tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73113552022350831202024-03-14T03:52:43.692-07:00various sundriesthe blog of gil trevizoGil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-4850685134768997362011-09-05T15:32:00.000-07:002011-09-06T03:03:23.662-07:00CelestiCon 2011Just back from <a href="http://www.celesticon.com/">CelestiCon</a>, a (relatively) new gaming convention in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was my first year attending and I was mighty impressed by how it turned out. My usual Labor Day weekend gaming con has been <a href="http://conquestsf.avalongamecon.com/">PacifiCon</a>, but after some lackluster years that have gotten so bad <a href="http://gtrevizo.blogspot.com/2010/09/pacificon-2010.html">my face froze in horror</a>, I decided to jump into CelestiCon just as it seemed to expand its presence. <div><br /></div><div>And it was very worth it: CelestiCon ended up being just as good as <a href="http://www.dundracon.com/">DunDraCon</a> and <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">KublaCon</a>, simply on a smaller but no less satisfying scale. There were plenty of good RPG games on the schedule, most of whom seemed to be getting filled up with players (something PacifiCon has had more and more of a problem with). Most of my games were played in an executive meeting space, but many were in communal rooms where the noise level got bad, but hopefully there can be more individual game rooms for RPGs in future cons. The dealer's room was tiny in comparison to other Bay Area cons, but I think that was mainly because CelestiCon and PacifiCon were splitting the available dealers between them, and, in talking to one of the dealers, they told me they had done good business. The con food was really bad (the usual fare of hot dogs and hamburgers was incredibly over-priced and somehow always cold), but the hotel was absolutely beautiful (yet the con rate for rooms was somehow the cheapest I've seen for any big Bay Area gaming con). I really wish I had taken photos of all the games and the gorgeous hotel, but the weekend was so jam-packed that it never slowed down long enough for me to do that.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>Probably the biggest compliment I can pay CelestiCon is that I had an extremely rare perfect batting average when it came to the games itself. Besides my own game, I played in five games, which is great in itself considering I only played on Saturday and Sunday, and every single one was at the very least an excellent experience if not face-smashing awesome. Even when I was up in the wee hours of the morning operating on too little sleep, there was never a point in any game where I wished I was doing anything else. Outside of <i>Dead of Winter</i> and some smaller and more personal cons, it's been over a year of con gaming that <a href="http://gtrevizo.blogspot.com/2010/06/kublacon-2010.html">I could really say that about another con</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b>Götterdämmerung, </b><i>(Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green)</i></div><div><div><blockquote>Berlin 1945: With the city surrounded by the Red Army, a lone glider flies into the flames and ruin, carrying a group of Allied agents, haunted veterans on a final mission that will take them from this world at war to a land of dreams, where the SS and their occult research division known as the Karotechia have built Project HODDMÍMIR, the final gambit to escape their reckoning.</blockquote></div></div><div>This is the third time I've run this scenario, and I'd been concerned since its first running at KublaCon that it's too locked to the rails and doesn't give the players enough agency to choose their own path through the story. However, this is now the second time I've walked away with the sense that the players had a great time with it specifically because it was a rail-shooter that allowed them to focus on simply enjoying the ride without worrying that they were doing the right thing in every situation. As <i>Götterdämmerung </i>was initially inspired by <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception">Inception</a></i>, there's still a part of me that wants to do <i>that</i> scenario, where OSS/Delta Green veterans are manipulating the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamlands">Dreamlands</a> to stop the Karotechia and get a final retribution against them, whereas <i>this</i> scenario is more along the lines of "journey through nightmarish Berlin and then see even more fucked-up wrongness in the Dreamlands." I don't know if I'll have the time to edit <i>Götterdämmerung</i> more towards the caper-inspired <i>Inception</i> version by <a href="http://www.bigbadcon.com/">Big Bad Con</a>, but I'm going to try. Nevertheless, this run at CelestiCon has convinced me that the scenario is already good as is, as the players seemed to have a good time and the game felt like a winner.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Have Ship, Will Smuggle</b> (FATE Star Wars)</div><div><blockquote>Setbacks and differences of opinion have left your crew on the verge of selling off the ship and going your separate ways. But every smuggler worth his spice would be crazy not to compete in Thespa the Hutt’s Gunrunner’s Gauntlet, a high speed, high risk scavenger hunt set to rage across the galaxy. Perhaps the winning ship’s 6,000,000 purse and lucrative contract position is just what you need.</blockquote></div><div>I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but I played in a great game with this GM a few cons back and figured it would be solid. That it was and more, as we played the crew of a smuggling ship entered in race to gather certain items and find a course that would lead to riches and glory. The simple set-up was complicated by our individual goals, many of whom were against each other, as well as by the war raging around us between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance (the game was set between <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> and <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, so there were lots of jokes about how the Imperials wouldn't be dumb enough to build another Death Star). Most of the characters were pretty good, but I didn't want to play the leader so after he was taken I let the other players choose who they wanted to play. I ended up with a <a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Devaronian">Devaronian</a> ex-pirate who sold his own crewmates into slavery after his former captain refused to sell the cargo of slaves they had captured. The GM used portraits of real actors morphed with Star Wars portraits (which was really well-done, better than <a href="http://gtrevizo.blogspot.com/2011/05/ss-soldbuch-investigator-sheet.html">my efforts of using Photoshop to morph actors into SS uniforms</a>), so my Devaronian was a horned Willem Dafoe, who I played as an alien <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_at_Heart_(film)#Supporting_cast">Bobby Peru</a> with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_(film)">Norman Osborn</a>'s gravelly voice. My Devaronian was arrayed against the Han Solo-esque captain, having bought his share of the ship by taking on the gambling debts of the captain's father, and used every opportunity to get the crew into trouble (my "Trouble" aspect was something like "Cannot Shut Up"). I ended up getting his father deeper in debt, nearly destroying the ship of the captain's friend, and trying to double-deal the Rebel Alliance before the captain took his opportunity to sell me to my ex-pirate comrades. I made it back to the ship in the middle of a battle, where the Devaronian and the captain drew down in an epic gun duel that left us both badly wounded and only my character still in the game (the other player had to leave to prep his own game). That was my only regret of the game, as, being a <i>Star Wars</i> game, it felt like the not-Han-Solo captain should win out and put down the not-Greedo Devaronian. Still, it ended well with us selling our cargo of arms to the Rebel Alliance for our own reasons (the Devaronian got a privateer's license and surplus Rebel ships for his new pirate armada). FATE is the perfect system for sci-fi swashbuckling like <i>Star Wars</i>, especially as it so easily handles everything from a raging battle between spaceships to social combat and all in the same scene, making it a surprisingly rich game. I had no complaints, although my throat-box was ripped raw from channeling Willem Dafoe for hours.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Here Be Dragons</b> (Call of Cthulhu/Dark Ages)</div><div><div></div><blockquote><div>The dragon banners of King Alfred have defeated the Viking/Danish forces at Ethandun, making their leader, Guthrum the Unlucky, bend the knee and receive baptism as a sign of his goodwill. During this peaceful time a group of fledgling investigators are given leave to go on holiday. One of the investigators has an invitation to a village wedding and he's gracious enough to invite the other investigators along. But holidays aren't always what they're expected to be and dark forces could be at work that make certain Alfred's dream of a united England never come to fruition.</div></blockquote><div></div></div><div>I'd been trying to play this game for awhile, as I'd been jonesing for some Dark Age axe-on-cultist mayhem. The game was more investigative than that, although I got plenty of shield wall-action by choosing one of the warrior characters. After the rich roleplaying of the previous <i>Star Wars</i> game, I wanted to play a simpler character, especially not a female one as, knowing the GM, I figured those characters would have romantic complications I was uninterested in playing out tonight. I ended up accidentally choosing a woman-in-disguise, although my romantic complications were with a long-dead NPC allowing me to mix that in at my leisure. I used it instead to support a romance between two other characters, which I had a lot of fun with. I would've expected a ten-hour game to drag, but the game went by surprisingly fast and my energy level never flagged, and between the strong attention to detail by the GM and the great role-playing by my fellow players, we put together a pretty nice story with well-realized characters.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>A Jury of Your Fears </b>(Wraith: the Oblivion)</div><div><blockquote>As the Empire of the Dead crumbles beneath the weight of corruption, ossification, and external aggression, six wraiths struggle to survive the end of everything.</blockquote></div><div>After staying up until 3AM playing that epic <i>Cthulhu Dark Ages</i> game and failing to submit my signup slip for the session, I had no intention of gaming on Sunday morning and thought to sleep in. My natural clock wouldn't let me, and as I was wandering the main foyer, I crossed the GM looking for an extra player or the game might not run. As I knew my roommate Basil was in the game, I decided to play, especially as it was short enough to still make my next game. It ended up a happy circumstance, as the game was great. I've never played <i>Wraith</i>, but the setting was interestingly gloomy, as we four players either played Wraiths in the San Jose Necropolis out to capture a haunted train to ferry people out of the doomed city then under attack from Wraiths from the Jade Sea, or we played Spectres tied somehow to the Wraith PC's by their past. Essentially we were two couples with competing goals to bring the other closer to oblivion or away from it, and were faced with scenes full of metaphorical imagery on our way to capture the train. My only regret with the game is that I had to leave a few minutes before the ending, as it went a little over time.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Operation Atomic Wichita</b> (Leverage)</div><div><blockquote>World War II is heating up! The Axis powers recently captured Paris, and with it, France. And it looks like the war's about to get worse, if what's rumored is true. A motley crew of Allied commandos is tasked with making their way to a ruined castle where the Nazi occultists known as the Thule Society are working on some sinister project. Maybe they're deluded, but Command is taking no chances. Get it, deal with the problem, and get out. Salute!</blockquote></div><div>This was the kind of a game where we started out parachuting into the Black Forest and getting attacked by a bear in <a href="http://yfrog.com/g0fkroj">assless lederhosen</a>, only for my character to end up bitten by a werewolf and shoving a gold Star of David necklace into the mouth of an undead Nazi sorcerer as his malfunctioning jet-pack exploded in mid-air and falling to safety by landing on the canopy of an Allied fighter plane. And by that I mean the face-melting sweetness kind of a game. I played Cornelius Lipshitz, an Ethiopian Jewish commando Hitter blaxploitation lovechild of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recurring_characters_in_Futurama#Officer_URL">Officer URL</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Little">Omar Little</a> (there was a scene where Lipshitz is strolling through the Nazi castle yelling "Cornelius coming... Cornelius coming...")</div><div><br /></div><div>This was my second time playing <i>Leverage</i> and, while I'm definitely impressed with the mechanics, I'm still unsure how useful it would be to the kind of things I want to do with it. I want a capers game with exactly the kind of rules that <i>Leverage</i> has for turning failure into interesting complications rather than a binary yes/no, but also something a little more gritty and less over-the-top. I think <i>Leverage </i>can do that fine so long as the players understand those limitations and buy into the genre ("I can use a Plot Point to set up a flashback that will get me past this security guard, but not to drop-kick the moon with my big toe."), but once a supernatural aspect gets dropped into the mix and there are vaguer limits to reality, things can quickly go from gritty to gonzo, especially when there is a narcissistic nutjob like myself at the table. Still, between this and my experience playing the game at the last Endgame MiniCon, I've become quite enamored with <i>Leverage</i> and will look to purchase and run it at the earliest convenience.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Spirit of Metal</b><i> (FATE)</i></div><div><div><blockquote>You are a piece of mortal sludge that has somehow washed up on the bloodspattered shores of The Metal Realms, where Brutal Legends clash with an animated classic, featuring the vile machinations of the Loc-Nar. Bring your lyrics, guitar, sword, axe, or battle drum. It’s time to rock!</blockquote></div></div><div>I've never played <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(film)">Brutal Legend</a></i> and <a href="http://youtu.be/LDtYkOrV4-E">this</a> was the last song I was listening to on my iPod before the game, but I love the fuck out of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(film)">Heavy Metal</a></i>, so a chance to play mere mortals-turned-rock gods fighting the Loc-Nar to free our metal realms from its corruption was something I wasn't going to miss. And Ozzy-dammit if this game didn't bring it <b>hard</b>. The GM was fully-prepped, laying out the world and mixing it with the FATE rules that it felt like the game had been made for just this kind of setting, infusing the room with a strong energy towards metal-mayhem, and delivering some of the finest metal tunes on his soundtrack that I think there's about a dozen or more songs I'm going to be adding to my iPod soon. The players were equally bringing it, creating characters and aspects based on metal songs and lyrics to either build archetypal rock characters like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(film)#Den">Den the Barbarian</a> or something straight off an Iron Maiden cover, or they were simply born as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skwisgaar_Skwigelf#Skwisgaar_Skwigelf">Matt Steele</a>. For the first six hours of this game, it was <a href="http://youtu.be/NQE1Q1NILfQ">a one-way ticket to midnight</a>, as we slayed hordes of animal men, banged bat-winged succubi, turned into a metal man made from WWI tanks and pissed napalm on ancient tomes, defeated castrating goat-woman roadhouse owners, freed southern belles in daisy dukes from meth-dealing Klan scum, brought the cowbell down to make the Reaper fear us in a battle of the bands, and unleashed Godzilla on Tokyo in a final apocalyptic battle against the Loc-Nar.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I had been able to get a little rest after the <i>Leverage </i>game, but I was still running on fumes when I started this game on Sunday evening. It is to the game's credit that, even though I was exhausted when it began, after the game reached its scheduled six hours and still had a lot of game left to play, I was disappointed because I wanted to keep going. And the game did keep going, but it was around then that I hit the two-fisted walls of sleep deprivation and the FATE point economy.</div><div><br /></div><div>FATE (in over-the-top balls-to-the-wall incarnations like this) is a great system, but it strongly depends on the players constantly using FATE points to power their abilities to be awesome and the GM refreshing those points in exchange for the players trying to be awesome. I've never seen that done really right (mostly because it depends on both the GM being able to run a great game and do point-banking adminstrativa at the same time, as well as the players never hoarding chips), but the GM here did something fantastic in the form of "Fan Mail" (I think he took it from <i>Prime-Time Adventures</i>) where the players had a pool of slightly-stunted FATE Points to share among ourselves for players being awesome. Unfortunately, due mainly to my sharing the Fan Mail points perhaps too freely with everyone else and not getting many myself, and the "Bane" aspect I created (which the GM would use to compel me with regular FATE points) frankly sucking, I was left halfway through the game without any kind of points. Normally that would've been fine and I would be cool with fading into the wallpaper to emphasize everyone else being cool, but I had brung it pretty hard up until then and I could tell other players were now looking at me to be bringing the awesome. Since I had neither the points nor the energy to bring said awesome anymore, it left me a little frustrated and the GM sensed that. He efficiently dealt with the FATE point situation, but there was nothing to be done about the sleepiness, so the game didn't end on the high note for me that it so richly deserved. Still, even that tinge of negativity could merely bring this game from Godlike to Fuckin' Legendary on the ladder.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>In between the <i>Leverage</i> and FATE Metal game, I got a chance to briefly sit and talk with Kenneth Hite about <i><a href="http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=1081">Night's Black Agents</a></i>, <i>World War Cthulhu</i>, the next <i>Delta Green</i> book, and his future plans for Project COVENANT and Thirties' espionage in <i>Trail of Cthulhu</i>. It was a short but informative conversation, and while I was most interested in the stuff most-related to <i>Our Darkest Hour</i>, my biggest takeaway was Ken's description of <i>Night's Black Agents</i>. I think the game is going to be much more visceral than I initially appreciated, and I'm now really pumped to see it come out (hopefully sometime early next year). I had a strange nexus when I returned to my room to relax and eat lunch, and was listening to my iPod full of <a href="http://youtu.be/hbe3CQamF8k">Massive Attack</a>, <a href="http://youtu.be/P1QUZzeZoPQ">The Heavy</a>, <a href="http://youtu.be/jtAmFKaThNE">Rob Dougan</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A12-KN5UijA">Crystal Method</a>, and watched (with the sound off) what looked like a spy-fi film with a vaguely European setting filled with black-ops secret agents shooting and staking leather-clad techno-vampires shot with cool filtered cameras and shadowy angles that was looking great until <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493424/">Steven Seagal suddenly appeared</a> in his goth-Tibetan-black muumuu and began doing his patty-cake aikido fat ninja-fu and ruined everything. So I'm already starting to groove with what I might do with "Jason Bourne vs. vampires" of <i>Night's Black Agents</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>So that was CelestiCon 2011. CelestiCon 2012 will have some big shoes to fill. My next con will be Big Bad Con in October, which with its stellar slate of RPGs is looking to overload me yet again with even more gaming goodness. Between DunDraCon, KublaCon, CelestiCon, Big Bad Con, Dead of Winter, and the Endgame MiniCons, truly do I live in gamer-paradise here on the Bay.</div>Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-70012611108946358562011-08-22T14:21:00.001-07:002011-08-22T16:54:55.477-07:00Who Owns P Division?<div>Arc Dream and Pagan Publishing have recently announced that they will be producing their own RPG system for an updated iteration of <i>Delta Green</i>, which might also mean that Arc Dream/Pagan may no longer be using Chaosium intellectual property in the setting. Based on the GenCon seminar where this was announced, this doesn't seem like a big loss to the <i>Delta Green </i>crew<i>, </i>but it did get me to wonder just who has done what with one particular aspect: P Division.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>P Division is a department within the Office of Naval Intelligence responsible for investigating the paranormal, particularly as it applies to naval concerns. Created during the First World War, P Division truly becomes a going concern with their participation in the raid on Innsmouth in 1928. Shortly after American entry into the Second World War, P Division is transferred to the Office of Strategic Services, where its files and operations are given the security classification DELTA GREEN. Eventually, the organization becomes more well-known as OSS/Delta Green than its original (and still official) title of P Division. The unit is disbanded along with the rest of the OSS with the end of the war, but is later resurrected in 1947 to control public knowledge of the Roswell incident. Now simply titled Delta Green, the unit remains an official section reporting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff until a disastrous operation in Cambodia causes its disbandment in 1970. The veterans of Delta Green decide to continue the fight as an illegal conspiracy, which continues up until the latest iteration of <i>Delta Green </i>(circa 1999).</div><div>
<br /></div><div>That's the gist of P Div, but it gets muddied when we start separating who has created what in terms of the unit and its history. The following goes into all that, and contains <b><span class="Apple-style-span" >spoilers</span></b> for the books <i>Adventures in Arkham Country</i>, <i>Delta Green</i>, and <i>Escape from Innsmouth</i>.</div><div>
<br /></div>P Division first appeared in 1993, with the publication by Chaosium of <i>Adventures in Arkham Country</i>. Within that book of scenarios was a three-part mini-campaign titled "With Malice Aforethought," written by Andrew Leman and Jaime Anderson, which is set at some indetermined point in the 1920s. In the first act, the investigators are relatives of inmates at the Arkham Sanitarium, where a Dreamlands sorcerer has taken on human form as a doctor and plans to use the inmates as part of a mad scheme to open a gate for his lords to come into the waking world and conquer it. In the course of the adventure, the investigators come across a Mythos tome titled <i>Synarchobiblaron</i>. In the second adventure, the investigators are detained by the Arkham police and charged with the murders that took place at the sanitarium. The <i>Synarchobiblaron</i> is locked by the police in the evidence vault of the Essex County courthouse in Salem, where it is potentially used against the investigators at their trial (as evidence of their Satanic worship as motive). Either the investigators are found not guilty or a new set of investigators are introduced to exonerate them in the third act, the Dreamlands sorcerer strikes again, using his agents to return him to the waking world where he can reenact the ritual to open the gate, a plan that requires him to reacquire the<i> Synarchobiblaron</i>. Stopping that plan also requires the Synarchobiblaron, as it contains the necessary spell in "The Banishment of Yde' Edat." In the way of both the antagonist and the investigators is Lieutenant Edward Brookstone and P Division, who arrive in Salem to confiscate the <i>Synarchobiblaron</i> "for use in an ongoing investigation." This is the first mention of P Division:
<br /><div><blockquote>Lieutenant Brookstone is in charge of a small subsection of U.S. Naval Intelligence known as P Division. Informally organized during the War to look into certain bizarre occurrences in central Europe, the division is currently investigating bizarre and paranormal phenomena. The details of the Halloween trial attracted the attention of the division and the evidence has been seized as part of an ongoing inquiry into cultist activity.</blockquote></div><div>Lt. Brookstone and a team of U.S. Marshals take the evidence, and load it into a Navy truck to drive it back to Boston for a flight back to Washington. What happens from there is up to the investigators, although, as Brookstone is mentioned as being able to get them all pardons from the governor of Massachusetts, it is implied that P Division is convinced to aid the investigators in their fight against the sorcerer.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>This is the only mention of P Division anywhere in a Chaosium book, including <i>Escape from Innsmouth. </i>In that book, published by Chaosium in 1992, the man "in charge of the military contribution" to the raid on Innsmouth is cigar-chomping USMC "Colonel James Rothler of Naval Intelligence." While Rothler is described as working for naval intelligence, he is never explicitly tied to P Division. <i>Escape from Innsmouth</i> does create the code-name used for the raid on Innsmouth: Project COVENANT, with those involved identifying themselves with the phrase "Samson" to pass through the roadblocks set up around the town. The book also creates "The Book of Dagon," five conical stones covered with R'lyeh glyphs which Robert Marsh, the high priest of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, had been attempting to decipher when interrupted by the raiders. Finally, <i>Escape from Innsmouth</i> establishes the fate of the Innsmouth prisoners as being shipped to "various clandestine camps and military prisons across the country" before " a secret desert detainment camp is set up and all prisoners are confined" there, although nothing is said of it being in Arizona.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Then, in 1996 (or maybe earlier, depending on any pre-release write-ups of Delta Green in <i>The Unspeakable Oath</i>), <i>Delta Green</i> establishes the meat-&-potatoes of P Division. Fully titled for the first time as the Parapsychology, Paranormal, and Psychic Phenomena Division, P Division's history is laid out in the most significant detail it's received before or since. <i>Delta Green</i> ties P Division into <i>Escape from Innsmouth</i> by stating that it was headed by "Marine Colonel James Whelan, the ranking military officer of Project COVENANT," which re-names Rothler and makes him the head of P Division. <i>The Book of Dagon</i> is also mentioned, with its decoding by the Black Chamber causing the Navy to fully-support P Division and its fight against the Deep Ones. <i>Delta Green</i> also follows through on the containment of the Deep One hybrids, placed here in a secret containment facility disguised as a Naval Air Station in Arizona.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Since then, no book outside of those published for <i>Delta Green </i>have really addressed P Division. The <i>Cthulhu Live </i>books, the LARP version of <i>Delta Green</i> and <i>Shades of Grey, </i>each mention P Division, but neither expand beyond what was written previously in Pagan's <i>Delta Green</i>. Kenneth Hite's <i>Trail of Cthulhu</i> has an entire section on Project COVENANT, but it's not as simple as it might appear:</div><div><blockquote>With former President Coolidge's death on January 5, 1933, the survivors of Project Covenant have nowhere left to turn when they start seeing the same sorts of things they saw that cold night in Innsmouth. Except to each other. They form a secret cabal within the US military and intelligence services, and provide cover and leads for each other where they can. They call themselves "Covenanters" or "Friends of Ezra" (after Ezra Weeden, an 18th century patriot who defeated a wizard), and use variations on "Ezra," "Samson," and the Ark of the Covenant as code words, contact signals, and warning signs.</blockquote></div><div>While a cursory glance might see this as <i>Trail of Cthulhu</i>'s version of P Division, it is in fact something entirely different: a secret and illegal conspiracy running parallel to the open (if nominally covert) and authorized operation that is P Division as described in <i>Delta Green</i>. It is instead <i>Trail of Cthulhu's</i> own 1930s version of Delta Green, which even utilizes its own network of "friendlies" in American and foreign embassies. Hite notes that Project Covenant <b>can</b> be "an official (though still secret) operation within the FBI and Navy bureaucracies," but he also states this as a "different sort of style," connoting that its default status is unofficial. <i>Trail of Cthulhu</i> doesn't add many details than those already established in <i>Escape from Innsmouth</i>, except to name certain NPCs differently than the way they were named in <i>Delta Green </i> (Treasury Agent Wade becomes Agent Drew, Rothler who is Whelan in <i>Delta Green</i> is renamed Maines in <i>Trail of Cthulhu</i>).</div><div>
<br /></div><div>And that, as far as I know, is entirely it for P Division. <i>Secrets of Morocco </i>makes some mention of the Office of Naval Intelligence, but no other book outside of those published for <i>Delta Green</i> make any reference to the organization. Still, even though the vast majority of what was written about P Division was created by the authors of <i>Delta Green</i>, it may not be so easy to separate it from Chaosium's IP. The name itself was created by Chaosium, as was it's pre-Innsmouth history, although that only amounts to the "bizarre occurrences in central Europe" that inspired its creation in 1917 (and it is <i>Delta Green</i> that is responsible for fixing that date to 1917) and the Brookstone affair in <i>Adventures in Arkham Country</i>. Everything post-Innsmouth, which represents most of what has been written about P Division was created by Pagan Publishing. So what can Arc Dream/Pagan do in terms of separating themselves from Chaosium IP while preserving the history of Delta Green? Well, going back to the source, this is what Lovecraft wrote in <i>The Shadow Over Innsmouth</i>:</div><div><blockquote>During the winter of 1927-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting - under suitable precautions - of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the waterfront.</blockquote></div><div>Lovecraft also speaks of the captives of the raid being dispersed to "various naval and military prisons," and he does establish the Navy's involvement in the raid by mentioning the "deep-diving submarine that discharged torpedoes downward in the marine abyss jsut beyond Devil Reef.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Based on all that, it's reasonable that, strictly from <i>The Shadow Over Innsmouth</i> alone, the Navy was involved in the raid on Innsmouth. As the Office of Naval Intelligence was obsessed with domestic intelligence during the interwar period, it's actually likely that ONI officers would take the lead when Navy and Marine troops are dispatched against the town. <i>The Shadow Over Innsmouth</i> also establishes that the prisoners from Innsmouth were sent to military facilities. From this, Delta Green can safely be descended from an ONI unit that took part in the raid on Innsmouth. Calling that unit "P Division" and code-naming the operation "Project COVENANT" are probably not kosher. The same goes for "The Book of Dagon" (although there's nothing to say that vaguely described artifacts recovered from Innsmouth were deciphered by the Black Chamber) or that the naval intelligence unit was created during the First World War specifically due to "bizarre occurrences in central Europe," although Central Europe is a big place and it was <i>Delta Green </i>that established 1917 as the date of P Division's creation.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>All that said, I happen to like canon specifically when it raises questions, within which lie opportunities to create stories; and there are a lot of such questions that disappear when what's been written on P Division starts to get fragmented. What were the bizarre occurrences in Central Europe that lead the U.S. Navy to create of something as fanciful as the Parapsychology, Paranormal, and Psychic Phenomena Division? What happened to the "intimidating" Lieutenant Brookstone so that the cartoonish Marine Colonel Rothler/Whelan/Maines (who seems so paranoid that he can't go anywhere without an alias) took over P Division within the (no more than) eight years between <i>Adventures in Arkham Country </i>and <i>Escape from Innsmouth</i>? What happened to the Colonel so that the lower ranking Lieutenant Commander Martin Cook had taken over by 1942? How did P Division going from investigating the Dreamlands with the <i>Synarchobiblaron</i> to focusing intently on Deep Ones affect the unit and its officers? Why do the officers involved in Project COVENANT abandon P Division en masse following 1933 and begin a new illegal conspiracy? How does J. Edgar Hoover go from the careerist afraid to tell President Hoover the truth of Innsmouth in 1928 to the regular visitor to the Arizona containment facility in the 1930s? Why would the conspirators of Project Covenant be unwilling to brief President Roosevelt on the Innsmouth raid in 1933, especially as FDR was historically closed to tied to naval intelligence, and how does Project Covenant react when P Division moves to the OSS and (supposedly) briefs President Roosevelt in full on what they've discovered? </div><div>
<br /></div><div>It's a bit of shame that I can't easily see a book that covers all of P Division's history from 1917 to 1942, but that's mitigated by the fact that there's nothing stopping Chaosium from producing a book on P Division from 1917 to 1928 (thereby avoiding entangling themselves with all the background created by Pagan Publishing post-Innsmouth). Nor is there anything stopping Arc Dream/Pagan from retconning their own work, renaming P Division to something else and leaving its pre-Innsmouth history as "a strange division of naval intelligence created in 1917 to investigate the paranormal that was reorganized and renamed to [INSERT NEW NAME HERE] following the Innsmouth operation." And <i>Trail of Cthulhu</i> has already side-stepped most of this, as Project Covenant remains this separate conspiracy leading from Innsmouth that hasn't been connected to P Division since then. As for all the interesting questions that arise from the various melding of what's been written about P Division, the bad news might be that the publishers can't steal each other's IP to play around with it, but the good news, and what really matters, is that Keepers can always do it for themselves.</div>Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-8108206728220875622011-05-31T01:06:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:24:31.469-07:00KublaCon 2011For the second year in a row, I came out of KublaCon without playing in a single bad game. Some were better than others, but none of them were stinkers and at no time did I ever want a game to end just to move on to something else.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Wolves of St. Croix </span>(Godlike)<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Winter, 1944. As the sky turns grey and snow blankets the French countryside, Patton’s Third Army creeps forward against orders during an uneasy winter stalemate. Your Talent Operation Group has been assigned to vanguard elements of the 25th Cavalry Recon Squadron, currently deployed in hills above the provincial village of Frahan. The last patrol sent to reconnoiter the surrounding forest hasn’t report in and you’re being sent into those dark woods to find out why.</span></blockquote>Friday involved a very horrible choice: there were nine games I would've loved to play that evening, all of them in competing slots. I settled on Jack Young's <span style="font-style: italic;">Godlike</span> game as my first choice mostly due to knowing Jack to be a great GM, loving the setting, and wanting to get my One Roll Engine experience under my belt. I was not disappointed, as this was a fantastic game and, besides my own game, the highlight of the con for me. It was a damn good bunch of players, and we gelled quickly as a group. Some of the best moments include the badger (our TOG mascot) that a character kept in his backpack that we addicted to morphine to keep it sedated, my secretly homosexual character (something I added, which Matt Steele pointed out that I often add to my characters... odd) who kept having to deal with innuendo about cigars and pinup girls, and my most metal moment of the con... after getting set on fire, my character dropped his B.A.R. and charged a Nazi brainwashing Talent, brass-knuckled trench knives in hand, screaming "BADGERS GO FIRST!" (the TOG motto is "Talents Go First") that soon degenerated through pain to "<a href="http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/">BADGER! BADGER! BADGER!</a>" and finally punching dead the Nazi (who has pissed his pants due to failing Will vs. Will contests) through the face as he simultaneously shot me dead through the face. A thing of beauty.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Knight's Tale </span>(Savage Worlds)<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">When two monks ask Sir David of Winchester and his entourage for help it seems like a righteous quest is beginning. But the monks of Muchelney Abbey lead a colorful and interesting life, and their problem is no earthly one. To save the monks physical bodies, and maybe their eternal souls, the knights must deal with a divine servant who guards a holy weapon and a French raiding party attacking southern England before facing down the true monster.</span></blockquote>Somehow Saturday turned out to be all <span style="font-style: italic;">Savage Worlds</span>, all the time. My first game involved a knight (played by me) and his retainers competing in a tournament before getting recruited <span style="font-style: italic;">Magnificent Seven</span>-style by some drunken, lascivious monks to defend their abbey from having its new construction torn down by a woodland demon. Evidently a published scenario, the game was okay but made much better by having great players at the table, as almost everyone (one player kind of checked out) just dived into their characters. We never encountered a French raiding party, and getting the holy weapon was pretty easy (although it was interesting when my squire, secretly a girl in disguise, failed to pass the test of morality to enter the tomb and was nearly attacked by an angel, while the lascivious, morally-loose herald entered with ease), but the fight with the wood-demon was intense and I felt satisfied after the game. In fact, after my experience running <span style="font-style: italic;">Savage Worlds </span>at Dead of Winter, I was almost lured into again believing that the system could be simple, light, and easy...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Witch of November </span>(Realms of Cthulhu)<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Early November, 1975. You and your crew are about to embark on a routine journey across Lake Superior with a full load of taconite ore pellets in the belly of your freighter. The National Weather Service has predicted clear skies with the nearest storm passing safely to the south... But there is something deep under the water that defies logic and nature. The witch of November is about to come stealing... And she's hungry.</span></blockquote>... but then I played this game and quickly returned to reality. It was quite a good game, and I had a lot of fun, but I sat between the GM and someone who mentioned doing editing work for the game, both of whom seemed very familiar with the system, and there were several times when they had to reach for their books to look up rules. There was even a time or two when I knew what the rule was in a situation and they weren't immediately aware of it. If even people like this haven't mastered the system, what hope is there for rules-retards like me?<br /><br />The game itself was decent. As I suspected, it was based on a rather famous song, so I knew how things were probably going to end from the very beginning. <span style="font-weight: bold;">SPOILERS!</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We were sailors on the </span><a style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wreck_of_the_Edmund_Fitzgerald"><span style="font-style: italic;">Edmund Fitzgerald</span></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, so we were all going to die.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> It ended up being a run-&-fight kind of game, and since I had no melee skills and many of the players had handguns while I didn't, I felt pretty limited in what I could do.</span> On top of that, since I suspected <span style="font-weight: bold;">MORE SPOILERS!</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">we were all going to die and survival really wasn't an option, I spent the game waiting for an objective different than "survive," which didn't come until the end of the last combat round in the game</span>. I came away respecting <span style="font-style: italic;">Realms of Cthulhu </span>for its lethality ("gritty" damage rules where you can't Soak damage with bennies are indeed quite gritty) and its Sanity mechanic, but the highly tactical nature of the combat serves more to draw me out of the game than into it. I think I'm done with any notion of running <span style="font-style: italic;">Savage Worlds</span>, although I'm still happy to play in games that use the system.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fighting for Freedom </span>(Exalted)<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Ever felt like you were a demi-god? In Exalted, you are! Your character has been blessed with godlike powers by the Unconquered Sun. However, you've been captured by a rival Solars who feel that only the strongest of your kind should survive to take over the world. Do you fight in their tournament to prove you're the best, or do you fight your captors for your freedom? The choices are yours in this game of Exalted.</span></blockquote>I tried to crash in 4 games on Sunday morning: I spent nearly an hour camping to get into a <span style="font-style: italic;">Doctor Who </span>game (which filled up with all its signed-up players, although I was okay with that when I found it the characters would all be from the show rather than original), then a <span style="font-style: italic;">Dark Heresy </span>game that a friend was also trying to crash (who also failed), then a <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek </span>game using one of my favorite systems (Cinematic Unisystem) that I thought would be full (and was right), then a <span style="font-style: italic;">Hellcats & Hockeysticks</span> game that sounded so quirky I thought there might be a chance (there wasn't), before my friend from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Dark Heresy </span>game and I ran into an RPG coordinator who told us this <span style="font-style: italic;">Exalted </span>game needed players.<br /><br />This was an odd game, but a fun one. Talking it over with a friend later, it almost seemed like the GM would've preferred if there hadn't been enough players to run the game, and once we got past the initial set-up, there didn't seem to be much more to the game. Regardless, it was still pretty awesome, as we ripped out trees and beat the Solar into submission with them. I've played <span style="font-style: italic;">Exalted </span>before, which is a strange mix of this interesting setting of highly empowered characters that should be able to pull off amazing stunts and would be an easy fit for something like FATE, but is mated to this incredibly crunchy White Wolf system that goes into far too much detail than is actually required. Still, it works in play, especially under an efficient GM, which this one was, and, after we all picked up the system, it ran smoothly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Operation Albion</span> (Delta Green)<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Delta Green cell Kilo is activated to investigate the odd remains of several animals found in Albion, Washington. Kilo cell is a group of experienced federal law enforcement agents who have worked successfully on supernatural cases in the past. The cell is called to the Hyatt Regency, Burlingame for a briefing provided by A cell.<br /></span></blockquote>The <span style="font-style: italic;">Exalted </span>game ended so quickly that I was still able to get into "Apocalypse Tao," a <span style="font-style: italic;">Savage Worlds </span>game using the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tour of Darkness </span>setting. After only one other player and myself showed up, the game had to be cancelled for lack of players. While unfortunate, that did allow me to play in a <span style="font-style: italic;">Delta Green </span>game, a very rare treat for me as I almost always have to run <span style="font-style: italic;">Delta Green </span>myself to see it on a schedule.<br /><br />This was a good game, but it was one of those situations where I got a little pissy over planning details with a couple of players as I kept getting called on the carpet for my character's decisions. It's very difficult, especially in a con setting where you don't often know the other players, to differentiate when a player is calling <span style="font-weight: bold;">your character </span>a moron or when they are calling <span style="font-weight: bold;">you personally </span>a moron. It's made even harder when the offended player doesn't really act out their character, using the same tone of voice and perspective whether in-character or otherwise. I'm an immersive role-player, so when I role-play characters in stressful situations that go temporarily insane, I'm not focused on what's the best tactical option but what is the most interesting response. And I'm a geek with self-esteem issues, creating a toxic mix when combined with criticism. I do think that a myopic focus on getting just the right plan in a horror game is rather silly, as no matter what you plan, it's all going to end up going wrong somehow. Nevertheless, I wish I hadn't let it get to me, and while I didn't go into a full-blown funk, I still wish I'd found a way to ignore it completely.<br /><br />For the most part though, the game was a lot of fun, and had some great moments. I got to yell "The pudding's gone bad!" as my character went crazy and ran away from the protoplasmic monster. One player got killed half-way through by said pudding, and then his replacement character failed a Climb roll and fell to his death about a minute after coming into the game. Another player had an absolutely metal moment where he went nuts and charged the pudding, guns blazing and yelling "I can take it!" as my character grappled with him to hold him back from certain doom.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Götterdämmerung</span> (Delta Green)<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Berlin 1945: As the city collapses before the advancing Red Army, a lone glider flies into the flames and ruin. Onboard are a small desperate group of Allied agents disguised as German paratroopers, who must journey through Hel to breach the final stronghold of the SS occult research division known as the Karotechia, where Projekt HODDMÍMIR waits to open the way for the Third Reich to escape its reckoning, as others arrive to reap what black science the Karotechia has sown.</span></blockquote>This was my game, and the first time I've run it anywhere. It went very well, in no small part due to an awesome group of players. I'll break it all down...<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Good</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></span>Everybody (including myself) had fun, which is the most important thing. A very solid story was created by the end of the game, and most of the characters ran through some kind of personal arc. As the game ran through without any major hitches, I left it confident in my GM'ing abilities, which is the first time I can say that about a con game since... well, the last KublaCon. I was really surprised to see that I almost brought it in on-time (6 hours) without having to sacrifice too much, although the early scenes in Berlin do have to get trimmed and character introduction took way too long. The props came out well and it was good to see that the Soldbuch character sheets held up under use. Listening to it on the drive to KublaCon, I was afraid the soundtrack I'd put together was less than optimal, but it turned out to be okay.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Bad</span></span><br />At the end of the game, one of the players said he would've paid good money to see this scenario if it were a movie. That made my day, but I also felt like I kind of did run it as a movie, as in it was all very scripted. I didn't give the players enough chances to roleplay their characters (although the players made the most of the few chances I did give), and the game itself pretty tightly runs on rails so that there are too few opportunities for the players to make choices within it. This is something that I can definitely edit in the game, so it'll ultimately be stronger for it.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Awesome</span></span><br />Like I said, I had great group of players for this one, everyone at the table brought something to the game. One player interpreted his character on a much deeper level than I expected (and I wish I'd been better prepared for that). Another player really followed through on some aspects I was prepared for (and hoping to see), but when something happened (which I had pre-scripted in a dumb way, so it's all on me) to cause almost everyone to drop to zero SAN, that story got ended prematurely.<br /><br />One thing that I learned from this game was that I never want to run on a Monday ever again. I was on high-energy throughout the game, but I completely crashed after it was over and was at the most tired I'd been in a very long time. It was also weird having a bunch of folks telling me how much they wanted to play in my game, which felt great for my ego but also built up the pressure to deliver. I'd much prefer to run on Friday, release that anxiety, and spend the rest of the con just enjoying the games I'm playing in.<br /><br />In general terms, KublaCon delivered once again, but I do think there is room for improvement. Unlike DunDraCon, KublaCon uses a wholly electronic sign-up system through off-line terminals at the registration desk. This makes signing-up for games during the con difficult, as a bunch of folks will have only 4 terminals to work with any time and queues can develop. What's more, I'm certain the system could be used on-line, as it's possible to sign-up through their website for a short period before the con starts. If the system were on-line throughout the con, there'd be less need to queue up at the kiosk, and it'd be much easier to change sign-up choices if you get into one game that will overlap with games you signed-up for in the next.<br /><br />I also feel like the con was very front-loaded this year, with 9 great games on Friday for me, and then fewer great ones (but still several okay choices) the rest of the con. There might've been less games than last year, but I have no data to back that up.<br /><br />In the dealer's room, I avoided making purchases, but it was a tough job to do so. I thumbed through <a href="http://www.arcdream.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=36">Black Devil's Brigade</a> and am seriously considering getting it and creating a short-lived group to run it as a mini-campaign. It will probably be a bit raw to begin with before I master the rules, but I'm coming around to the idea that the only way I'll ever master the One Roll Engine is to just jump in and run it a bunch of times.<br /><br />So, all in all, another great time from KublaCon. It was my first and it remains my favorite. I can't wait to go back next year.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-22142739568792875312011-05-21T20:24:00.000-07:002011-05-21T21:01:01.713-07:00SS Soldbuch Investigator "Sheet"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGfTKuvDKNjquYMZep2JPGHIWus31L64V6mOy3UXqU-6z9quePf5NU3UeJOCQ8jnXiDukj3D3MWwJEARMmDeTmWTh7JOQw4Jg1yiXAeKT8ZupTALLDoZMstq9pqSnOPAla_GeCyuQnj7e0/s1600/Soldbuch+2.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGfTKuvDKNjquYMZep2JPGHIWus31L64V6mOy3UXqU-6z9quePf5NU3UeJOCQ8jnXiDukj3D3MWwJEARMmDeTmWTh7JOQw4Jg1yiXAeKT8ZupTALLDoZMstq9pqSnOPAla_GeCyuQnj7e0/s320/Soldbuch+2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609377975911439874" border="0" /></a>In less than a week at <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">KublaCon</a>, I'll be running <span style="font-style: italic;">Götterdämmerung</span>, a <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu </span>scenario set during the Battle of Berlin, where OSS/Delta Green agents, disguised as Waffen-SS paratroopers, infiltrate Berlin (which is surrounded by the Red Army) and try to stop the final machinations of the SS occult division known as the Karotechia. I got the idea to mock up an abbreviated and simplified version of an SS Soldbuch (a pay book carried by German soldiers which included unit information, issued equipment, and various other stuff), since the Soldbuch was also used as a kind of identity card, figuring it might make a nice prop for the investigators' cover identities.<br /><br />Then I got another idea: why not turn the whole thing into a character sheet?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgp3WQy21F8qR-v8JEyzEFWg4Er0Noh_8ukOy-VVdp9nAld9cDBGOslGGymGa-Ej4to46q-qZAU2oWWCEeRKmXs2X3_m8if_W0x2a3CFsNTYRH-iNLq7RyNbMJcoMqTxXuHgCA4Zc-x5p/s1600/Soldbuch+1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgp3WQy21F8qR-v8JEyzEFWg4Er0Noh_8ukOy-VVdp9nAld9cDBGOslGGymGa-Ej4to46q-qZAU2oWWCEeRKmXs2X3_m8if_W0x2a3CFsNTYRH-iNLq7RyNbMJcoMqTxXuHgCA4Zc-x5p/s400/Soldbuch+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609378109069061458" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGuXEQn5XAuXy3HVi9cGJWMEhl-19-L_CAwlsMfLNGShqEI0oAchKKDsmCDrtJhndn-0y_hLDaJ2FfsQTI-90Dso1lLIDWiEV9XDIpbAlA_yPW9irme4rRPrzgRXkrwQ4o4-THkQkVuz1H/s1600/Soldbuch+3.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGuXEQn5XAuXy3HVi9cGJWMEhl-19-L_CAwlsMfLNGShqEI0oAchKKDsmCDrtJhndn-0y_hLDaJ2FfsQTI-90Dso1lLIDWiEV9XDIpbAlA_yPW9irme4rRPrzgRXkrwQ4o4-THkQkVuz1H/s400/Soldbuch+3.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609378295055115074" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGakEJ6-ahLFnWUUIggylD9fgqFtw2ET2CfeEfdrMCc16ErffelUQT-Jjt2a7DOte1fNyD8s7d3EhAaW6LHo34Bqcws-6hlGcg5qiGYvaA3cpmf5hPvUMLdbCYZnBhhGlZw_tMMpWzdjj/s1600/Soldbuch+4.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGakEJ6-ahLFnWUUIggylD9fgqFtw2ET2CfeEfdrMCc16ErffelUQT-Jjt2a7DOte1fNyD8s7d3EhAaW6LHo34Bqcws-6hlGcg5qiGYvaA3cpmf5hPvUMLdbCYZnBhhGlZw_tMMpWzdjj/s400/Soldbuch+4.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609378459798945730" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDn7VD2XgbF-6SKRYxCZWKs73zKWNg-_9S2z1kZjPUoPsR28D87Lu_u3SQssc19v6SKaxLUGom_oF18lc6hBrk1OoM5Oc33pAVOdmgNOJPHyQ7qxDcQVMl9Hwf_uE1N20yiKB40m-uE8sN/s1600/Soldbuch+5.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDn7VD2XgbF-6SKRYxCZWKs73zKWNg-_9S2z1kZjPUoPsR28D87Lu_u3SQssc19v6SKaxLUGom_oF18lc6hBrk1OoM5Oc33pAVOdmgNOJPHyQ7qxDcQVMl9Hwf_uE1N20yiKB40m-uE8sN/s400/Soldbuch+5.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609378655492387986" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3LsLyIKcigbTbUHgwqxA33USRjhXH2y-RRYZVL8C79iyqcxj-WtT1fgdG5e5dArFm7zQ_T1fo8UNKNMDvFBx1aLq8jFQlbxVJ6v_hLtLmZBGYV91h-eOZ9qD0Mx8XK3u3Kv40EHteu3gA/s1600/Soldbuch+6.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3LsLyIKcigbTbUHgwqxA33USRjhXH2y-RRYZVL8C79iyqcxj-WtT1fgdG5e5dArFm7zQ_T1fo8UNKNMDvFBx1aLq8jFQlbxVJ6v_hLtLmZBGYV91h-eOZ9qD0Mx8XK3u3Kv40EHteu3gA/s400/Soldbuch+6.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609378852881158066" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UpSjkZtJ8GRZmThWknFvPwqwGCebF4WzkiJ0SH193Ch0kypxBnY5wbwQLlM_kapQPcB3AKFoCPDIfNCLrh_sSuTGogYR6g9xuE5RYwokNDe80hnwCmV2cogO1HpbBFCoPQ6KHrQDoFFG/s1600/Soldbuch+7.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UpSjkZtJ8GRZmThWknFvPwqwGCebF4WzkiJ0SH193Ch0kypxBnY5wbwQLlM_kapQPcB3AKFoCPDIfNCLrh_sSuTGogYR6g9xuE5RYwokNDe80hnwCmV2cogO1HpbBFCoPQ6KHrQDoFFG/s400/Soldbuch+7.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609379065025482050" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Sdh1iHzvLfJpiR4iCVwtsInYASokM1KoZo5oIQ_yld8Q4K4xFoLjfiUK-ldgi5PKtDr2WvmDw29bE3VbvWRki07xTZOclhXLc3XVq2kkZEla83aZfMVMfDxA8iKtUcDCAgClEAuXWiwO/s1600/Soldbuch+8.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Sdh1iHzvLfJpiR4iCVwtsInYASokM1KoZo5oIQ_yld8Q4K4xFoLjfiUK-ldgi5PKtDr2WvmDw29bE3VbvWRki07xTZOclhXLc3XVq2kkZEla83aZfMVMfDxA8iKtUcDCAgClEAuXWiwO/s400/Soldbuch+8.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609379378169212994" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2mqsFLz2sw_yaFPoA95R4HyKRe1AWIXJLZ-iGgEsT5zl3W-TFkq0rqpWh4ZCe4KTRSJTZfud_UwlpAXXzhBOEJVjeM5WeBkQITEUiPnJCGWhjwW1fG5M9BTPWNOkyLt4lzLzoWLb90lSp/s1600/Soldbuch+9.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2mqsFLz2sw_yaFPoA95R4HyKRe1AWIXJLZ-iGgEsT5zl3W-TFkq0rqpWh4ZCe4KTRSJTZfud_UwlpAXXzhBOEJVjeM5WeBkQITEUiPnJCGWhjwW1fG5M9BTPWNOkyLt4lzLzoWLb90lSp/s400/Soldbuch+9.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609379632662103922" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFQUs9U9Vff71y5UZgTeyQrxRsnGhgRzS4DS9sP5HKAgZgis0houPnjO4TF-CMxIB4pdLiTa-HhkkALeq9Wci8upuNRTLmFF9RGdY3nJUOk39ogtvkPx8Zn7cMbvPnPqw2O43UTNG1Of6H/s1600/Soldbuch+10.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFQUs9U9Vff71y5UZgTeyQrxRsnGhgRzS4DS9sP5HKAgZgis0houPnjO4TF-CMxIB4pdLiTa-HhkkALeq9Wci8upuNRTLmFF9RGdY3nJUOk39ogtvkPx8Zn7cMbvPnPqw2O43UTNG1Of6H/s400/Soldbuch+10.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609380138210930546" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS1V4AS3vgufhq-EUoFV7CEzseaR1zi1iUC-d7RAdGQio3GzVNwBsBs6YZSlE9pGNWfmC754J2EL75CH92leMAWhws4rperaIzu6u97DODjIXxQyroCicth2dloW70yT3t4TylebHCmr2h/s1600/Soldbuch+11.JPG"><img style="display:block; 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margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPljFYvh-8yUF2qpmrV86yq9ancDTevXfynOaKLCNvz-FBV8pq09lAf45KSWAsYXyeaYujbqZ7jiJ7O2CwLZgzYU5FwBKNCRzPOegXKsoTiuseDGWmULpEbPnfCStkd0VlZfyGgsm1Xvbg/s400/Soldbuch+15.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609381827913953074" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM2vzShs_EBVEVbAaN52gmN5rB-t3pfzZkK1K4881p7-ZSNkOK4i_JiBEUlwAT2-UXUyANY6-omppfj7u8kN371Y4iCBs7V-h7SZ8SvcHNJiSHXZSgBu1DyOncvGzp2DU4iphBP8zFCFmz/s1600/Soldbuch+16.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM2vzShs_EBVEVbAaN52gmN5rB-t3pfzZkK1K4881p7-ZSNkOK4i_JiBEUlwAT2-UXUyANY6-omppfj7u8kN371Y4iCBs7V-h7SZ8SvcHNJiSHXZSgBu1DyOncvGzp2DU4iphBP8zFCFmz/s400/Soldbuch+16.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609381823348492674" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7LqUCx-1KaKBXNcaHSzlZFZ1YKai6_uMLsLEPSJ_q4L3haB7zD5taPtPXTXDQuGCcUIFnWNlrG6gP36lgiz0fXTvKUDPiPXYYYY1ZxPibL7Vp1BJLhRVNqm2Y9XgMkgpIdBbN2q9KHjt/s1600/Soldbuch+17.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7LqUCx-1KaKBXNcaHSzlZFZ1YKai6_uMLsLEPSJ_q4L3haB7zD5taPtPXTXDQuGCcUIFnWNlrG6gP36lgiz0fXTvKUDPiPXYYYY1ZxPibL7Vp1BJLhRVNqm2Y9XgMkgpIdBbN2q9KHjt/s400/Soldbuch+17.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609381837349161474" border="0" /></a><br />This was a <span style="font-weight: bold;">lot </span>of work. I used Word to create most of it, put into a PDF (the raw files are <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B2s0RfOkZ88wODAzYTAyOWEtYTEwZi00NjY0LTliN2MtZTk1NmUxNzM5YjBk&hl=en_US">here</a>), and printed it with the cover on grey card stock (which looks much less grey than it actually is in the photos) and the rest on light beige paper. Then I "bound" it with a long-reach stapler, and covered the spine (and hid the exterior of the staples) with black fabric tape.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-17571086412023975162011-04-18T09:55:00.000-07:002011-04-18T10:25:47.665-07:00A <a href="http://www.yog-sothoth.com/threads/20733-WWII-Call-of-Cthulhu-Campaign">recent thread</a> on yog-sothoth.com inspired me to do a little bit of Internet necromancy and try to find <a href="http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/v03/03-022.txt">the earliest mention by Pagan Publishing about <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Darkest Hour</span></a>.<br /><blockquote>From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of PaganArt@aol.com<br />Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 6:15 PM<br />To: dgrpg@delta-green.com<br />Subject: Re: DG: Books?<br /><br />The following books are ready for printing:<br /><br />DG Eyes Only 3 Project Rainbow: Which is going to press on friday.<br /><br />DG: Dark Theaters trade paperback: This revised edition will be available soon, most likely by the end of next month.<br /><br />The following books are in production:<br /><br />Delta Green: From an Dim and Ultimate Thule: A WWII era Delta Green novel dealing with the Great Race, Deep Ones and other nastiness. This should go to press some time the in the forseeable future, maybe within the next three months...<br /><br />There are several DG: Eyes Only volumes in the works including:<br /><br />Agents, Friendlies and Bronsons: 41+ Fully detailed NPCs for any Delta Green campaign.<br /><br />Black Cod Island: An ancient Deep One colony located in southern Alaska still survives today, despite an attempt by the Haida indians of the northwest to stomp out the alien threat in the 1730's.<br /><br />As far as big books go, the next planned biggie which is already underway is<br /><br />Delta Green: Our Darkest Hour, a sourcebook for playing DG during WWII. Most likely it will make Countdown look like a slim little volume.<br /><br />Cult of Transcendence is in the middle of its endless rewrite as we speak, no definite idea on when (or if) it will ever be released.<br /><br />Other plans include a large campaign (modern day) for DG and more fiction.<br /><br />Suggestions are welcome.<br /><br />Dennis Detwiller.<br />Art Director/Co-Creator of Delta Green/Silly Rabbit<br />Pagan Publishing</blockquote>But that's not the earliest mention of <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Darkest Hour</span>, as there are posts as early as April 2000 mentioning the product. I purchased <span style="font-style: italic;">Delta Green </span>sometime after August 1997, when I moved out to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I almost immediately got the idea for running a WWII campaign with it. I had created a website (two actually: one for WWII Delta Green, the other for Delta Green set before the Second World War), but I shuttered it when Dennis Detwiller announced on the DGML that <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Darkest Hour </span>was in production... and that announcement was not in this email above.<br /><br />That means that ODH has been announced for at least 11 years, and maybe even as long as 13 years. That's about the time it took the actual war to be fought <span style="font-weight: bold;">twice over</span>. All I can say is that both Scott Glancy and Shane Ivey have recently expressed strong interest in getting the book done, and not in the long-term but in the immediate future. I have delivered my own (very) rough draft of the OSS/Delta Green chapter, and have been working on similar drafts for the other "organization" chapters. Still, more definitely needs to be done, at least on my end.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-52870246857721695372011-03-19T10:49:00.000-07:002011-03-19T10:54:56.475-07:00Charlie's in the wire!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgOQTyACOYWzaDmucqJFTu1AHxCEX-MxYqefuDdIJhd7bMUYCDEOIPpeVyHiJyIADPyS4UrCp_vzw8ZKDzPQbmURmY7tfjbQedEvrhPUJsBrXMxxnX7yVpX_iVjN5b3-BYjiAAE3yDacC/s1600/CthulhubyArclightCover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgOQTyACOYWzaDmucqJFTu1AHxCEX-MxYqefuDdIJhd7bMUYCDEOIPpeVyHiJyIADPyS4UrCp_vzw8ZKDzPQbmURmY7tfjbQedEvrhPUJsBrXMxxnX7yVpX_iVjN5b3-BYjiAAE3yDacC/s320/CthulhubyArclightCover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585850574004524930" border="0" /></a><br />It's looks like the Vietnam War issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Black Seal</span>, which has been in production for a very long time, <a href="http://www.theblackseal.org/2011/03/19/black-seal-announces-vietnam-special-cthulhu-by-arclight/">is finally nearing publication</a>. Instead of being issue #4 of TBS, it'll be it's own book, two in fact: <span style="font-style: italic;">Cthulhu by Arclight</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Missing in Action</span>. Considering one of those volumes should include the article I wrote on the Tcho-Tcho in Vietnam, I'm quite excited to see it finished and finally see something of mine in print.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-87233636578911558222011-03-02T22:48:00.000-08:002011-03-02T23:49:37.910-08:00To Portrait or Not to Portrait...<span style="font-size:78%;">[I have no idea where to put this, and it's a question I can't get out of my head, so I'm slapping it here.]<br /><br /></span>I've submitted a game for <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">KublaCon</a>, which has put me knee-deep into creating characters. Set during the Battle of Berlin, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu </span>game will involve OSS/Delta Green agents (dressed as SS-Fallschirmjäger<i>) </i>flying a glider into the besieged city to infiltrate the Berlin headquarters of the Karotechia. Right now, the characters are:<br /><blockquote>2 veteran OSS/Delta Green field operatives<br />1 OSS/Delta Green research specialist<br />1 former Karotechia research subject<br />1 US Army glider pilot<br />1 US Army Japanese-American infantryman<br /></blockquote>Of these six characters, two are definitively male but the rest are gender-neutral. Whereas the glider pilot and the infantryman have to be men, any of the OSS/Delta Green personnel could be either male or female.<br /><br />Now this would not be an issue if I simply used tent cards which gave the character's last name, organization, and nationality. In that case, the player could choose what gender they want for their character and could create a physical description of them on their own terms, both for themselves and the other players.<br /><br />However, I've become enamored of using character portraits that are put in clear plastic photo stands instead of tent cards. Here is an example from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu </span>scenario "The Burning Stars" in <span style="font-style: italic;">Terrors from Beyond</span>:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOMVKJHCCPqEeRPIvl0dllotUKMYHprWzldcK0VcQ72xtUhnhfvXCow95LD8ulQcqd5qjE2M5kcpPYuT0seN_ADcbmOMKi_4iTWoFrCYmGPtAmOYkYxKhUgF_n95UWvNkzTYRYbkjdoLR/s1600/Photo+-+Dirk+Kessler.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOMVKJHCCPqEeRPIvl0dllotUKMYHprWzldcK0VcQ72xtUhnhfvXCow95LD8ulQcqd5qjE2M5kcpPYuT0seN_ADcbmOMKi_4iTWoFrCYmGPtAmOYkYxKhUgF_n95UWvNkzTYRYbkjdoLR/s320/Photo+-+Dirk+Kessler.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579748815619897810" border="0" /></a>And here's another example, from a Vietnam War <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu </span>game I ran involving the disastrous Cambodian operation that lead to Delta Green being deactivated in 1970:<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfyguzQFPYqBQDj7yrlAzb16Qyt1CpBDYAoaNYRrFrjT8yi46gBGQUBpblVSOQtYL41F4pMsAVxcT-jkCXOKUTqKUWtXntwc532aUCGu-haIIgDzhh3ZWsSnN6aGdDcM8mHQDZ6tOGn_q/s1600/Andreas-3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 224px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfyguzQFPYqBQDj7yrlAzb16Qyt1CpBDYAoaNYRrFrjT8yi46gBGQUBpblVSOQtYL41F4pMsAVxcT-jkCXOKUTqKUWtXntwc532aUCGu-haIIgDzhh3ZWsSnN6aGdDcM8mHQDZ6tOGn_q/s320/Andreas-3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579750550830804034" border="0" /></a>And here is a character portrait from a <span style="font-style: italic;">Deadlands Reloaded</span> game I ran at <a href="http://terrorrabbit.com/">Dead of Winter</a>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJP1_44mgsrhN3IzEIy6Ok7zPERvY-b0BCKNoYTIEEgfg8d2_0dvsGfWWAm-7uXxjl8cPK0CKFWV9wmSny1RqDxcciILIyIs0Fo2SBdIpin4xsb3I7Z-oqXk3AuycssB6lJtw9cJChsvHu/s1600/Character-Cards.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 219px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJP1_44mgsrhN3IzEIy6Ok7zPERvY-b0BCKNoYTIEEgfg8d2_0dvsGfWWAm-7uXxjl8cPK0CKFWV9wmSny1RqDxcciILIyIs0Fo2SBdIpin4xsb3I7Z-oqXk3AuycssB6lJtw9cJChsvHu/s320/Character-Cards.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579751586642867922" border="0" /></a><br />I find these props much more evocative than simple tent cards, and, in the case of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Deadlands </span>characters, capable of conveying important game information (the portrait shows the characters vice/virtue and the white space is where that character's particular "demon card" from a poker deck is supposed to go).<br /><br />My problem is that when I create a character as gender-neutral, it means I have to create 2 sets of portraits for that character. I could simply fix the gender to one or the other, but then I run into the issue of forcing players into certain roles based on their gender preferences at the table. Even if I create an equal number of male and female characters, I'm still forcing a player that is comfortable with a certain gender to pick from a less than possible pool of characters.<br /><br />There's also the rougher problem that it is just damn hard to find character portraits for the kind of female roles I need. In the case of my KublaCon game, it is relatively easy to find 4 sets of portraits of Waffen-SS soldiers (for the gender-neutral characters' disguises), but it's tough as hell to find even 1 decent portrait of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel#SS_Helferinnen_Corps">SS-Helferin</a>.<br /><br />Compounding the problem is that I don't like to use historical photos for character portraits, preferring instead to use photos from movies and television shows. It's partially because it feels a little like disrespecting the dead (or in the case of using Nazi photos, just plain creepy), but it's mostly because I'm really trying to emulate a <span style="font-weight: bold;">fictional </span>portrayal of the period rather than history <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke"><i>wie es eigentlich gewesen</i></a>. I wasn't a WWII spy and I doubt anyone else at the gaming table was either, so what we're really working off of is the fictional portrayal of the war as seen in movies, books, and tv shows.<br /><br />I have no idea where I was going with this. It's just something I needed to write down, and maybe get other GM's opinions on. I'll probably end up using tent cards.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-9115597544208403942011-02-23T16:56:00.000-08:002011-02-23T17:16:47.399-08:00The To-Do List...... is pretty freaking huge. Here's what's on the docket:<br /><br />1) Start my diet. I started exercising today, but I need to get to eating right.<br /><br />2) Figure out what I'm going to run for KublaCon. Right now, the choices I'm either most interested or are the deepest in terms of pre-production are:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Golden Gate </span>(Call of Cthulhu) - a noir game of corrupt cops set around the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939, involving a ritual murder aboard a Key System train passing over the Bay Bridge near Treasure Island.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Götterdämmerung </span>(Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green) - As Berlin falls to the Soviets, the Karotechia attempts to preserve the Third Reich through the Dreamlands, and an OSS/Delta Green team is sent in to stop them.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Safety Not Guaranteed </span>(Call of Cthulhu) - "WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322, Oakview, CA 93022. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before."</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">To Live and Die in the Magic Kingdom </span>(Don't Rest Your Head, or Call of Cthulhu) - A degenerate group of Disney character impersonators must survive when the Magic Kingdom becomes a very bad place.</li></ul>3) Begin working on <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Darkest Hour </span>again.<br /><ul><li>Rewrite the rough draft of the OSS/Delta Green chapter that I submitted last year.</li><li>Organize my notes so I can create rough drafts for the Karotechia, Black Dragon Society, SMERSH, and PISCES chapters (in that order).</li><li>Read my half-finished copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Hero</span>, a biography of Wild Bill Donovan by Anthony Cave Brown (so I can read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Bill-Donovan-Spymaster-Espionage/dp/1416567445/">the new biography of Donovan</a> that just came out).<br /></li></ul>4) Begin working on something for P Division (the section of the Office of Naval Intelligence that executed the raid on Innsmouth and would turn into Delta Green during the Second World War). I talked about <span style="font-style: italic;">The Black Chamber </span>(a once-proposed book by Chaosium on espionage in the '20s for <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu</span>) with Charlie Krank during his seminar at DunDraCon, and Ken Hite might be working on something like this for <span style="font-style: italic;">Trail of Cthulhu</span>. I'd like to get something substantial together by KublaCon to show both of them (assuming Hite will be at KC this year).<br /><br />5) Edit my version of the Vietnam scenario based on the disastrous Cambodian operation that resulted in the deactivation of Delta Green in 1970. I promised the files on this for a gamer buddy by the next Endgame Minicon, and I'm thinking that I'd like to run it again myself to playtest some new combat optional rules.<br /><br />Writing all that down made it feel much less huge. I should do this more often.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-26217074783285311322011-02-20T22:12:00.000-08:002011-02-22T16:01:19.181-08:00DunDraCon 2011<span style="font-size:78%;">[long time no blog...]</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.dundracon.com/">DDC </a>was a real blast this year. There's still the depressing odor (both metaphorically and literally speaking) of the grognard hanging over it, but the games were all enjoyable if not legendary.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Breakfast on Pluto<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">(Eclipse Phase)</span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Yesterday was February 2011, and you were a college student, trying to score beer money for the three-day weekend. Now it's ten years after the Fall, and you're having breakfast on Pluto...</span><br /></blockquote>This was a hot tranny mess of a game, which was appropriate considering <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_on_pluto">the source of the game's title</a>. The characters were modern-day college students that had their minds digitally copied by proto-sleeving technology, with that data ultimately being collected in the age of <span style="font-style: italic;">Eclipse Phase</span> by a fringe "Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Scientological" monastic order based on the Omega Point theories of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Tipler">Frank Tipler</a>. The college students were resurrected at the order's central archives on Pluto by a member of the Order working for egonappers who needed similar brainwaves to pull off an elaborate egonapping of the college students' future selves, all powerful gerontocrats intending to complete a synergistic hive-mind communication technology called CONSENSUS that would be the next step in transhumanity but ultimately fail, dooming the interlocked humanity to widespread economic, political, and psychological meltdown. The characters faced an Exurgent virus among the animatronic robots (the Order had sold out and was turning the place into a nostalgia theme park, and the egonapper-hired monk had come to believe that the Omega Point would be realized through releasing the virus), then (some) got saved by the egonappers, informed of the plan, jacked a farcasting crew on Nova Vegas (my idea for what Las Vegas becomes on Mars, basically Space Reno), and barely completed their plan to egonap the gerontocrats while a neotenic Lost PC gave his genetic mother (one of the gerontocrats) a hysterectomy by Wasp Knife, a Slyph PC went insane and bashed another gerontocrat into goo then collapsed due to mental trauma and was taken advantage of by a delta-forked imbecile mercenary (that he had previously dosed with Hither) in a closet... good times. Unfortunately, in the course of my prepping the game I forgot to learn the rules or develop a proper plot outline. People <span style="font-weight: bold;">had </span>fun, no doubt about that, but it was more about being goofy than playing the game. This is the third (maybe even fourth) game in a row I've come away dissatisfied with my GM'ing performance, and I don't think it's a coincidence that those games were all either new systems for me or based on pre-written material. I need to get back to my comfort zone, which means I'll probably be running something like a prop-heavy game of Call of Cthulhu set during the Second World War for <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">Kublacon</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Flying Misfits </span><span style="font-style: italic;">(Godlike)</span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">With the formation of the Talent Operations Groups, Section 2 also formed a handful of TOGs specifically made up of flight-capable Talents, hyperskilled pilots and aircrew, and certain specialized Talents whose abilities could support air operations...</span></blockquote>A great game by a solid GM that was well-versed in the game mechanics, and had prepared a beautiful set-up of maps, personnel folders, and plane miniatures. Although it was a pretty slim plot (we flew out of our airfield, blew up their airfield and harbor, and returned home), that set-up was so complete and well-executed, and the other players were all so into and fully role-playing their characters, that it was a really nice game. I played a Goldberg Engineer responsible for keeping his experimental plane aloft but not actually flying it or using any of its weapons. It initially sounded like one of the boring roles in <span style="font-style: italic;">Battlestations</span>, but the ability to create all kinds of on-the-spot gadgets to improve the efficiency of the plane made it interesting.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />(Altered) Resonance </span><span style="font-style: italic;">(Call of Cthulhu)</span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">A cabin in a desolate forest. Snow encrusts your boots. Someone screaming in German. A sullen wind moans outside. You can't remember what your mission is. You can't remember anything. Something's gone terribly wrong...</span></blockquote>I'm totally stealing a bunch of the way this game was run. The music, which consisted of dark ambient beats mixed with weather sounds and the occasionally creepy touch (like Nazi marching music), was extremely effective. The game started in media res, so was jarring from the get-go. And the rest was just well-executed, which I won't say more about to avoid spoiling anyone who plays it at a later con.<br /><br />There was a strange moment where the rules for burst fire against multiple targets came up, which was just your regular rules question that the GM quickly and efficiently adjudicated. What made it strange was that I should be fully versed in that particular subject, not just because I've run CoC many times but also because I've discussed just that very rule previously on forums. Yet I couldn't for the life of me remember it correctly in the heat of the game. Between this and my spotty rules-work on running <span style="font-style: italic;">Eclipse Phase</span>, I thinking I'm getting early Alzheimers limited specifically to remembering game rules.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">On the Eve of the Election </span><span style="font-style: italic;">(Call of Cthulhu)</span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">People's Candidate Eve McClusky, of the Pointe District, has been reported missing by friends and family prior to important mid-term elections for city council. The police have no leads, City Hall is calling for an investigation, and the press smells a cover-up. Is it murder or something else? Investigators must delve in to the mystery facing one of the city's favorite daughters, before time runs out.</span></blockquote>I've often wondered what a truly Lovecraftian CoC game would be like. Rather than (often artificial) notions about characters being unarmed or incompetent, I think it should include rambling descriptions of architecture inconsequential to the plot. While there weren't any gambrel roofs in this game, the GM had set up a whole lot of detail in this investigative saga about a missing politician and the corrupt powers that would rather see her remain missing. All that detail meant that the GM's city felt like a real place, but it also slowed the pace of the game down to a crawl, made worse by the fact that there were eight players in the game and we were encouraged to split up. I (and half of the players) spent a whole two hours doing nothing but eating con pizza while I waited for my character to do something as the other investigated one site. But it was fun, mostly because we just laughed our ass off at each other's absurdities, both in and out of character.<br /><br />I didn't get into any of my choices for an afternoon game, and there wasn't anything on the schedule I wanted to play in the evening. I took the opportunity to attend the Chaosium seminar (and later made what I thought would be minor post on the subject but has now been plastered on the front page of Yog-Sothoth.com), where I kinda sorta broached the subject of my taking up the moribund <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Chamber</span> project.<br /><br />There was a Pendragon game on Monday that I could have driven back for, but I decided I'd rather spend the day relaxing with my wife. Like I said, DDC was solid this year, even though I only played in three games besides the game I ran.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-9170342344622621942010-11-02T00:02:00.000-07:002010-11-02T01:34:00.094-07:00Election DayAlthough of no interest to out-of-staters and possibly of marginal interest to Californians, here's how I'm voting tomorrow:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Governor</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jerry Brown</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lt. Governor: Gavin Newsom</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Secretary of State: Debra Bowen</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">State Controller: John Chiang</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Treasurer: Bill Lockyer</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Attorney General: Kamala Harris</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Insurance Commissioner: Dave Jones</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">U.S. Senator: Barbara Boxer</span><br /><br />All of these people are the Democratic candidates for their position. I did consider each office on individual basis, and there were a number of cases where I would normally think of voting third party: governor (I doubt Brown can even get himself excited at the though of his possible future term), lieutenant governor (I respect Newsom a great deal for his stand on same-sex marriage, but, even with a collection of shitheads in the Board of Supervisors, he's been a failure as mayor), and, most especially, attorney general (it seems it's a tradition among SF district attorneys that they be absolutely worthless). However, there has never been an election year where the choices are more clearly defined. Thanks to the polarization of the irrationalism, bigotry, and sheer ignorance of the Tea Party (otherwise known as the Republican wing of the Republican Party), I simply will not consider a third-party vote when it might it possibly benefit the Republican candidate on any level. It would be like voting for anyone but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_1933">the SPD seventy-seven years ago</a>.<br /><br />As for the propositions:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 19</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Yes</span>. Structural flaws or not, it's essential that the push towards drug legalization gets rolling, and state legalization of marijuana will hopefully be a major step towards that. As of today, the War on Drugs has cost $42,524,538,184 <span style="font-weight: bold;">this year alone</span>. That's over half of what the federal health care reform bill will cost on a yearly basis, and, while the health care bill gives us something tangibly beneficial, the War on Drugs has provided nothing but misery and frustration for all involved.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 20:</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">No. </span>There is a very simple and easy solution to gerrymandering: mobilize and elect politicians that support your views. Gerrymandering isn't what is keeping the Republican Party out of power in California, it's your baffling adherence to extreme positions that don't play in the sane part of the country. Republicans and other parties have done nothing to deserve an equal representation in redistricting, and if Judge Walker's decision on Prop 8 was against "the will of the voter," then establishing unelected committees to redraw districts is just as equally undemocratic.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 21:</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">No. </span>I like parks. I like representational democracy even more. I elect politicians to have balls and pass taxation when they need money (although I recognize that's not so simple in California, see Prop. 25 below). Vehicle license fees are regressive taxation that pays no mind to the income level of the person being taxed. I will vote for officials that will increase funding to state parks. I will not vote to do the job they should be doing themselves.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 22:</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">No. </span>It sucks that Prop. 13 has set up a budget structure by which city revenues can be so easily raided by the state to pay the bills on the gargantuan administration needed to manage what should be city services that can't be carried by the city because they have no money because their revenues can be so easily raided by the state to pay etcetera et-fucking-cetera. Lockboxing revenue is never a good idea, especially during tough economic times when it needs to be flexible to meet our most necessary demands. The problem is Prop 13, and this is just another band-aid on what has been the ever-growing cancer at the heart of the California government.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 23: No.</span> Do you like Texas oil barons spending millions to keep California's from even attempting to do anything about climate change, regardless of what they've already supported at every level of the decision-making process? Do you like being anally-raped by your corporate overlords? If you answered yes, then vote yes on Prop 23. If you are not a complete tool, vote no.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 24: No. </span>Basically this an attempt by the Californian Teacher's Association to work around tax breaks given as consolation prizes by the Democrats in the state legislature to moderate Republicans to get a budget passed. Regardless of whether those tax breaks hurt or help the California economy, this is another example of an attempt to use the proposition process to micromanage the budget and have voters do the jobs we elect legislators to do for us. Hopefully if we can pass Prop 25, we can end this nonsense. Speaking of which...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 25: Yes. HOLY FUCKING <span style="font-size:180%;">YES</span>. </span>This is the most important item on the ballot. California has tried this experiment of a two-thirds majority requirement for voting in a budget for decades now, and it was all fine until Prop 13 added a supermajority to taxation and screwed everything to hell. We have been living by Howard Jarvis rules for 32 years now and California ain't exactly been the Libertarian Utopia that was promised. As long as we keep the supermajority for the budget, Republicans can continue to stymie the process, Democrats can continue to claim it was all the Republicans fault, and the legislature will continue to pass bonds that are so devaluing the state's credit and no one will ever get held accountable. Only Arkansas and Rhode Island require a two-thirds supermajority for passing a state budget, and that might be all fine and dandy for Sister-fuckingville and Tinyland, but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_nominal_GDP">this is the 8th largest economy in the motherfucking world</a>. Do the right thing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 26: No. </span>See Prop 23, just here the attempt is to neuter Prop 25 and keep the carbon emissions flowing. Do you like the taste of corporate ass? If so, vote yes on 26 and get licking, slave.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Prop 27: Yes. </span>See Prop 20. Right or wrong, democracy means you get the government you deserve people. When less than three-fourths of all eligible voters bothered to make a choice in 2008 for the California state senate, you can't tell me that democracy is being subverted by anything other than apathy in this state. And if it turns out to be true that Californians do overwhelmingly vote Democrat in this state, then change or die, Republicans.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-49807512545957735152010-09-14T19:05:00.000-07:002010-09-14T19:48:10.742-07:00PacifiCon 2010<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1F8b-JApf2V1sWVHbfeInidkrZC-9D1Qsw4UqfJehEfqP8GhmK4nJ6x-NoNAsejNcYNkXG0YZMXMFpiURNylGUn5IrKOML6BitIUggMkLdGQ31jqRYF32z21SJR3BIH7qg4BmplDWrnmL/s1600/IMG_0464.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 288px; height: 292px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1F8b-JApf2V1sWVHbfeInidkrZC-9D1Qsw4UqfJehEfqP8GhmK4nJ6x-NoNAsejNcYNkXG0YZMXMFpiURNylGUn5IrKOML6BitIUggMkLdGQ31jqRYF32z21SJR3BIH7qg4BmplDWrnmL/s320/IMG_0464.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516965833750514946" border="0" /></a>This is my face. This is my face on bad gaming conventions. Any questions?<br /><br />That's probably not fair, as <a href="http://conquestsf.avalongamecon.com/">PacifiCon 2010 </a>wasn't <span style="font-weight: bold;">that</span> bad, at least not the half I was able to attend. I ran my game on Friday, played in a couple of games on Saturday, and woke up on Sunday to find half of my face had gone dead. Luckily, it was just my face (and not the rest of my body, which would suggest a stroke) and, following a visit to my local emergency room, I was diagnosed with Bell's Palsy, an almost-certainly reversible but highly-annoying disease that is a lot more common than I realized. As I write this, I still can't make a proper smile, but I am getting better and expect a full recovery by the end of the month.<br /><br />PacifiCon 2010 was pretty much the same as PacifiCon 2009: same hotel, same sign-up procedure, same dwindling number of role-playing gamers. The big difference between last year was the number of games. There were about 47 RPGs at Pacificon this year, whereas there were something like 120 games at <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">KublaCon</a> and almost certainly more than that at <a href="http://www.dundracon.com/">DunDraCon</a>. It also didn't help that the games were poorly scheduled (there were more RPGs scheduled for Friday afternoon before people got off work than there were for Friday evening). Now, with such a small number of gamers and an equally small number of games, PacifiCon is looking more and more pointless, especially as there will be <a href="http://www.bigbadcon.com/">a new weekend gaming convention in October next year</a>.<br /><br />As for what I played:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Last Flight of the Cathay Clipper </span>(Call of Cthulhu: Delta Green)<br />My game, running it for the last time. A good time seemed to be had by all, and the game itself unfolded in some different ways than it had previously. I still think it's always been a good premise in need of a much reworked climax, but I'll never run it again.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">To End All Wars </span>(Savage Worlds)<br />This was a pretty straightforward pulp game where the characters (stock two-fisted heroes) found out about a Nazi plot to gas the Lincoln Memorial from a zeppelin and foiled the plot. The GM didn't have enough characters so I ended up creating one (a Chinese teenage baseball player named Wide Load). It was short but fun, and I got to play more Savage Worlds, which is good because it's the system I'll be running at <a href="http://terrorrabbit.com/Home_Page.php">the Dead of Winter convention</a> this December.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gre'thor Rising </span>(FASA Star Trek)<br />We were a bunch of Klingon officers (I played the Captain of Marines) commanding a fleet of warships to recapture a lost vessel and destroy a nest of mutinous separatists. The system is quite old (percentile-based with the highest skills in the 50's) and the GM was very old-school (must roll to do pretty much anything). Ordinarily, this kind of game would've been my fifth or sixth choice on a schedule, but beggars can't be choosers at PacifiCon. Nevertheless, it was a surprising amount of fun, primarily because the GM had crafted a nifty starship combat system onto the game (and every player got some role to do, either handling some part of ship operations or commanding a lesser vessel in the fleet). Once I had recognized the parameters of the "fun" in the game, I focused on that and ended up having a great time.<br /><br />The next morning, I got into an ICONS game run by a good friend of mine, but very early on I realized that there was something seriously wrong with my face and I would need to see a doctor, so I had to bail out. That was a shame, as that ICONS game and a later Cthulhu Dark Ages game were pretty much the only things that really looked interesting to me on the schedule (or I had not already played at a previous convention).<br /><br />I repeatedly stated at the con that this PacifiCon might be my last. It's just not worth the hotel expense for so few games (and so few gamers). However, my plans for 2011 also included a pilgrimage to GenCon, and with my sister getting married next September, that's looking much less likely. So, I may end up attending PacifiCon 2011 after all, although if I do, I'm thinking I may just ignore what little RPGs are available and concentrate entirely on wargaming, something I've never tried before.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-65050498062879355552010-07-04T08:53:00.000-07:002010-07-04T09:14:07.571-07:00From the Original Draft of the Declaration of Independence<blockquote>"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of <span style="font-style: italic;">infidel </span>powers, is the warfare of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Christian </span>king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce; and this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and to purchase the liberty of which <span style="font-style: italic;">he</span> has deprived them, by murdering the people on which <span style="font-style: italic;">he </span>also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the <span style="font-style: italic;">liberties </span>of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the <span style="font-style: italic;">lives </span>of another."</blockquote>We could have been better then, and over the course of hundreds of years, we <span style="font-weight: bold;">have </span>become better. The lesson of America's past is not in how great our country has been, but in how much greater our country can still become, so long as we continue the revolution to expand the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-10721838121035708582010-06-01T21:50:00.000-07:002010-06-01T23:05:41.412-07:00KublaCon 2010This year's <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">KublaCon</a> was fantastic. I didn't get into a single bad game, and it was surprising how consistently good all the GM's and almost all the players were in the games I played. Usually there's at least one problem player that drags the game down, but there wasn't anything like that at this con. Although there wasn't as great a variety as I'd hoped to see in terms of games (no <span style="font-style: italic;">Eclipse Phase</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Dresden Files</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Doctor Who, </span><span>and</span> the <span style="font-style: italic;">Supernatural </span>games both got cancelled), KublaCon gave the great experience I've come to expect from it, and was so much more satisfying than this year's <a href="http://www.dundracon.com/">DunDraCon</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hitting the Bottom </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu</span>)<br />Most of us played professors that had burned down part of our university to stop a Mythos ritual encoded in a music performance, and were now hiding out in Seattle. I played a physicist with a scoped AR-15 and some proficiency in Martial Arts, which gives a good impression of the kind of game it was. We ended up saving some creature that was being tortured by a punk band managed by Men from Leng in a raid that killed half the party. That part was fun, but we spent a good fourth to a third of the game corralling one character that didn't want leave his mental treatment center and (we believed) we desperately needed to continue the story. That was not fun, at least for me, although, considering that player was voted best of the game, I'm assuming the other players had less of a problem with it. I like player conflict, even just internal conflict within a single character, but not when it goes on forever and turns into the rest of the group watching one player's performance. The GM did try to step in and force the player to get on board the plot, and ultimately it was an interesting story, but it seemed to get rushed near the end because so much of it was spent dealing with that one situation. That did a disservice to what might have been a really great game, but was still a pretty good one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Operation Queckselbradler </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Story Engine</span>)<br />We were all (except for a British spy) the crew of an American B-17 bomber during WWII, who was assigned to bomb Hanover and then drop off the spy on the way back. After some nasty scrapes with ME-262s we ended up being catapulted through time into an alt-England where the Germans won the war. When the game started, it looked like it would only be three players, so I made a pilot character thinking we'd need one; but, then a bunch of folks turned up and I ended up playing a command role I didn't expect to. The system was designed to be very cinematic, so I had to cast my character (Brad Pitt's Aldo Ray from <span style="font-style: italic;">Inglorious Bastards</span>, the only Southern kick-ass type in recent movies I could think of that wasn't Sawyer from <span style="font-style: italic;">Lost</span>) and we rolled a group die roll to determine how the scene played out before we actually role-played it. It was like a lot of narrative games for me - great fun as a one-shot, but nothing I could see playing for even a short campaign. A very good GM though, and a good group of players.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Strange Bedfellows </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Spycraft</span>)<br />The last time I played <span style="font-style: italic;">Spycraft</span> it was run by two of the most incompetent GMs I've ever played with, and my strongest memory was of spending most of an hour trying to get from one side of a balcony to another as we ran through the combat actions of over a dozen PCs. This was <span style="font-style: italic;">so much </span>better, although I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw all the pages of character and equipment stats. We definitely seemed to play by the rules, but the GM had a steady hand on them, and they didn't turn out to be very difficult to learn once we got into the game itself. Having now played <span style="font-style: italic;">Spycraft</span> with a good GM, I can say that the rules work well for a strongly tactical game, but are far too crunchy for me. Still, the game felt very cinematic and pulled off a bunch of over-the-top action scenes one would expect of a Bond movie.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Last Flight of the Cathay Clipper</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu</span>)<br />My game. This was a great bunch of players, and every single one of them really took ahold of their character and played it to their fullest. Besides playing with less people (a cap of 6 players) and speeding up the second half a bit, I didn't do anything particularly differently than before, but the game did seem to run a little more smoothly. My only complaint was myself: I felt really tired and bumbling through the whole game, and don't feel that I brought my A-game. I've decided to try and run my next con game on Friday evening (when I'll be fresh) and hopefully be a little slimmer and more healthy so that I'll have a higher energy level and a clearer mind.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Planasthai</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Cinematic Unisystem</span>)<br />Another really good game, this one based in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span> universe (it was never settled whether it TOS or the "new movie" Trek). The Cinematic Unisystem rules (the same one used in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Angel</span> games) worked flawlessly, and made me wish more GMs were still using that system because it works so well for genre games like this. Again, there was a great bunch of players, especially the one playing the Captain who did a dead-on impression of a starship captain somewhere between Kirk and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapp_Brannigan">Zapp Brannigan</a> that still managed to be original. I played a Vulcan security officer, perhaps a little too strongly, as one of my friends (who also played in the game) was concerned afterward if I was feeling alright because I had been so quiet during the game. The game itself nicely captured the feel of a TOS episode, especially as it dealt more with philosophical issues of violating the Prime Directive than how awesomely we might blast monsters with our phasers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Replacements</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Storyboard</span>)<br />I didn't get into any of my choices for Sunday evening, so I threw caution to the wind and crashed into this game, mostly on the fact that I knew and liked the GM. A high-magic fantasy game about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephit">mephits</a> who serve an elderly wizard too old to be adventuring that are sent on a deadly errand into the Underdark and face <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drow_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29">drow</a> and spider queens is not my usual cup-o-tea, but, even though I was exhausted, it turned out to be a lot of fun. The game had the feel of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki">Miyazaki </a>movie, at least to me, and was light-hearted and full of laughs. The Storyboard system worked fine, but it was (again) the high quality of the players and the creativity of the GM that really made the game for me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Backups </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Mutants & Masterminds</span>)<br />There were not a great deal of choices on Monday morning, and as this one was GM'd by a guy I used to play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun">Shadowrun</a> with, I thought I'd give it a try. It had some really good players who were also a bit loud, which faded out some of the other players at the table. All that became a non-issue once we got into the action, which was fun and well-paced but I get the feeling it was never as threatening as the GM intended it to be. The M&M system was easy to pick up, enough so that I might take a look at if I ever get another hankering to run a superhero game. The real highlight of the game was probably the greatest superhero character I've seen made for such a game: the Metagamer, a guy whose powers were that he knew he was in a role-playing game, and had the (limited) power to rewrite reality but also anything the <span style="font-style: italic;">player</span> said at the table was always considered in-character. The guy who played Meta-Gamer did an exceptional job, and half the fun of the game was everyone just dealing with the nonsense created by the character interacting with the GM. A really good game.<br /><br />I can't believe how good KublaCon ended up being. So many good games run by thoughtful and inspiring GMs trying to create something more than just the average con game, filled with people (I think there might've been a single game that didn't get filled-up by the shuffler) that were not all mouth-breathing, neck-bearded, morbidly obese, t-shirt torturing grognards. Which probably just means that <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> was that guy in the room for everybody else. It still worked for me.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-5226006806062385032010-04-04T09:22:00.000-07:002010-04-04T10:00:14.071-07:00Endgame Mini-Con April 2010I made a serious mistake with this mini-con at Endgame - I waited too long to sign-up for games. In the past, I've signed up as soon as games show up on the schedule, and, while I almost always get into a good game, there are usually one or two unique games that get posted late that I really would've liked to play but can't now that I'm already locked into something else. So with this con, I waited to the last minute. On the one hand, this meant I did get to play two very unique games; but on the other, the morning session filled up so quickly that I couldn't get into a single game, and ended up only playing two instead of three games.<br /><br />My afternoon game was <a href="http://www.agon-rpg.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Agon</span></a>, run by Sean Nittner (of the <a href="http://narrativecontrol.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Narrative Control</span> </a>podcast). <span style="font-style: italic;">Agon</span> is a game of Greek heroes doing mighty deeds and overcoming great odds to gain glory. Most of the game was narrative-based, with mechanics where players rolled off against their various skills (a D4 to D10 die + their D6 "name" die) to succeed in a conflict (to further the plot) and against each other (to be the one that claims credit for the success and thus gain greater glory). Players can help each other by offering their skills to another when not directly involved in the roll, in exchange for an oath that will compel the other player to return the favor at some later point. As oath-taking and failing conflicts quickly degrades skills and depletes the "divine favor" useful to make rolls highly successful, there is a mechanic where the characters engage in a week of revelry, challenges, or rituals to regain some of their original values (although this can be very slow, in particular to regaining skills). This aspect of the game works pretty well, moving the story quickly and favoring aggressive role-playing. Combat gets a little more crunchy, with a positioning mechanic similar in feel to the new <span style="font-style: italic;">Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay</span>, but is still relatively smooth and quick. My only real criticism of the game is that, while there were a time or two where I felt my character was less than effective (this was mitigated by an interlude of revelry), I never felt my character was in danger. A fate mechanic, where the character gets closer to the end of their story, never really came into play, and wounds never got terribly serious. I think this might have been due to the one-shot nature of the game, and those aspects could come up more in a campaign. All in all, I liked the game, the GM was good, and the players were fun, so I'd like to try it again.<br /><br />My evening game was a playtest of an unpublished system run by Paul Tevis (of the <a href="http://havegameswilltravel.net/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Have Games, Will Travel</span></a> podcast) based in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Delta Green </span>setting. I won't talk about the mechanics of the game (as Paul may be thinking of publishing it) except to say that it was a quite effective story game that emphasized the interpersonal relationships of the agents and the internal questions each character was grappling with during their battle against the Mythos. I was little worried when I saw we'd be playing characters from Paul's campaign, as that situation has never worked well for me when I've played it at other con games; but, the players were all top-notch and we so quickly got into our characters that it worked out great. It was a fantastic game and lots of fun.<br /><br />The next Endgame Mini-Con will be the Good Omens Con on July 17, although KublaCon at the end of May is what's next on my agenda.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-69964518952135441922010-02-24T00:02:00.000-08:002010-02-24T01:56:45.425-08:00DunDraCon 2010After this year's <a href="http://www.dundracon.com/">DunDraCon</a>, I've come to the conclusion that it, in terms of good role-playing experiences, DDC is the worst of the three gaming conventions in the Bay Area. DunDraCon still sounds better than what I've heard of non-Bay Area cons, which seems to be fixed to 4-hour game slots in communal rooms rather than the local standard of 6-8 hour slots in individual rooms. And I plan to go next year. I've just realized that, for this and every other year I've attended, the games I've played at DunDraCon tend to be mediocre.<br /><br />Once again, I almost didn't attend the convention. I was sick (so much so that my doctor sent me to the ER the previous week) and still have something (possibly a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_liver">fatty liver</a>) as of yet undiagnosed, but on the second day of the con, I was feeling well enough to go. So I only played in four games, and was never feeling 100% solid throughout the entire con, and that could be considered a factor in why I had such a mediocre experience... except that I've had a lot of mediocre experiences at past DunDraCons.<br /><br />DunDraCon has a reputation as the premier RPG convention in the Bay Area, as it's the oldest, not just in Northern California but on the West Coast as a whole. It has more RPGs than <a href="http://www.kublacon.com/">KublaCon</a>, which is considered more of a general gaming convention as it equally focuses on card, board, and miniature gaming. It also has more RPGs and number of attendees than <a href="http://conquestsf.avalongamecon.com/">PacifiCon</a>, which has been an almost ad-hoc affair over the last few years. Nevertheless, PacifiCon has such fewer players that it's easy to get into your game of choice, and there's more of a feeling of "can do" attitude (or least, lowered expectations) that I almost always have a good time there. KublaCon is just always a great time: the hotel is gorgeous, the atmosphere feels vibrant as everyone is getting their game on with so many choices (even if there are less RPGs), and the slate of RPGs tends to be more varied than the usual <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hero</span>, and endless iterations of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dungeons & Dragons</span> that make up most of DunDraCon's schedule.<br /><br />Whereas KublaCon always feels fresh and new, DunDraCon always feels stale and old. Although the systems may change (often though they don't) gamemasters at DDC tend to run the same kind of games with the same kind of standards for the same kind of players they have, year-in and year-out. Whereas at KublaCon and PacifiCon, I've played in games where the GM put a strong effort to create a compelling story, cool handouts, or run a new kind of system, at DunDraCon, GM's tend to run something just good enough to fill 6-8 hours. DunDraCon also feels choked to death with mouth-breathing, neck-bearded, morbidly obese grognards; and while I myself may fit some or all of those descriptors, I don't wallow in it. The players at DunDraCon are often more likely to want to joke around at the table than to get into their characters and role-play out a story, whereas I often run into players at Kubla or PacifiCon that really try to create an exceptional experience. DunDraCon feels to me like it's become comfortable in its own mediocrity, and it shows in the quality of the games and gamers it attracts.<br /><br />As for this year's games...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tales of the Singing Skull: The Clipper </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthuhu</span>)<br />We played actual passengers onboard the <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,931483,00.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Hawaii Clipper</span></a>, which disappeared in 1938. My character was a Chinese-American restaurateur bringing 3 million dollars to the army of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_kai_shek">Chiang Kai-shek</a>. Since I was the only character expecting trouble, I was the only one armed when three black-clad "ninjas" armed with submachine guns burst into the lounge in mid-flight, took over the plane, and started killing everyone onboard once they found the two American scientists they were looking for. One of those scientists was the only PC not be killed (in the first five minutes of the game!), and then we were all resurrected by the Singing Skull, a skull packed in cargo containing the spirit of an ancient Italian sorcerer compelling us to take back the plane and bring him to Ponape where his "friends" were waiting to take him home. The "friends" ended up being Deep Ones, who we allied with so as to take over a Japanese patrol boat. The Deep Ones sacrificed the Japanese to power the ritual which sent the sorcerer home, while we tried to make for Wake Island with the captured patrol boat. As a Japanese destroyer barreled down on us, the Singing Skull returned to ancient Rome, causing everyone who had been resurrected to die, and the sole surviving PC got picked up by the U.S. Navy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Dirty Half-Dozen </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Millennium's End</span>)<br />The characters were American military convicts during World War II, assigned to blow up the air defenses and steal the experimental plans of a Nazi V-3 rocket facility. Completely ill-equipped and unprepared for the mission, we parachuted into occupied France, killed a bunch of guards at a checkpoint, killed more Germans who came down the road, and then, because the GM felt we were moving too slowly, got fast-forwarded to the secret Nazi base. After a rushed plan to ambush a couple of trucks with noisy explosives, and then infiltrate the base in our own (flaming) truck, most of us successfully got onto the base and started blowing up the anti-aircraft emplacements when the Nazis suddenly fired off six V-3 rockets that spun around and turned into cyborg "Iron Men." The Iron Men then proceeded to kill us all with great ease.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Fight for Gailea </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars Saga</span>)<br />My character was a heavy weapons expert on a three-man Rebel squad assigned to disable the sensor station for the Imperial anti-aircraft defenses, then wreck havoc on the local garrison to keep the enemies' attention away from the other teams (a group of spies capturing the corrupt planetary governor, a team of local revolutionaries inspiring a popular uprising at the palace, and squadron of fighter-bombers). We pretty easily took out the station, and then, with a quad laser on the roof, we knocked out many of the AA guns themselves, as well as the communications array the Imperials were using to jam everyone's communications. This drew the attention of the elite 501st Legion, who we fought off long enough till the starfighter pilots could drop a danger-close bombing run on us and wipe them out. Then we were attacked by two "<a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_trooper">dark troopers</a>" who nearly killed us before we whittled down their shields and cut them down. After posing with the corpses and broadcasting the footage over an open channel (still trying to draw the enemy's attention), we met up with a Jedi (a PC shuttling between the tables) and fought our way into the garrison, where she commandeered a vehicle to infiltrate a Star Destroyer now sitting over the city. With nothing else to do, we blew up the garrison, took control of an <a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/At-at">AT-AT</a>, then blew it up to finally just end the game and wait for the other tables to finish.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Project ACORN </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">All Flesh Must Be Eaten</span>)<br />As the last game of the con, I didn't take the time to write out a synopsis of what happened, which basically boiled down to black ops spies shooting zombies on a cruise ship.<br /><br />So that was my DunDraCon for 2010. Like I said, I'll go next year, but with significantly lowered expectations.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-28594273338264417952010-01-19T23:47:00.000-08:002010-01-20T00:39:36.178-08:00Blood's a Rover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ68gGtoi5kDHNLAqfnxBnvFo2f99M5PEq6rqvp7qW7l9BFZt5C5DRmKVafSRwkMkG7IoOieNDpHGsKzXZo1PT0T3_Z1PP9o_bA52cCrfSv_OGwv0UPbqi5BplVKJicxUsyFt_IoIyop71/s1600-h/bloods-a-rover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 202px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ68gGtoi5kDHNLAqfnxBnvFo2f99M5PEq6rqvp7qW7l9BFZt5C5DRmKVafSRwkMkG7IoOieNDpHGsKzXZo1PT0T3_Z1PP9o_bA52cCrfSv_OGwv0UPbqi5BplVKJicxUsyFt_IoIyop71/s320/bloods-a-rover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428733781326799218" border="0" /></a>Even though <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%27s_a_Rover"><span style="font-style: italic;">Blood's a Rover</span></a>, the conclusion of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ellroy">James Ellroy</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld_USA_Trilogy">Underworld U.S.A.</a> trilogy, is not a bad book, there's no way I can recommend it to anyone that hasn't read the first two books. While it might stand on its own, it doesn't really do anything that <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Tabloid">American Tabloid</a> </span>didn't do better, and the book<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>ends up working best as part of the greater work than a standalone story.<br /><br />Taking place between 1968 to 1972, the novel moves from the cover-up of government and organized crime conspiracies in the assassinations of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy">RFK</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.">MLK</a> (the subject of the previous novel, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Six_Thousand"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Cold Six Thousand</span></a>) to an attempt by the Mafia to set up a Cuban-styled wise-guy wonderland in the Dominican Republic while the FBI attempts to destabilize fringe black-power revolutionaries with undercover agents and heroin trafficking. Tying it all together is a 1964 armored car heist and the ubiquitous presence of the "Red Goddess Joan," a female post-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapes_of_wrath"><span style="font-style: italic;">Grapes</span></a> Tom Joad with a mysterious vendetta against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover">J. Edgar Hoover</a>.<br /><br />The protagonists include: Wayne Tedrow Jr., fresh off of murdering his Mormon racist publisher father in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cold Six Thousand</span> and now serving as a bagman to both the Mob and Howard Hughes; Dwight Holly, a minor character also from the previous novel transformed from a cardboard thuggish FBI caricature there to a conflicted leftist sympathizer here; and Don Crutchfield, a young L.A. wheelman/peeping tom who quickly becomes enmeshed in the various plots that permeate the book. A couple other perspectives are clumsily brought into the narrative in the last third of the book, but it's these three that fuel the story to varying results. Tedrow is basically a shadow of his character from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cold Six Thousand</span>, and his chapters make up more of an epilogue to that book than anything compelling new in this one. It also doesn't help that, in that book, Tedrow's character was most interesting in relation to the other protagonists, and here he's equally dry. Holly is the classic Ellroy "killer with the heart of pyrite," cut from the exact same mold as Kemper Boyd in <span style="font-style: italic;">American Tabloid</span> and Ward Littell in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cold Six Thousand</span>, with similar results. It's a great character, but it's beginning to feel like Ellroy has come back to that well one too many times. Crutchfield is best thing about <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood's a Rover</span>, not the least interesting of which is that <a href="http://www.pi4stars.com/jameselroy.htm">he's an actual guy</a>. Based on Ellroy's history (his murdered mother, his criminal record as a peeping tom), the Crutchfield character feels like the closest thing he's ever written to his own self, and the novel is at its most raw and original when it focuses on him. How Ellroy uses Crutchfield in the last pages perhaps speaks more truly to his own politics than anything the author's actually said, and how Crutchfield himself speaks of his own fate at the very end might have something meaningful to impart on the arc of Ellroy's own fiction from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Quartet">L.A. Quartet</a> to now.<br /><br />Overall, I enjoyed <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood's a Rover</span>, but it does have some problems. A voodoo murder that parallels the investigation track into the armored car heist comes off as flimsy and tacked-on, almost as if Ellroy were making some perfunctory nod to the L.A. Quartet books. The revelation behind Joan's longtime hatred of Hoover is rather pedestrian. The murderous LAPD cop character of Scotty Bennett that becomes a major character halfway into the book feels like Ellroy resurrecting a fatter, dumber version of Dudley Smith. The terse telegraphic style of prose from the previous two books is still here, but where it was intense in the rich story and characters of <span style="font-style: italic;">American Tabloid </span>it only points out the less adequate elements of <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood's a Rover</span>. Ultimately, Pete Bondurant's final scene in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cold Six Thousand</span> was an effective end to the Underworld U.S.A. story, while <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood's a Rover</span> makes little more than a satisfying but unnecessary epilogue.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-54135965114674754462010-01-13T18:33:00.000-08:002010-01-13T18:46:22.870-08:00The White City<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF2ycpcS7jfTr1TPZnAEowc7Cur4cLFak3TD0G3EJhRPURdYY-NCB7XY5N_1JkPqc9_8A4zowd5-imD0BHIjVIuLXXSMR05mOxoWot2jg3CbvCgIMBM3EigxVa5M0tCnxktlhAnxrHUeYT/s1600-h/the-white-city.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF2ycpcS7jfTr1TPZnAEowc7Cur4cLFak3TD0G3EJhRPURdYY-NCB7XY5N_1JkPqc9_8A4zowd5-imD0BHIjVIuLXXSMR05mOxoWot2jg3CbvCgIMBM3EigxVa5M0tCnxktlhAnxrHUeYT/s320/the-white-city.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426420739419233666" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/White-City-Alec-Michod/dp/0312313985/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The White City</span></a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Michod">Alec Michod</a> is pure shit. The author can't write: his characters act like he scripted them with Mad-Libs, the prose is equally turgid and confusing, there is no mystery, and he doesn't do anything interesting with the setting much less explore its themes. I could give a synopsis of the plot and explain, point-by-point, why this hack should never be allowed to publish anything ever again, but this book was so utterly lacking in value that I can't even muster the disgust to go into why. Let this simply be a warning to those that might care: do not read this book.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-72323454919040726602009-12-14T04:22:00.000-08:002009-12-14T05:36:48.407-08:00Dead of Winter 2009I spent this weekend at the first <a href="http://www.terrorrabbit.com/">Dead of Winter Horror Invitational</a>, a very small gaming convention held at the <a href="http://www.brookdaleinnandspa.com/">Brookdale Lodge </a>deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. My friend, <a href="http://behindthescreen-bts.blogspot.com/">Matt Steele</a>, did an incredible job running this little monster, and despite a bunch of problems that could have wrecked any other con, I came away from Dead of Winter with a fantastic experience.<br /><br />Just getting to the Lodge was an experience in and of itself. After getting out late and fighting through traffic to pick up my friend Basil in San Francisco, Google lead us astray and onto several miles of winding, mountain roads in hard, slippery rain, until we finally reached Boulder Creek for a good but late-coming dinner at the <a href="http://bouldercreekbrewery.net/cms/">Boulder Creek Brewery Company</a> (do not eat here unless you have hours to spare waiting for your food and resolving your bill). It was late by the time we got to the hotel, where we found most of the 30-or-so other DoW guests drinking it up in the bar.<br /><br />The Brookdale Lodge, with a history of iniquity during Prohibition as well as a number of deaths (the most recent in September of this year) has a reputation for being haunted. As Basil and I discovered upon entering our room, "haunted" may simply be synonymous with "broken" or "code violations." Our original non-smoking room, for which we signed a document stating we would pay hundreds of dollars if we smoked in it, was filled with the stench of cigarette smoke. Also the lights wouldn't turn on. So we got ourselves checked into a new room, where the heater was covered by heavy-drapes but the window door to the patio wasn't (so morning light woke up whoever slept next to it), the lights worked (until Sunday morning, the bathroom light shorted-out in a rather explosive fizz... and the bathtub was made of steel, so no shower for us), and there wasn't a smoke detector in sight (speaking to others, they didn't have a smoke detector in their rooms as well). And these were the renovated rooms, as the un-renovated rooms had holes in them and windows in missing. All this might sound horrifying, but I actually had a decent time and, besides the shorted-out bathtub-of-doom that prevented showering on Sunday, was no different than any other room I'd stayed in at a con (for much mucho bucks).<br /><br />I woke up around 8:45 on Saturday to receive my 8 o'clock wake-up call from an apologetic and addled front desk clerk, and, without any time for breakfast after showering, I made my way through the hotel (filled with buckets catching leaks and water-sogged carpets, past the electrical wires wrapped around a water faucet, and by the half-completed renovation of part of the hotel that burned down only recently). The hotel's main attraction, a long, three-level hall with a roaring creek flowing down the middle, was lovely in pictures, a bit worn-down and poorly maintained in person, and cold-as-hell in the rainy weather. Beyond that was the Log Room, a meeting room made like a log cabin (you could see daylight through the some of the slats) whose only heat was a large fireplace and the many space heaters Matt had place around the room (which went on-and-off intermittently as the outlets regularly shorted-out). This where we ran our games, and my first one was...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silent Night </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">All Flesh Must Be Eaten</span>)<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It’s beginning to look a lot like TERROR, as a bunch of naughty department store Santas and their not-so-nice little helpers learn that the true meaning of Christmas is FEAR while trapped in a shopping mall full of last-minute shoppers and equally sinister things. You better watch out, you better not cry, and pouting won’t save you on this slay ride straight to HELL.</span></blockquote>This was my game, which can more easily be described as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307987/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Bad Santa </span></a>with zombies. Absolutely the most offensive game I've run, the players got totally into it from the get-go, and everyone seemed to have a good time. AFBME was a nice, rules-light system for it, staying pretty much in the background, though I did feel that the characters were able to take down the main baddie a little too easily just with normal weapons. I liked the game, but I can't see it running it again (except for my regular gaming group next weekend) as it is so specific to the Christmas season.<br /><br />Our catered lunch was surprisingly good, and was going swimmingly until just after the end of the session, the power went out throughout the hotel. This seemed fine as we had a two-hour break for dinner. Unfortunately, we all went to the Boulder Creek Brewery for dinner, so what should've been two hours stretched out into four hours as the place took forever to get us our food and then let us pay them for it. We were two hours late when all of us got back to the Lodge for the evening session, where it was discovered that the power was still out. This meant that we had to do everything - navigate the creaky hotel with the history of accidental deaths, go to the bathroom, and play role-playing games - by the dim, flickering light of candles or flashlights. In the "haunted" Brookdale and playing a bunch of horror-themed games, this was AWESOME.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Night Tide </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Basic Role-Playing</span>)<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Spring, 1721. Welcome aboard the privateer frigate Revenant. Crew: 261 Souls. The storm season has arrived with a fury and a venegance the likes of which no living sailor has ever seen. And while on a treacherous patrol through the dark heart of Kingbreaker Islands, the Revenant finds what she always seems to find: trouble and the unexpected.</span></blockquote>My evening game was run by Jack Young, a great GM who I've had good experiences with in the past, and, despite the conditions (and kind of because of them), this game was no different. The game was set in his homebrewed world of a slightly fantasy version of 18th century piracy, where we played a cursed crew of privateers moving inexorably towards some watery doom of which we only had a vague foreboding. Playing all that in candlelight with a hard rain falling on a rustic cabin was the best atmosphere imaginable, but even after the power returned (by around midnight) it was still a pretty spooky game. BRP is the base system behind <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu</span>, so it fared well for the horror game.<br /><br />With the power back on, I slept easy through the night, woke early enough to get breakfast, and headed down for my last morning game...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">At the Circus </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">World of Darkness: Mortals</span>)<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Dec. 15, 2000 - The small town of Circle Pines, Kansas, was shocked 18 hours ago when the horribly-mutilated body of local girl Ursula Wells, 16, was discovered. The shadowy Paranormal Investigations and Combat Bureau has noticed an unnerving trend, and is sending a team to investigate the cause and stop it before it claims more lives.</span></blockquote>A solid and fun investigative horror game in <span style="font-style: italic;">The X-Files</span> mold, this game played out well. I like nWOD as a system to play if not to run (the mechanic to spend Willpower to increase your chance of success is the only advantage I really find it has over BRP), and the investigative process ran smoothly. The GM, Travis Smiley, created a well-textured story of a German who shows up in the American Midwest after WWII, and creates a circus where accidents regularly happen and death toll strikes on a weekly basis. I liked how all the players, including me, immediately think Nazi occultism when we hear that, but it turned out to be something completely different. I played a hard-ass female ex-LAPD cop, and got to shakedown locals in a rough and abrasive manner. There were probably some things that we should've done differently, but the pacing was good and I had fun throughout.<br /><br />There was an evening game slot, including a Jack-the-Ripper themed <span style="font-style: italic;">Don't Rest Your Head </span>game that I really wanted to play, but I didn't want to drive home in the rain at 1 in the morning nor did I want to pay for another night at the Brookdale Lodge, so me and couple of others headed out in the afternoon. Even though it might sound like a nightmare with all the hauntings/code violations, power outages, and dinner snafus, Dead of Winter turned out to be one of the most fun times I've ever had at a con, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">not </span>in spite of all those mishaps. When the power went out at DunDraCon last year, there was a panic about how people would know what games they were in, much less how we would all play in the darkness; but, at Dead of Winter, there was a kind of glee in the air, as though it was all part of some (mis)adventure. That was the general tone throughout, and with such great players and GMs, and so many friends in general, Dead of Winter had a charm that just couldn't be beat. So long as it doesn't bankrupt him, Matt has to do this next year, and I am much looking forward to it.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-11768935621864496992009-10-09T21:54:00.000-07:002009-10-09T22:16:01.607-07:00Zombieland<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAVm4NEGtga-PziCCzZQl0dhM5OZU0USpj7oaDvBzA8dRn3RhQlVErNXNKFJtIBiCtok13nYQDIe3Slk1Ne54_7WaMUOsvl-l-VHnet4eMx8_7NB4AKTSGA99C6qJyw5lROPFwbSV4uEt/s1600-h/zombieland.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAVm4NEGtga-PziCCzZQl0dhM5OZU0USpj7oaDvBzA8dRn3RhQlVErNXNKFJtIBiCtok13nYQDIe3Slk1Ne54_7WaMUOsvl-l-VHnet4eMx8_7NB4AKTSGA99C6qJyw5lROPFwbSV4uEt/s320/zombieland.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390830576865331122" border="0" /></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombieland">This</a> was a very stupid movie. An awesomely stupid movie. And, between this and being dragged to see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Joe:_The_Rise_of_Cobra"><span style="font-style: italic;">G.I. Joe</span></a>, I am now convinced that stupid movies tend to attract stupid audiences. <span style="font-style: italic;">Zombieland</span> was no different, and as every zombie got killed and dismembered in an ever wider variety of cartoon violence, this audience of Neanderthals cheered it on like grape-gorged Romans screaming for blood in the Coliseum. It was mindless gore-porn, without plot or meaning or certainly anything approaching art.<br /><br />I loved every fucking minute of it.<br /><br />Sure, it can't beat <span style="font-style: italic;">28 Days Later </span>for nihilistic horror, or even <span style="font-style: italic;">Shaun of the Dead </span>for managing to be both funny and a real movie with actual characters and plot. Nebbish Geek hooks up with Redneck Wahoo, they fall in with Hot Chick and Spunky Kid, they drive to Los Angeles, have a zombie celebrity cameo, do something really stupid to move the non-existent plot along, and then kill a lot of zombies. That's it. If you're pissed that I just spoiled the plot for you, when it comes to <span style="font-style: italic;">Zombieland</span>, you're doing it wrong. Forget character, forget plot, this is about laughing at carnage and nothing else. It ain't much - but just as Tallahassee feels about Columbus - it'll do, pig.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-49140451888114964062009-10-06T15:52:00.001-07:002009-10-06T16:09:04.330-07:00Dr. Octopoid, Occult Detective From Beyond Space and Time!<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT7OhXLPb5BD8TnT3R5yaEyy1a1TwlBXdUCmcVfB_NJTJAsHi5Rwp7ykrjbikJLT2Fwm342F3SeU74NQSqcT4PQOlJ8L87zxWV2U8Xs-GKmeyw95i9hJNayN9SwYxhAbY675JdePRPzjUL/s1600-h/doctor-octopus.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 313px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT7OhXLPb5BD8TnT3R5yaEyy1a1TwlBXdUCmcVfB_NJTJAsHi5Rwp7ykrjbikJLT2Fwm342F3SeU74NQSqcT4PQOlJ8L87zxWV2U8Xs-GKmeyw95i9hJNayN9SwYxhAbY675JdePRPzjUL/s320/doctor-octopus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389623828597490178" border="0" /></a>Courtesy of <a href="http://www.flamesrising.com/horror-plot-generator/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Flames Rising</span>'s Horror Plot Generator</a>:<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">A gigantic octopus with psychometry, whose home base is in a Victorian funeral home, wants to bring the Earth closer to the sun. Supported by falcons, the gigantic octopus appears to have one weakness - bat tongues. Interestingly enough, the gigantic octopus is from the not-too-distant future.<br /></blockquote>Sounds silly at first, but consider this rewrite: in the last years of the twenty-first century, as civilization collapses due to an apocalyptic Ice Age, a small band of scientists use time-travel technology to send the consciousness of one of their own back in time to prevent this coming catastrophe. Now trapped in the body of a giant octopus, the futuristic Doctor, armed with hi-tech psychic powers that allow him read the sensations of memory by touch and control the minds of lower life-forms (like his flying army of falcons), plots from his tank in the basement of a Victorian funeral home, where he builds, with a workforce of cadaverous conscripts, giant rockets underneath London that will push the Earth further towards the Sun and save mankind from an icy demise two hundreds IN THE FUTURE!<br /><br />And he also solves crimes and shit with the help of his plucky monkey assistant and a hot corset-wearing suffragette.<br /><br />And he's allergic to bat tongues.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-17251291532308766772009-10-05T20:26:00.000-07:002009-10-05T20:52:21.283-07:00Once I Lived For Hate...<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz4fXA4uZxMDeZeLWxV3Du-nSZo0iWjLM1S44KK0WsK1AJ139BDnLY7kMlNW7OfU3FZlwpjDnwM_yvGEWajBSLfy2izsI1XW40OTzxW1I6F82zKVbjzqhayBypJH2JmpR4yAOL3AHfRlDZ/s1600-h/death-of-schadenfreude.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz4fXA4uZxMDeZeLWxV3Du-nSZo0iWjLM1S44KK0WsK1AJ139BDnLY7kMlNW7OfU3FZlwpjDnwM_yvGEWajBSLfy2izsI1XW40OTzxW1I6F82zKVbjzqhayBypJH2JmpR4yAOL3AHfRlDZ/s320/death-of-schadenfreude.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389327944135951026" border="0" /></a>... but now I live for suck. For years, my entire enjoyment in watching the NFL has been based on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude">schadenfreude</a>. Sure, I've rooted for the Pats and the Steelers on occasion, but what really gets me off is the annihilation of those teams and players I detest. I hated Peyton Manning, and I watched him win a Super Bowl. I hated his brother, Eli, and watch him hoist the Lombardi. I hated Brett Fav-ruh, and am watching him tonight prove true the douchebags of ESPN. I can hate no longer. I must choose a team and stick with it, so I flipped a coin to choose between my two "home" teams.<br /><br /><br /><br />And, starting tonight, I am officially a fan of this guy's product.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibv801nJ7ODhPECLa2738btyRrGmipxjwCP51UKSayeNpZvHDc_ALeHX-RVQlcJrVQIzD1nZYFBJsqElkbeBqoJmyXRL5mYKBFX-1EPB6UpFSNjMqsWrmtw1s8pMUSiVNmxEfl-BjPNftP/s1600-h/cryptkeeper.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibv801nJ7ODhPECLa2738btyRrGmipxjwCP51UKSayeNpZvHDc_ALeHX-RVQlcJrVQIzD1nZYFBJsqElkbeBqoJmyXRL5mYKBFX-1EPB6UpFSNjMqsWrmtw1s8pMUSiVNmxEfl-BjPNftP/s320/cryptkeeper.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389325822432876850" border="0" /></a><br />May God have mercy on my soul.<br /><br />At least no one will accuse me of being a fair-weather fan. The starting quarterback has a passer rating lower than some major leaguer's batting averages. The head coach could soon be up on assault charges for knocking out his own assistant. The owner is so batshit-crazy old, I think his face <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwYzyRfNFn0">has literally begun to melt</a>. But, hey, at least I can now say I am rooting for something. That's a positive thing, right?<br /><br />Right....Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-14690071713543331162009-09-30T10:13:00.000-07:002009-09-30T10:20:57.246-07:00ProcrastinationAfter a day spent cataloging them, I can now say that I own <span style="font-weight: bold;">424</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu </span>scenarios. Taking away PDFs (many of which are very short one-shots) and my own original scenarios (which may be still in-development), I still have <span style="font-weight: bold;">278</span> fully-written scenarios. Were I to run these scenarios back-to-back every week (and they were each completed in a single session, which ain't going to happen as a number of them are campaigns), I would be finished with them in <span style="font-weight: bold;">over 5 years</span>.<br /><br />I really need to get an ongoing <span style="font-style: italic;">Call of Cthulhu </span>group going.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-51355050430473291262009-09-16T21:33:00.000-07:002009-09-16T21:54:25.236-07:00Why I Don't Buy More ComicsTonight I was reading through my latest issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Previews</span>, a catalog I get from my local comic book store to order my weekly dose of books, and came across the most obvious example of why I am buying less and less comics these days. Behold, <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=13384"><span style="font-style: italic;">Batman/Doc Savage Special #1</span></a>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcT4a1PChRwO9WgLcsyqMHX1mi2zaPD7vBycYboBwJYjcT6mVVaozyMV7g0LTiQJXqNisXcIqM5GbSmJCzFhfjCR_TXuCv58ltEhvt0yBycvsksLgpwjJCkvGRqm5m00AGPatFXnqrwNnc/s1600-h/batman-doc-savage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcT4a1PChRwO9WgLcsyqMHX1mi2zaPD7vBycYboBwJYjcT6mVVaozyMV7g0LTiQJXqNisXcIqM5GbSmJCzFhfjCR_TXuCv58ltEhvt0yBycvsksLgpwjJCkvGRqm5m00AGPatFXnqrwNnc/s320/batman-doc-savage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382290228290998098" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Doc Savage returns to DC Comics…and comes face-to-fist with the Batman! Superstar scribe Brian Azzarello (100 BULLETS, JOKER) and the breathtaking art of Phil Noto combine to shine the first light on a shadowy new version of the DC Universe, where the thugs run rampant, corruption runs deep, and even heroes can't be trusted!</span><br /><br />The "shadowy new version of the DC Universe" that this issue inaugurates is what most fascinates me, as this seems to be setting up a new pulp setting for the DC superheroes. I love this stuff, both the author and the artists look solid, and I would be quick to gobble this issue up, except for one niggling little detail...<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On sale November 11 - 56pg, FC, <span style="font-weight: bold;">$4.99</span> US</span><br /><br />$4.99. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents. $4.99 for a "prologue" (so not a self-contained story) that also includes a sketchbook that the publishers think is a plus but is actually just filler when you charge over <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">FIVE DOLLARS </span></span>with tax for fifty measly pages of story!<br /><br />I don't care if it's the greatest comic on the planet, I'm not paying five bucks for an issue of anything sight unseen, especially when I don't even know if it will be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_crisis">total</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Invasion">and</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Crisis">complete</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_civil_war">ass</a>. Maybe I'll wait for the trade, when, in the unlikely event that it doesn't disappoint, I can pick up the complete story on Amazon at a 20-30% discount off the cover price in a format that looks good on my bookshelf.<br /><br />Over the past year, I've dropped more than a few comics that I was enjoying (<span style="font-style: italic;">Booster Gold </span>comes immediately to mind) and never picked up others (the Lovecraft pulp one of the independents put out) because I refuse to pay more than $2.99 for a comic book. I wonder if the publishers really understand what I could do with $5... I can buy a used paperback of most novels, a used copy of many current-generation video games, a DVD of even recently-released movies, or go on Ebay and get a trade paperback of their own comics. I've heard rumors that the Disney buy-out of Marvel might result in a price drop to as low as $1.99 to rebuild the casual market that's been lost over the past two decades. Based on this kind of nonsense, I can only hope it's true or I might end up not buying <span style="font-weight: bold;">any</span> comics outside of trades on Amazon and Ebay.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-77157391635342105702009-09-12T12:04:00.000-07:002009-09-12T12:37:08.310-07:00The Strain<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisiHuZmXuxk4vJ7PXbFRR1mxpRnawgCyPQAnoci2eExQgFQb1wPbUBYmyFkRKXA9McufnHXuW5IqUsgopWD4y1uisoGNdNHtELQef6Kni-bQzbocBW5v0M3RtPb9He-TFQ77hCfBv1_qCs/s1600-h/the_strain.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 211px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisiHuZmXuxk4vJ7PXbFRR1mxpRnawgCyPQAnoci2eExQgFQb1wPbUBYmyFkRKXA9McufnHXuW5IqUsgopWD4y1uisoGNdNHtELQef6Kni-bQzbocBW5v0M3RtPb9He-TFQ77hCfBv1_qCs/s320/the_strain.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380665983971366914" border="0" /></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Strain</span></a>, by filmmaker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro">Guillermo del Toro</a> and novelist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Hogan">Chuck Hogan</a>, is the first book in a trilogy about an outbreak of vampirism in modern-day New York. A jet lands at JFK airport with its entire crew and passengers seemingly dead (a la the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Plot_summary"><span style="font-style: italic;">Demeter</span></a>), with a mysterious coffin-like cabinet aboard. This first sequence is taut, and the <a href="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/harpercollins-ems/Strain_Excerpt.pdf">free preview</a> available on Amazon.com is what lead me to check the book out, but it's misleading. Whereas those first 28 pages are full of foreboding, that quickly fades as the book then goes on for literally hundreds of pages before anything interesting happens. The book is padded with repetitive sequences of uninteresting characters stumbling to their doom (usually at the hands of vampirized family members), and whatever is mildly interesting (the ancient vampire clans, the corporate conspiracy behind the outbreak) is left implied, presumably to be fleshed out in the next two volumes.<br /><br />All that said, the real cardinal sin of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strain</span> is that it's just not scary. The vampires, an uneasy mix of traditional folklore and biological pathogen, are too mindless to work as the "monstrous human" of traditional vampires, while remaining too silly (the Master vampire still runs around in a cape) to work as scientific horror. It also doesn't help that none of the characters are engaging enough to fear for their safety. The protagonist is a recovering alcoholic workaholic who blames his ex-wife and her new boyfriend for the dissolution of his marriage, so you can guess how the authors lazily have this whiny jerk get his satisfaction. The rest of the supporting cast are cardboard cutouts, except for the absurdly over-the-top Van Helsing-esque vampire hunting ex-professor pawn broker, an 80+ year old with a heart condition and crippled hands who still swashbuckles around decapitating vampires with his silver cane-sword while belching his ridiculous catchphrase: "My sword sings of silver!"<br /><br />Yeah, it's <span style="font-weight: bold;">that </span>bad. In the end, the book reads more like the pilot script for a television series, with more effort spent on creating antagonists and situation than resolving conflicts, setting us up for the next episode (book two) but not offering anything like a good read. Mercifully, it was a quick read, although I admit that by the end, I just shuffled through the tedious action scenes. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strain</span> was shit, and del Toro should still to movies.Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7311355202235083120.post-87242731160877151052009-09-09T00:45:00.000-07:002009-09-09T01:35:37.700-07:00April 6, 2055According to <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=april+6%2C+2055">Wolfram Alpha</a>, April 6, 2055 will be a Tuesday. The sun will rise in the San Francisco Bay Area at 6:49am in the morning and set at 7:40pm in the evening. It will be a waxing gibbous moon that night. And according to <a href="http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/public/simulation/life_expectancy_en.html">this website</a>, that's about as far as I can expect to live.<br /><br />45 years, 6 months, 28 days...Gil Trevizohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11141881186992459537noreply@blogger.com0