Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 89
January 11, 2012
Cthulhu and Me
[image error]Benjamin Hayward asks for my cthredentials:
You've been posting often about H. P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu on Twitter, Facebook, and here. Would you mind doing a blog entry talking about your first exposure to, favourite part of, interest in, and history with H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos?
I am among the first wave of readers who caught the Lovecraft bug from gaming. Call of Cthulhu came out when I was in high school; I bought it right away and was soon off to the Orillia public library to track down their copy of the Arkham House anthology The Dunwich Horror and Others, with its Lee Brown Coye cover. When Sandy Petersen's game helped spur a resurgence of interest in Lovecraft, I grabbed the paperbacks as they showed up in the small Ontario city of my birth.
The story that I find most brilliant, innovative and influential as a piece of writing is "Call of Cthulhu", with its documentary realism and disorienting, stories-within-stories structure.
The one that scared me the most was "Whisperer in Darkness", perhaps because I mentally set it in an area I knew well from my childhood—not New England, but the stark landscape of Ontario's Muskoka district. I also retain vivid sense memory of my first reading of the subtle and brilliant "The Color Out of Space."
Lovecraft interests me on a couple of levels. The kid in me loves the outlandish details of its creatures. The geek responds to the quasi-continuity he builds as he adds to his corpus of stories, so that knowledge of one informs one's responses to others. The group collaborative aspect with his peers is also appealing—and the reason the mythos sits in ambiguously in the public domain for anyone to play with. I appreciate him as an exponent of intellectual horror: it is as much about our fundamental aloneness as the fear of being torn apart by a star vampire or hound of Tindalos. In his mature work he is also a top-notch stylist, marrying prose to content in an uninhibited way we could use more of today.
For all of these reasons, I am glad to get to dip my toes in the icy Lovecraftian pool, both with works for Trail of Cthulhu, such as The Armitage Files, and as editor of the upcoming Shotguns v. Cthulhu fiction anthology for Stone Skin Press. There are also some other short fiction projects in the offing, which I'll announce when the stars are right.
January 10, 2012
Minotaur Planet
According to a conspiracy theory both odd and oddly un-sinister, a youthful Barack Obama, as part of a secret CIA program, used to teleport to Mars. Why, the official denials only serve to confirm it!
To rip this from the headlines into an Ashen Stars scenario...
Teleportation technology doesn't appear in the game setting. It's a notorious plot-hoser. And in a roleplaying game you never have to leave out an establishing shot of a shuttle for pacing or budgetary reasons.
With this in mind...
A wealthy woman hires the lasers to locate her missing daughter, Rika True. Like many missing persons contracts, the arrangement calls for them to bring to justice anyone responsible for any harm that may have come to her. Rika, they learn, was last seen applying for employment with the utopian Eden Corporation. They find the uncharted company world that serves as its headquarters: a lush paradise that provides Eden settlers with a life of ease and luxury. They discover that Rika won the coveted right to participate in an Eden teleport experiment. The experiment turns out to be a scam to feed willing volunteers to a bi-dimensional predatory entity. The twist: it's the entity that makes the planet inhabitable. If they destroy it or drive it away, the atmosphere immediately becomes toxic. Should the lasers reveal this to the populace, the residents decide that they'd rather continue the modest sacrifices than abandon their paradise. Do the lasers bring the system crashing down, as their contract demands, risking the lives of thousands?
January 9, 2012
Bring Back the Old-Timey Political Nickname
I've started in on The Game of Thrones of political biography, Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The first volume, The Path to Power, begins by establishing the Texas political scene prior to LBJ's birth and during his childhood as the son of a Populist state representative.
As a savorer of political lore, I have to say that the modern era has lost one great element from the early part of the last century—the old-timey nickname. Honest Buck. Old Oxcart. Cactus Jack. Heck, I would settle for Pinky.
The trick is that the nicknames have to be favorable, bestowed by admirers. In the modern media environment unironic affection for political leaders is harder to find. Reagan had "the Gipper", but he got it on loan from Hollywood. Margaret Thatcher's "the Iron Lady" cut both ways.
I'm too much the satirist to come up with straight-faced, old-timey-ish nicknames for current figures. Hillary "Pant Suit" Clinton? Michelle "Crazy Eye" Bachmann? Rick "Santorum" Santorum?
The best I can do is Barack "Long Game" Obama. Fans of the Steve's Dad candidate might go for Ron "Gold Standard" Paul.
What moniker would you bestow on the politician you admire?
January 6, 2012
January 5, 2012
Avoiding Foot-Mouth Proximity Incidents (Creator Interaction Edition)
Now that you've had time to check out the podcast episode mentioned in yesterday's post, it's time for me to lay a little Rashomon on Joe's account of an awkward Gen Con moment . To recap, Joe remembers me looking at him like he was a "total douchebag" because he hadn't yet wrapped his head around Hamlet's Hit Points. Co-host Nicky avers that this is because Joe was indeed being a total douchebag.
I wouldn't say it quite like that.
Joe led off with a faux pas, to be sure, and I, wag that I am, let him twist in the wind over it. To paraphrasing from memory, he started by saying that he didn't like HHP as well as Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering. I laughed at this, in an oh really kind of way, and then proceeded to tease him about this for the remainder of our chat. And am teasing him a bit more now, because that's how I roll. Another creator in similar circumstances might conceal his dudgeon, or get genuinely shirty with you.
Which brings me to a general service announcement. Here are a few handy tips on how to maintain mutually comfortable foot-mouth separation when talking to creators you meet at conventions, signings, and similar events.
The apparent intimacy of the Internet, and the opportunity it provides to express your judgments on art and entertainment products, may lead you astray when it comes time to engage in person people whose work you admire. You may think that creators want to hear critiques of their work expressed with the same frankness you'd use when talking with friends or posting to a forum.
They do not.
Even the necessary process of getting notes from collaborators and trusted readers can be emotionally fraught. Unsolicited notes during a casual social encounter? Etiquette breach! Etiquette breach!
That doesn't mean you ought to fawn, or claim that you like stuff that you don't. Remember though that the unwritten rules of casual interaction remain in force.
When in doubt, ask yourself if you'd expect a good reaction to a comment were the subject swapped to something more mundane.
"I don't like that shirt as well as the one you wore last week."
Or, given that creative work is a labor of love riven with self-doubt and setback, test your remark by recasting it in a more deeply personal vein:
"I don't like that new baby of yours as well as your first kid."
If you have an issue with the work, you might succeed in smoothly raising it, if you are indeed a master of diplomacy. Phrasing it in the form of a question might help. "I didn't believe it when Josie went back into the house," comes off as a note, and is socially assaultive. "Why did Josie go back into the house?" expresses the same thought but doesn't play as a critique.
Roleplayers are luckier than fans of passively consumed work; they can describe practical problems they had in play, or anticipate having in play. "How do I make combat crunchier?" obeys the etiquette of casual interaction. "I still don't like your combat system," violates it.
Some become unnecessarily anxious when meeting people whose work they like. No one in this field is a Clooney-level celebrity who needs social insulation from fans. I sure want people to feel comfortable approaching me for a chat. I strive to make myself accessible, and so do the vast majority of my colleagues.
On occasion this anxiety leads to a related faux pas, in which an embarrassed speaker tries to defuse the situation by backhanding the compliment, inadvertently converting it into a jab. Never feel you have to apologize, or undercut yourself, when saying something nice.
If a creator makes you feel bad for being excited about his work, they're the douchebag.
Not that Joe, in our inciting example, was being a douchebag, total or otherwise. He just had an unfortunate foot-mouth proximity incident (FMPI), which happens to all of us now and then.
And now we are all well-equipped to avoid similar FMPIs of our own.
January 4, 2012
2 GMs, 1 Mic On Hamlet's Hit Points
In episode 20 of their 2 GMs, I Mic podcast, the irrepressible Joe Wolz and Nicky Helmkamp tackle the issue of pacing in roleplaying games. In the process, they give Hamlet's Hit Points a thorough and gratifying examination. Those of you already familiar with the book may be most interested in the examples they give of applying its lessons to actual play.
Joe tells a funny story on himself in which, when talking to me at Gen Con, his comments on the book led me to look at him like he was a "total douchebag." While it is true that he led with a wee faux pas, I would, and will, characterize the moment somewhat differently. But before I turn the anecdote into a remake of Rashomon set at the Pelgrane booth, I'll give you time to listen to the Wolz-Helmkamp version.
January 3, 2012
Shotguns v. Cthulhu Cover Preview
Here's a peek at the cover for Shotguns v. Cthulhu, the upcoming anthology of action-oriented Lovecraftian tales from Stone Skin Press. Jason Morningstar brilliantly captured the bold, graphic look we're pursuing for the line with his double-barreled, multi-tentacled retake of the skull and crossbones motif. Sans text, the design would look great on a T-shirt. Alas, that's a category of merchandise publishers have difficulty shifting, so you'll just have to keep an eye out for the book when it arrives later in 2012.
January 2, 2012
December 31, 2011
A New Year's Tale
Scene: a new preserves and charcuterie shop in Kensington Market, Toronto. In keeping with the place's friendly vibe, the counter guy tries to engage a customer in conversation. The customer, in his mid 50s, dressed in a natty overcoat, sits on a bench eating the sandwich he's just been served.
COUNTER GUY: Do you have any plans for New Year's?
CUSTOMER: [has a mouthful of sandwich, unable to talk.]
COUNTER GUY: Any special plans?
CUSTOMER: [indicates that he's eating and can't reply]
COUNTER GUY: Anything special you're doing for New Year's?
CUSTOMER: [rising] My wife wants to divorce me, because of my girlfriend.
December 23, 2011
Sleigh Bell Sign-Off
The presents are wrapped, the Christmas pudding cooked, and it's time once again for my holiday sign-off. As visions of sugar plums dance in my head, I'd like to thank everyone for hanging out here, or dropping in from your redoubts at Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. I've been grateful for your attention as I launched Ashen Stars and The Worldwound Gambit. Hamlet's Hit Points, released in 2010, continues to find new readers, which pleases me to no end, proving that a labor of love can make good in our long tail world. The big news here on the blog was my pre-Gen Con flight from Livejournal to Blogger. The latter's better analytics and the immediate success of Google+, have helped me to keep the joint alive as eyeballs shift from blogs to social networks. Highlights of the year in blogging include the wrap-up of the Korad world-building experiment, a Kovalic-led encounter with a classic Wisconsin smelt fry and its requisite brandy old-fashioneds, a two-pronged assault on creative paralysis, and a Cthulhoid victory in the annual Gen Con buzzword competition, and the traditional TIFF Capsule Reviews. Together we hated on haters, reconsidered secrecy, and feared the rising of the dread mascots.
I'll be back in the new year to keep you updated on Hillfolk and The Gaean Reach, to share the scoop on new fiction projects, and to kick off the impending "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff" podcast. With a US election cycle fully swinging, I may dare to disturb the dusty padlock on the Politics Hut. How To Design RPGs the Robin Laws Way will resume, as will the usual talk about movies, narrative, writing and the gun-toting despond of deadpan avians.
Until then, enjoy or survive, as the case may be, your holiday time with friends and family. Imbibe judiciously and beware of road hazards, whether they consist of black ice, drunk guys, or Heat Misers.
Merry Christmas, Internet!
