skilz would be appreciated.

Books 85-86

2009-10-03T01:08:41Z

85) Stone's Fall: The new Iain Pears novel this one is intended to be structrually similar to his very impressive an Instance of the Fingerpost, but while that one had overlapping views of the same event, each providing additional details to both deepen and clarify, Stone's Fall is chronological, with three accounts providing additional detail on a particular family working back through time. As such it isn't quite as satisfying, because the rules of the nartrative made it easier to determine the mysteries and the endgame then it was in Fingerpost. Still, it was very good, and the detail it gives on finance, the military industrail complex and espionage in the Victorian era is fascinating.

86) The Haunting of Hill House: Shirley Jackson's classic (well, one of them), I was reminded that this was a gap in my reading by some recent discussion in A&E. Creeeeeeepy.

Drat!

2009-09-26T21:36:16Z

Finally hit a week when I didn't finish a book.

We did move out of the old house, however, and signed all the paperwork to finish the sale assuming the buyer can get their act together to close the deal - it was supposed to happen Friday but now we're looking at Tuesday. We're now in a short time apartment for 3 weeks. Nice enough, in a very big, very crowded complex in Tarrytown NY. I am looking forward to getting a new house, however, and just finishing this whole process.

And for getting more gaming time, obviously.

for those of you no in the know

2009-09-21T23:27:01Z

We should be selling our house on the 25th, then spending 3 weeks in a corporate apartment before taking possession of the new house on 10/13.

Life is change. The trick is workign through it.

brianrogers @ 2009-09-20T18:47:00

2009-09-20T22:49:06Z

83) Evolution, the Triumph of an Idea: Car Zimmer's companion work to his PBS series, this was an interesting account of evolutionary theory and the resistance to it, though I felt it strayed afield in the end with discussion of computer programming leading to the evolution of an AI. The most interesting thing about it was how it highlighted the inherent Anti-Darwinian bias in the Call of Cthulhu Sanity mechanic, which I discuss a little in this month's A&E.

84) Bring The Jubilee: Ward Moore's time travel classic, this had been on my shelf for decades before I finally pulled it down. It was very good, but somehow I had built the image of it being a very different book in my head - one that I was less enthused to read than the one n that actually existed. Maybe the one I was thinking of was written in a previous timeline....

Books 79-82

2009-09-12T11:43:27Z

79) Swamp Thing, volumes 6-11 (reread): Why yes, I am missing volume 5, with the first John Constantine story. I've read it before, but don't own it. This set of volumes covers through American Gothic and the Outer Space arc, and is very, very good stuff. Got me thinking about the prevlanace of space opera/SF sequences in ongoing comic books - almost everyone has their voyage into space arc, given a long enough run from single writer.

80) The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee: Pulled this off the shelf because Mylescorcoran and his group just ran a Judge Dee game. I'm wondering how the hell Chinese detective stories setting has not been made into a professional game system! The characters have a high degree of authroity and autonomy, the genere has reliable small groups (Jidge Dee is the judge, his sherrif/watson type, along with two martial artists and a con man for his deputies), and it's an interesting social setting. I will almost certainly pitch something on this soon.

81) The Ballad of Halo Jones: one of Alan Moore's unfinished works, this 2000 AD series with Ian Gibson is a fascinating, if depressing, analysis on the need to break out of decaying soceital niches. Moore fortunately completed enough to feel like the series has a resolution, but there's clear that there's more story for Halo.

82) The Complete DR and Quinch: I'm clearly on a Moore kick here, since his books just got shelved to the front. This violent, juvenile farce done with Alan Davis was one of my first exposures to his work, and it's quite a bit of mental whiplash between this and Halo Jones, which he was writing concurrently. Not quite as funny to me as it was 22 years ago, but still funny.

Books 73-78

2009-09-06T12:55:39Z

Vacation Week, got me some reading done

73) Swamp Thing Volumes 1-4 (Reread): This just got reshelved in a more accessible location when we prepped the house for sale, so I started working my way through the Alan Moore work. This covers everything fromt he Anatomy Lesson through the Nukeface Papers, and remains a high water mark in the comics field, even if it is the unusual blend of horror and supers. The degree to which Moore foreshadows things, the clever symbolism and wordplay (which sometimes does verge on the "I'm so clever!" level) and the gradual discovery of the character's potential make this one of the must reads for my analysis of beat structures in serial fiction for replication in gaming.

74) The Innocence of Father Brown: drcpunk was kind enough to pass along her Complete Father Brown a month or so back, and I finished the first book of it while in New Hampshire. I found the stories charming reads, but could only manage one or two at a sitting - like Asimov's Black Widower stories or the works of Damon Runyon, G.K. Chesterton's tales are wonderful taken individually but develop a staleness if read all at once. Still, I look forward to picking my way through the other 4 volumes.

75) Adventure! (reread): This 2005 Anthology was an attempt to start up a regular "all genre, all action pump anthology for the new mellinium". I have no idea if it worked, because I only have volume 1. The qualtiy fo the stories, as in all anthologies, is a bit spotty. I'm frustrated with the editor's selection of 5 different stories where outside forces generate flashbacks in the hero to explain their backstory - surely som eother stories might have been submitted that didn't all rely on the same trick. Still, editor Chris Roberson's contribution of a young Von Helsing meeting an equally young Captain Nemo in the court of the White Raja on Sarawak was interesting enough to make me want to find more of his works.

76) When the King Comes Home (reread): Caroline Stevermer's second book in the world of College of Magics is drastically different from the first and third, which is likely why it sank without a trace. (another reason might be the author's decision to stick with the viewpoint character while she's confined and other people are off doing the swashbucklery things that most people expect in fantasy) That's a pity, because it's a solid work.

77) Lyoness volume 1 - Suldrun's Garden: I have had a long fascination with Vance's Lyonesse series that, until recently, never included cracking the cover on one of the books. Now that I have read the first I wonder why I stayed away so long. It is a lovely fairly tale with the dark bits included but lots of light touches and discoveries that you aren't quite in the type of tale you expected. I now have to track down the other two volumes.

78) Not So Big Solutions for Your Home: I've long been a fan of Sarah Susanka's design aesthetic, so knowing that we were going to have to move to a new house I snatched this up at the Innisfree book store in NH. It's a collection of articles on ways to change the layout and functionality of your home to maximize the use and livability of the space you have, and I suspect it will see some use once we find a new place.

Books 72

2009-08-29T08:00:39Z

72) Beowulf (reread): I listened to the audiobook of the Seamus Healey translation. This is my third translation of the text, and I like Healey's quite a bit. Mush as with reading Homer and Tacitus I spent time in the car thinking of how to translate the 'rules' of the story into a game setting. More things I haven't the time for, alas.

House Now On Market

2009-08-27T00:06:56Z

If anyone is interested in a lovely little place in northern CT, now's your chance!

http://ctmls.mlxchange.com/Pub/EmailView.asp?r=1024099117&s=HFD&t=HFD

Books 69-71

2009-08-22T22:34:18Z

69) If I Ever Return Pretty Peggy-O: I was very favorably impressed by Sharon McCrumb's submission to Ed McBain's _Transgressions_ so I decided to give one of her actual books a go. Much like her novella, _Peggy-O_ is billed as a thriller but really isn't: it's a character study of small town appalachia. This book purported to be about a folk singer, freshly moved to a small town, being stalked by a killer. it's actually about the impact of the Veit Nam war on Appalachia's baby boomers. That doesn't make it a bad book, but it does suffer from some usual boomer angst and misconceptions, but at least the author acknwoeldges the inanity of some fo the ideas her characters are spouting. I'll likely read more of her, but I won't look to buy the next one.

70) Cauldron: Quite likely the last of Jack McDevit's _Patricia Hutchens_ novels this one is fully of his usual big idea science fiction and depressingly realisitic view of human nature and politics. I really enjoyed it, and accepted the resolution of the Omega cloud myster that has been central to the stories. I still haven't read his _Talent for War_ books, but I should try them.

71) Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones: New Girl Genius! Yea! They've started roping some of the older supporting cast back into the story, and the younger generation is beginning to coalesce into their new political model, so the book is an absolute joy on many levels. One thing that continues to amaze me is that the Foglio's have developed dozens of very interesting characters and manage to give each of them chances to shine in every book - no mean feat.