City of Strife, by Claudie Arseneault

This was a pick of the Enigma book club -- I've been idly hanging out on the Enigma Discord server seeing what the younger generation are up to. I didn't manage to get to the discussion, but earlier I went to their bookswap and managed to unload a bin's worth of antiquated books on them. Anyway, the book is an easy read, and the author has a good sense of characters bumping into each other in various combinations. What it reminds me most of is more of a larp. Characters are created and there are reasons for them to come into conflict or conspiracy. So I guess I'm not surprised that (as I understand it) the novel developed from a D&D campaign. At the same time, what the book is missing (like a larp) is any sense of a larger world of NPCs inhabiting the space. It's almost eerie. Apart from a guard or two and a waif, there is really nothing other than people with PC glow. And in book that centers in part on political intrigue, it's just very strange. There's no sense of a real place. And (also as in RPGs and larps) there's something of a lack of plausible reactions to extreme situations. Oh Bob's just done an arson; surely the townsfolk will be enraged at his faction. But with no townsfolk, there's no reaction. My good pal Brenda has casually announced that she kills people for money. But we need a third hand for card games (because there are no other people in this allegedly crowded hostel other than those of us with PC glow.) So, like I said, there was some snappy writing, but I found it really unsatisfying in the realism of the world. Even fake fantasy 'realism'. All the characters are queer in some way, and this fact enhances the story as much as this fact enhances my review. 

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Dr. No, by Percival Everett

A very quirky read. I liked it, but I didn't love it. Obviously, the author is making a huge nod and wink at the world of James Bond. In brief, a supervillain attempts to enlist the aid of a mathematician who has devoted his life to nothing. Not zero, not a lack of ambition, but the serious study of nothingness. And our villain wishes to weaponize it. This allows the author a lot of opportunity to make equivocal use of the word 'nothing'. 

As Sill says, “Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it’s time we gave nothing back.”

This happens perhaps a mite too often. But again, all in good fun and nice to see many Bond tropes through the funhouse mirror. FWIW, the plot such as it is borrows much more from Goldfinger than Dr. No. Almost all the characters are African American, and this fact enhances the story somewhat more than this fact enhances my review.

For the past few days, I've been living about 2.5 lives, and not had time to catch up on it. Until now (?) We'll see how far I get.

( click at your own risk )

aaronjv ran Endgame last night at Wyvern Manor (a perfect setting and many thanks to Pam and Lianna for hosting).

The game is a 1920s murder mystery, so... I don't want to spoil things. But I did have a very good time, and it's a very solid game that is complicated enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be pretty easy to run and play. (So if you have an ambition to run a larp, here's one you can download and get cracking. That's what these things are for.)

The player mix was good, and I only knew a couple of them well, and a few more somewhat more vaguely. So at least half the people are now people that I'll know only by their character names...

I don't have any criticisms, but I'll mention one detail, just because my mind would not let it go. The setting is left vague, but the reference to Prohibition places it in America, but the character names all read to me as quite English (Harringdon, Stirling, Fairfax, Smyth-Montague...) more so than even the WASPiest of enclaves on the east coast (at least I imagine so -- I'm not invited to those parties). This is somewhat reinforced by the inspiration that the larp lifts from Dame Agatha.

OK, two more details from the run:

I wore great-great-grandfather's watch.

Favorite dialogue:

Rattled Suspect: It makes no sense to accuse me. I had the opportunity to kill him numerous times on other nights.
Me: So how many times did you kill him tonight?

Sax Rohmer's novel is at least 75% less racist than the film. It's also interesting that while the film Fu Manchu is trying to revive the legend of Genghis Khan, in the book his goal is to gain control of Islam (or at least an Islamic sect) by impersonating the Mahdi. Fu Manchu is portrayed as an honorable gentleman (if a ruthless criminal mastermind), and it's very much a plot point that he's a man of his word -- explicitly contrasting with a rather bombastic British archaeo... er... privileged private tomb raider, who ransoms his daughter with fakes of the antiquities he has promised. And the book actually ends with Fu Manchu deviously infiltrating a very generous wedding gift into the wedding of the daughter and her young swain. (Fu is probably exceedingly relieved that the wedding prevents the young swain from becoming his own son-in-law, since his just-as-evil-genius-y daughter improbably ("I have tricked you many times; for, although I love you, [swain], you are really not very clever.") has taken a fancy to him. (But it's ok, the swain only sexed her up while he was under the influence of a mind control drug.))

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I also read through aaronjv's Secret Ante (aka Soul Strip Poker), a larp of revealing characters (souls, if you like) through poker. In effect, you use memories or character aspects as chips to bet with. If you win someone's 'Fear' chip, you can get them to reveal their Fear to you, or reveal it publicly. I think my favorite sentence in Secret Ante is: "It's probably more intellectually challenging to play a fictional character, and more emotionally trying to play You." OK, I'm also partial to the part where he thanks me for providing some dim inspiration in the form of Casino Arcane/Arcana.

Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.

Friday, I showed up for aaronjv's game of Itras By, scenario by hagdirt.

It was a phantasmagoria. A blow-by-blow would be more unedifying than even the usual after-the-fact war stories. IB is a communal story telling exercise, and you can't lose with the right crowd, and I think we had a good one. It may not have lived up to the sheer butt-raping insanity of some OctaNe sessions with Jazon_brez, but still good stuff. K gave us enough of a line to hang our chaos on. And A finessed it and made sure everyone had some input.

No doubt it was the absinthe A plied us with, but I was most satisfied with literally belting out the Alabama Song when I was in a bar setting. That wasn't my only contribution, but it may have been the least Mike-like. Which is worth something.

[PS if you only know the song via The Doors, shoot yourself in the head. If you don't know who The Doors are, just hold your breath for a few seconds so your brain dies.]

I had a large gap, and strangely my plan for introvert sociability worked perfectly. I went to get some food, and sat all by my lonesome self in the hotel restaurant. I will say that their short rib sandwich with horseradish mayo is pretty awesome, but it does have slightly too much meat on it. In any event. Aaron showed up and joined me. And then Fei. And then... oh shit, I've forgotten her name, but the nice kiwi lady. And then John. This all happened one person at a time, and I was glad to be the starting nucleus.

But I had to be off to change for the Masquerade Ball. This was an interstitial adventure for the Messina campaign, so I kinda knew I wouldn't be a star, but it was definitely still fun to wander about as an ancient Thomas Alva Edison and interact with the other people there.

I think there was a plotline there that I wasn't actually, well, informed about. But I tried to roll with it as best I could, but it ultimately devolved into gunfire and swordplay. Not Tom's thing at all. That poor Duchess whatever-her-name-was (my hearing has always been bad) took a bullet to the head, and crumpled practically in my arms.

Zipped home and back. Well, not entirely. As I left Saturday, somehow I forgot my flip chart thingy. So I turned back. Having seen how terrible the 405N was, I cleverly (?) went further south to hit the 110 N to the 105W, so I could swoop through the Manchester/La Cienega Offramp to get home. Alas, the reason that the 405N was rotten was that the two-lane nearly a freeway Manchester/La Cienega Offramp was closed. Entirely. Which meant additionally, that all the people who wanted to get off on those two major arteries were trying to get off at La Tijera (as was I, but I settled for zooming out and back in to get off at Sepulveda/Slauson.) In any event, I spent 15 minutes heading toward Wyrd Con, and 45 minutes coming back. So there went my extra time for lunch and beer. I picked up the dingus and headed back down.

Now I rushed my ass and got to the room for Exodus 22:18 with a half hour to spare, and... there was nobody there. I rearranged some tables and chairs, and still nobody. Augh. Fortunately thing picked up rapidly right at game time.

I was flustered a bit, but found my center fairly quickly.

The game went fairly well. Problems with pacing was probably the biggest problem. The conceit is that the players are townsfolk attempting to determine which among them are witches.

It pains me to say it, but I was slightly shocked when a couple players seemed to make it their mission to paint giant targets on their backs.

At the same time, they were portraying a more skeptical, modern view of the witchcraft hysteria. Sadly, though I agree with it through and through, that is the quick path to getting yourself burnt, and so it proved. Or so it would have been, if they had not extemporized a method of self slaughter.

In any event, while they made for good scenes, it also led to a fast, easy resolution, and with many of the townsfolk wondering, "Are we done? We rooted out the obvious witches."

Some flurries of drama and accusations happened thereafter, though leavened with boredom. A number of other good scenes here and there.

At the end, there was some good feedback and criticism all around. Some I agree with, some I disagree with, and some that would probably be very good for a game that was not the game that I wanted to run.

Sleep is finally catching up to me. Not me at my best, not me at my worst. I was satisfied. I think, on the whole, it was certainly not a failure. Well, no, that's too litotes-ish. It was good. But not perfect. But these things never are.

Some of you know I'm on the board of directors of Seekers Unlimited, an educational nonprofit (status still-fucking-pending) that is involved in producing educational live action role-playing games for schools.

We've just launched a Kickstarter Campaign to raise money to polish and publish our first suite of edu-larps, which have had their initial runs at various schools around Southern California.

Too many schools are stuck in the rut of teaching to the standardized tests. Student performance and student interest in education are at shamefully low levels. Art, music, and drama have been reduced or cancelled. Our edu-larps help to insert some liveliness and humanity back into the curriculum.

Please spread the word and maybe toss a few (or many!) bucks our way. Rewards range from a stylish pen/light to a custom educational game run at your local school. And somewhere in the middle, you can get copies of parlor larps (not primarily educational) written by aaronjv and myself, including my finalist entry in the 2013 Larpwriter Challenge.

Also, an earlier Seekers Unlimited edu-larp, focused on teaching about Ancient Mesopotamia, is available for free from Educade/Gamedesk.

Still enjoying replaying OG Bioshock. The number of pixels and the controller button set-up are about the only two things that are worse in Bioshock than BS Infinite.

A while back, my Nyko guitar controller broke. I decided to go for an authentic Rock Band guitar as a replacement, and I have to say I am not a fan. I'm slowly getting used to it, but I doubt I'll ever match what I could do on the old one. The one advantage is that it has the extra set of frets for the solos, but they're so small I find them hard to use, and switching between the two sets accurately ain't easy. The star power sensor is a bit dodgy, which is very annoying. I don't mind the non-clicky strum bar that much, but the frets themselves are really loud, and you can't slide from one to the next as easily. All right, that's the end of my 1st world problems.

Oh, okay, in new game news, I got word this morning that my live game did not win the Larpwriter Challenge. I still haven't seen any official announcement about who did win.

First thanks of the post: to dark_of_night, who not only tolerated my absences this weekend, but let me steal her laptop and other stuff for the game.
I showed up with an hour and change before Death in Valhalla was scheduled. I strolled by the room, and the panel was still going on, so I headed to the bar for a beer and an 'appetizer' of sliders, which turned out to be a plate of cheeseburgers AND a plate of french fries. I ate what I could, but pre-game butterflies take up a lot of room. I fortuitously bumped into ian_tiberius and Eric. Ian was already signed up, and we managed to convince Eric to have another drink so that he couldn't drive, and then would have to play in my game. While at the bar, we managed to recruit another couple into the game as well. Second thanks go to I&E for playing, but also helping with transporting matter from my car to the room and helping to arrange the room for play.
( This could get long (unless I fall asleep) )

I fought my way through Friday rush hour traffic to return for hagdirt's Game of Sunken Places. The Framing LARP is that the war between the 'elves' and the 'goblins' is mediated by a LARP-like game constructed 'cooperatively' by the goblins and elves, and then sprung on unsuspecting humans. The two contestants (or in our case, teams) compete for each side.

Although the framing LARP provided some character interaction and motivations, the activity slid more into a crash-course unsupervised workshop in creating a LARP communally using whatever brainpower we could muster and the contents of K's craft room and prop cupboard. And then run it. In the space of a few hours.

Given her prep talk, I think one of K's motivations was to investigate this creative process, and it was interesting to be both a part of that process and to keep a spare brain cell handy to watch it from the outside. Maybe if you had recorded everything, you could have traced all the decision-making and compromises and coming together of different elements, but it is still kind of a mystery when you have that feeling that 'the room' just had an idea. Or when an idea that stinks gets the silent treatment or stonewalling until a better idea comes along.

Then we managed to rustle up a posse of random conventioneers with nothing to do to play the LARP that we had created. Or at least the 40% of it that fully existed at that point. While they went through the first challenge, we finished up the second, and likewise with the third. It was sort of a harrowing example of just-in-time logistics.

The geniusiest challenge created by the room (mostly a combo of the Sarah and J part of the room, IIRC) was for each team to receive four Tarot cards, mainly distinctive portraits from the Major Arcana (yes, I can't escape the Tarot at Wyrd Con). Their task was to go out into the convention and take photos recreating the Tarot images using other conventioneers as the subjects, enhanced by props from the communal pile and anything else they could lay their hands on. They were to be judged on accuracy and creativity, and they did very well on both counts. Hopefully, K will make the images public, if and when she has a chance to set down what happened.

The players (and the random people they also dragged into this) were absolutely great. I'm glad they were so enthusiastic about jumping into these random challenges that had been heaped upon them. It makes me feel good about my game tonight that WyrdCon attendees are looking to have a good LARP experience, and they will have a good LARP experience, if something even remotely resembling the opportunity of a good LARP experience is offered to them.

It's kind of curious in my recounting of Casino Arcana that I pitched Murder by Death as a possibility for my next Wyrd Con LARP. Because that sounds similar to And On The Other Hand, Death, which was supposed to run this morning, but got scratched. I'm bummed, since I had signed up for it, but it'll keep my day clear to prepare for Death in Valhalla. And in related news, that means I'll run the best murder mystery LARP at Wyrd Con.

Oh, maybe Werewolves of Millers Hollow counts... maybe there's competition after all. Hard to beat a fun party game.