Saturday, I ran the first session of the Amber Quarterly Game that has been in the works since last December. I offered to run a semi-regular game for the local Amber players at the last Wixercon and there was some interest. Unfortunately, since we’re all busy adults (also one of the reasons for Wixercon) it was determined that we could only meet about once every three months.

In the intervening time, we’ve been doing character creation and and campaign setup by email and chat.  Saturday, all of that paid off.

We got a slow start around 10 am as players started to trickle in and by Noon almost everyone was in attendance and things were in full swing. We ended up going until 10pm, though a few folks had to head home before everything wrapped up.

Overall, I feel like it was a good start to the game. Some things happened faster than I had anticipated but that rarely surprises me anymore. No campaign survives contact with the players.

On the GM front, I felt a little rusty and it took me a little bit to find the groove but I think the session went pretty well over all. Folks seemed like they were having fun and the usual politics and shenanigans were had by all.

Now to plan for the next one.

I’ve been debating whether or not there is much point to continuing this blog.

I mean, am I writing this thing as a means of self-expression or with the illusion that I’m trying to inform/sway my audience? (Honestly, I think I can count my ‘regular’ audience on one hand.)

Thinking continues.

I often wish that I could join a reading group that would be interested in reading the same kind of books that I enjoy.

For example, I just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget this morning and now I want to find out what other people, especially my tech-centric acquaintances think of the book. I would say something similar about John Scalzi’s new book The God Engines, which I also finished recently.

Ideally, I could try to form such a group but it would probably have to be done over the internet. Either way, I wonder whether the payoff would be worth the effort.

Lost Souls and Legendary Lives are roleplaying games that were published in the 90s. I first encountered them in college when I ran them as part of my work for Gamicon (which I’ve discussed earlier). Apparently, they are sufficiently obscure that they do not even have listings on Wikipedia.

Lost Souls is a game in which you play a ghost. As I recall (and the webpage confirms), the idea was that you get sent back to Earth to do good deeds in an effort to earn Karma in the hope that you’ll be reborn as a higher being (whatever that means).

Legendary Lives, on the other hand, is a fairly straightforward fantasy game in the vein of D&D.

Both games use the same, mostly generic system. I recall it being adequate to the task but nothing really special. If you’re interested, though, the author has made these games (and a couple others too) available for free on his website.

[Edit: I remember now (aided by a quick look at the games) what I really liked about these rpgs. The system had the players roll for everything and the GM never touched any dice. The emphasis was on keeping the GM engaged with the narrative.]

Sinfest is a webcomic by Tatsuya Ishida. I used to read it daily a few years ago but I lost track of it because I didn’t have an RSS aggregator at the time.

A couple weeks ago, I found Sinfest Volume One at my public library, containing the first 600ish strips. I’ve been enjoying it in small chunks and, having just finished the collection this morning, I thought I would recommend it.

It’s not fall-on-your-ass funny but I find it amusing.

What does local mean to you?

By that I mean, really, what do you consider a local business? Does it have to be owned by someone local? Employ local people? Be located in your town?

What is your criteria?

Here’s the thing: I work at what is, essentially, a big box store. It is owned by a national corporation and that means that some, probably large, percentage of the money that we bring in is shipped off to another state. The money that isn’t, though, pays my salary and the salaries of all the other folks I work with. They give me health insurance, they pay local taxes, and they provide what I consider to be an important service to the community.

I consider where I work to be a local business. I consider pretty much all businesses that fit the above criteria, even the ones I don’t like, to be local businesses.

Other people are not so generous.

I talk to a lot of people where I work and I also get to see and hear about fun websites and online groups that seem to have a beef with my workplace. Many of the people I talk to don’t seem to consider my workplace to be a local business. So, when they choose, instead, to buy the same products that we offer from an online business, sending their money to some other state entirely, I just don’t get it.

Which is to say, I understand that they seem to be purely motivated by getting the cheapest possible price for what they want. However, when they then tell me that my employer is an evil corporation that is sucking the money out of our local economy I want to make them explain their crazy-person logic to me.

Seriously, how does sending your money to another state not make you ‘evil’ based on your own equation?

Bah. Internet rant over.

A couple weeks ago, at Madison Games Day, I ran seven players through Diaspora cluster and character generation. Afterward there was some chewing of scenery.

With that many players, I had really intended only to do character and cluster creation because I’d expected it to take about three hours. We actually ended up stopping short after two hours when everyone got their Aspects and Skills sorted out, eschewing the picking out of equipment to shorten things.

At that point, we had about two hours before MGD closed down so I ended up running a few scenes. My plan had been to do a conflict or two to spotlight the system but, as with most plans, it didn’t survive contact with the players. In the end, there was a fair amount of roleplaying but not too much system engagement.

The session left me wanting to run/play more Diaspora but I definitely think that cluster creation needs to be a session of its own so that there is plenty of communication among the players about what kind of game, with what kind of interactions, everyone wants to see. It would also help to give everyone a good grounding in what the game specifically means by ‘hard science-fiction’.

The last two weeks I’ve been on top of the posting. I’ve had them written and scheduled well in advance(this, actually, is the key to posting on a regular basis). Last week, in particular, I had all of my posts written by the Sunday.

This last weekend, I spent most of my writing time catching up on email rather than writing blog posts so now I’m behind.

The week before last I talked a little about my obsessive need to schedule my time and I had a little bit of revelation that I needed to consider. This is the follow-up about what my considerations have uncovered.

So, last time I came to the realization that, really, it’s only the time that I spend with other people (presumably my friends and family) that I obsessively plan and schedule. I spent some time thinking about it and my conclusions are these:

• Actually, it appears that Britt and I have a nicely sized social circle. Granted, our current circle is smaller than what we had in Ithaca but we’ve been here in Wisconsin for a shorter time and our circle is likely to continue growing.
• We, as a couple, have less flex time, i.e. less available non-working time to hang out. In Ithaca, Britt and I had a relatively congruent schedule so it was easier to schedule social time. This is less the case here in Beloit due to my fluctuating work schedule and Britt’s work/class load.

So, given these two points, it is hard for me to justify leaving potentially available social time unscheduled because, rather than leaving things up in the air and hoping that something will happen, I would much rather schedule something even if we have to cancel at the last minute.

So, I’m going to keep working on making interesting things happen on a regular schedule. That also means that if you want to do something with us, you should probably not contact me about doing it at the last minute. Just sayin’.

Saturday was Madison Games Day 3 but our first time checking out the event.

Britt and I drove up to Madison a little early to check out the new location of Misty Mountain Games and, of course, ended up buying a new game: Small World (a game review will have to wait for another post or possibly my next newsletter). Afterward, we drove over the the Madison Games Day venue to grab some lunch before the event only to find that they weren’t officially open yet. Happily, the staff let us in so that we could hang out and punch Small World before most of the other gamers arrived.

Madison Games Day turned out to be a pretty hoppin’ event. I didn’t do a head-count but I would say their were upwards of 40 or more gamers hanging out and playing various RPGs and boardgames from Noon until 10pm. Britt and I ended up playing a couple games of Small World, a game of Race for the Galaxy, and a little 8-player mini-session of Diaspora in addition to hanging out and chatting with Kathleen and Kat, both of whom had a limited amount of time so they mostly just stopped by to hang out with us for bit.

It was nice way to spend a Saturday. Next time, I’ll have to lure more friends into coming and staying longer.

Friday, on the spur of a moment, we went out to dinner with Ben, Melinda, and Nicole. Lately, we’d been lamenting not seeing much of Ben and Melinda lately so when Nicole organized a social dinner by email and Ben responded Britt hooked us in as well.

Our first mistake, really, was going out to eat on a Friday night in the Beloit area without a reservation. Dining out seems to be the thing to do around here on a Friday night (maybe it’s that way everywhere . . .) so we ended up waiting an hour and a half to get a table.

Should we have bailed and gone elsewhere? Maybe but the situation probably would have been the same.

Overall, I think we had a good time despite our excessive standing around and waiting. At least we were waiting with friends and much of the conversation that we would have had during dinner instead took place while we standing around. Everything is better when you’ve got friends with you.

Last weekend we attended an enjoyable dinner party at the home of another of Beloit College’s faculty. Unlike most, this one had a theme: Film Food. The party was a potluck and the idea was that everyone brought a dish that somehow related to a film.

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This upcoming Saturday I’m planning on driving up to Madison for Madison Games Day. Since I haven’t been able to make the previous two, I’m not sure how big a crowd to expect but I’m hoping to meet folks both new and already acquainted to hang out and play some games.

Personally, I’m planning on bringing a bag full of boardgames along with my copies of Diaspora and Microscope for some RPG/Story-gamey -ness to add to the mix.

If you’re in the area and you enjoy playing games, I hope to see you there!

Starblazer Adventures is the other FATE in space game currently out there. I haven’t read it, though I own the PDF, because the thing is over 600 pages long.

I mean, I’ve read good things about it but 600+ pages? Really? I don’t want to have to read that much material to run a RPG.

I’m sure I’ll pick at the PDF here and there to see if there is anything useful in it for other FATE games but I doubt it’s going to see a lot of use anytime soon.

This was a hectic week at work. It was the first week of classes at Beloit College for the Spring semester and a very busy week for selling textbooks. I doubt it surprises anyone that those two events are connected.

This week being especially hectic caused me to think about my somewhat obsessive need to schedule and my tendency to shy away from spontaneity. (more)