Jeremy Zimmerman's Blog, page 7

Posting for Future Reference

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

In Jim Butcher’s newest Dresden Files book, Cold Days, there was a section that really spoke to me. It summed up a lot of frustrating conversations I’ve had over the years. I can’t say that this is true for all men and all women, but it rung true for my own experience. So every time I’m in trouble for not “getting” some body language or something that other people find obvious, I’m going to send a link to this post. Hopefully this excerpt counts as “fair use.”

I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they’re communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they’re actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person’s body language.

That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that’s like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we’re having a conversation. Singular. We’re paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn’t even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

I felt somewhat skeptical about the article’s grounding. There were probably a lot of women who didn’t communicate on multiple wavelengths at once. There were probably men who could handle that many just fine. I just wasn’t one of them.

So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it’s tempting to think to yourself, “The man can’t possibly be that stupid!”

But yes. Yes, he can.

Our innate strengths just aren’t the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we’re lost and need to figure out how to get where we’re going. That’s how impaired we are. I’m telling you, we have only the one conversation. Maybe some kind of relationship veteran like Michael Carpenter can do two, but that’s pushing the envelope. Five simultaneous conversations? Five?

Shah. That just isn’t going to happen. At least, not for me.

The Next Big Thing

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been tagged in one of those writer memes. It’s so prevalent that I was tagged by both Nathan Crowder and Angel Leigh McCoy. Here are my answers. At the end are links to the next three authors I’ve tagged. When they post theirs, I’ll edit the post to be more specific to their own blog post.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

For the book I’m planning on coming back to this year, Fish Out of Water

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

There are a lot of mythologies that have been tapped for paranormal romance. I though that there needed to be more exploration of the Lovecraftian mythos when it came to that.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

That hazy realm between paranormal romance and urban fantasy.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

In an ideal universe, I’d want Kate Jackson from the time of Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A female private investigator reconnects with her first love and has to save the planet from vast cosmic forces.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I haven’t decided, though I’ve been leaning towards self publishing just because this is such an unlikely sort of genre.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I haven’t finished the first draft, but I imagine it will be a couple months all told.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

My inspirations for this have been The Southern Vampire Mysteries and, to bend genre a bit, the Kinsey Milhone mysteries.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I have a general desire to combine unlikely elements, and the Lovecraft mythos with romance is the most unlikely I can imagine.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The protagonist is just a normal person caught up in extraordinary circumstances. In other books I’ve read of this type, there is a superhuman either inherent in the character or that they gain over the course of things. My goal for this is to have my protagonist rely on her more mundane strengths in facing the unknown.

I now call upon Sanford Allen, Jamie Lackey, and Emily C. Skaftun to do the same!

AmberCon Northwest 2012: The Recappening!

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

Once again, we ventured south for four days of spa, drinking and roleplaying games. For those unfamiliar with the convention, it is one of a few conventions that had started out dedicated to playing Amber Diceless roleplaying. That’s still the core of it, though there have been more indy games making their way into the weekend.

There’s no dealer room, usually no panels. Just gaming from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon with breaks for sleep. It’s less of a convention and more a sprawling family of people that have been gaming together for years. This year was a peak year of over 130 people. We almost entirely overran the McMenamin’s Edgefield, which has been the home of the convention for all of its 15 years.

There are seven slots of games, here’s how mine went.

Slot 1 (Thursday Night): All That Glitters: No One’s Business but the Kashfans (GM: Me)

This is the third installment of my “Golden Circle intrigue game.” It’s generally a mystery oriented game, with the location shifting over the different kingdoms of Amber’s Golden Circle. The characters are the crime lords, diplomats, spymasters and military leaders that hobnob their way through the area.

I’m always a little unsure about this game. This all started with Pulp Chaos many years ago, as I attempted to imagine what a gritty street level game in the Courts of Chaos would be like. This then expanded into Rebma Confidential at AmberCon US, which tried the same thing with Rebma.

I don’t think this game has found its legs yet. It started off rough the first year, being more of a dungeon crawl than a mystery. This year I felt the plot was a little bit too much like last year’s plot. We had fun, and it was perhaps a sillier event than last year. I think next year I’m going to do something a bit more different.

Slot 2 (Friday Morning): On the Ecology of the Mud Dragon

This was a late starting and very silly sort of game using Ben Lehman’s game of the same name.  Ben Lehman is a great guy who makes a bunch of neat games that I never get to play, so I thought I’d sign up. The entire game is about being the last surviving breed of dragon, which is a pathetic and lame breed of dragon called a mud dragon. Character creation was entirely random, and all of the rolls involved in the game were a matter of overcoming your inherit lameness.

It was ridiculous fun. Very cartoony, with slapstick violence. My only complaint was that it runs very quickly. Each round was less than an hour. But I got to kill God, so I had that going for me. Because, you know, that’s how I roll. Not my greatest moment of scene stealing, but still pretty mighty.

It’s a free download, so feel free to give it a look. Maybe kick Ben some money, because he’s awesome and deserves it.

Slot 3 (Friday Afternoon): Sandman: Entropy’s Garden (GM: Jennifer Edwards)

This was tied for my favorite game of the weekend. For the previous two years that Jen has run this game, this probably was my favorite. But it faced stiff competition with the other game I played Friday.

The general idea for the game is Neil Gaiman’s Sandman mashed up with Nobilis ideas. I play Matthew, which is mostly just a chance to chew scenery. Someone destroyed Canada to get the attention of Destruction. And that just fills me with glee.

Slot 4 (Friday Night): Villians and Batman (GM: Ogre)

This game was a hack of Ben Lehman’s Polaris. The original game is one about tales of tragedy among elf-like entities at the North Pole. There’s no central GM, just a rotating protagonist and roles for interaction based off of relative seating position. The person opposite you plays your antagonist. In this hack, we played members of Batman’s rogues gallery. It was also a tale of tragedy, as our primary goals eroded in the face of our obsession with Batman. As each of us played a villain, the person opposite us was Batman.

It was fucking amazing.

I don’t know how Polaris usually goes, but our stories all fed on one another and created this massive, intertwined epic. We played for four hours and barely got into the story. Much scenery was chewed along the way. At one point another player was narrating so awesomely that all I could do is stare and listen, forgetting that I was supposed to interrupt the flow as his antagonist.

Even the side characters took on a life of their own. Scarecrow and Harley Quinn were not one of the main protagonists, but side plots developed surrounding them. My favorite moment, really, was when the Joker pissed off Harley once and for all and she defected to work for Scarecrow, complete with a Halloween-style witch costume.

It was the sort of Batman story we would have paid money to see or read.

Slot 5 (Saturday Morning): Pulp Chaos 7: Demons with Dirty Faces

This was the latest installment of this ongoing game. It’s basically an attempt to run a street level game set in the Courts of Chaos. In a place of reality warping Shadow-shifters and stitched together fragments of reality, what does poverty look like there? How about crime? As one player said in character one year, “You know Dagger Ways. It’s the kind of place you crawl out of the Pits of Hell and think ‘This is the kind of place I want to raise and possibly eat my young in.’”

It was, as per usual, very good. This year there were some strange twists to things. The first was that I accidentally set the max players at 8 instead of 6, and the game filled up. And it went to strange and weird places. Suffice to say that there were Lords of Chaos on hallucinogens and a multi-year-long man-crush consummated. To quote one character, “That ain’t an ovipositor.”

Slot 6 (Saturday Night): Grindhouse 6 (GMs: Thaddeus and I)

This was the sixth installment of this game. It’s not a campaign. It’s just an ongoing game with a common theme over the years: We run two games in one slot, horribly abusing a different indy game for each half. Thaddeus used the Fear Itself rules for GUMSHOE to run a Scooby Doo style mystery titled “The Strange Case of Old Man Jenkins”. I ran “Real World: Gotham City” using Monsterhearts. As with previous years, we had players describe trailers that air between the two halves of the game. And each game had a “missing reel” so that we could jump the plot to the end and try and turn things upside down.

Overall I feel like Thaddeus really knocked it out of the park and I got a chance to really try out GUMSHOE and see how it’s investigation mechanic worked. On the other hand, I think I should have had more pre-generated characters than just the semi-generated characters Monsterhearts normally uses. It took a while for people to decide how they wanted to adapt the Monsterhearts skins to common villains from Batman. And dumping them all together and letting things happen… didn’t feel like it really gelled.

Slot 7 (Sunday Morning/Afternoon): Even Death May Die: That Ocean is Not Silent

This was the second year that I ran this attempt to do an ADRPG-style reworking of the Scion: Hero system. It was a little wobbly this year. I had tried to smooth out some kinks learned from my first year running the game. I also only had one player return from the year before, so there was a certain level of trying to recreate some of the magic from the year before.

When I originally submitted the game, I had vague ideas of a Lovecraftian theme and retrying something I had tried to do in a previous campaign: Explore the idea of non-human mythologies. The general distinction between Titans and Gods is that Titans are raw forces of existence while Gods have become more connected to humanity. I’d pondered the possibility of a third option: non-human residents of earth who had their own Gods.

In the end it felt a little too high concept for a bunch of players who were relatively new to the Scion cosmology, so I reused the general plot from the previous year: A Titan is trying to force itself more into the mortal realm and the Scions have to stop it! The first year it was the Titan of Light and a bunch of angels. This year it was the Titan of Water and a bunch of deep ones. It ran basically fine, but it’s always disappointing to rehash old plots like this.

“Slot 8”

There are technically only seven slots at the convention, but after the Obies (in which we give each other awards for awesomeness through the con) and soaking in the soaking pool, some gaming broke out in a common area. People were calling it “Slot 8”, sometimes calling it “Slate!” I was convinced to run some Monsterhearts for some people curious about it.

I’ve never run straight Monsterhearts, and really only played it once before. It ended up being much darker and more messed up, with a high body count, right off the bat. After an hour of play, everyone pumpkined out so I ended up watching the wrong-bad conclusion to the other Monsterhearts game that was going on nearby. I can’t really explain it. There’s a certain level of “What happens in Vegas” that just requires this event to stay behind closed doors.

On the other hand, I had a great debriefing with more seasoned Monsterhearts players who game me a lot of pointers for the next time I try to run it.

 

Books!

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

With all the other stuff going on in my life, I’ve been pretty bad about blogging. Part of it has just been lack of time, part has also been not having anything to specifically announce. But today is the launch of my first book length piece, Kensei. It is being bundled with two other books (Wrecker of Engines by Rosemary Jones and Tatterdemalion by Nikki Burns) under the title Cobalt City Rookies. It is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Timid Pirate site.

Also, my work on Mad Scientist Journal has resulted in two quarterly ebooks! Links to the myriad of places this is available can be found here: http://madscientistjournal.org/collections/

The biggest favor I can ask of you is not to buy the books, but to write reviews so that other people will pay attention to these books.  These books will suffer more from obscurity than anything else.

Go Play Northwest 2012: After Action Report

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

After missing last year’s Go Play Northwest due to a case of getting married, the wife and I returned to Go and Play this year.

The Venue

This year GPNW returned to the same place it started: Seattle University. Though not in the same building, it was definitely the same stomping grounds as before. It was, essentially, the bottom floor of one of the dorms. There was a ballroom with tables set up across it, a lobby with some conversation areas and tables, some private study and entertainment nooks, and tables outside. Games filled up these various locations through the weekend, with varying levels of quite available as needed. Those staying overnight for the convention roomed in the dorms upstairs.

Overall I enjoyed the venue space, though other groups were using the dorm rooms and sometimes had to pass back and forth through the lobby while games were going on. These were usually mobs of teenagers in groups of about twenty, which was a little annoying at times. But otherwise I really liked the venue.

In addition to our access to the event, membership provided us with food on Friday night during the social as well as free lunch in the cafeteria. I’m guessing the school also provided the catering for the social. For university cafeteria food it was okay. Not spectacular. But okay.

The Games

The whole convention sort of snuck up on me. I didn’t prepare anything to run and I didn’t get to the forums to sign up in advance for anything. Almost everything I wanted to play that had been posted filled up by the time I saw it. Because I haven’t thought much about indy/story games over the last year or so, I didn’t have anything I felt like I could run. I mean, aside from Amber. But I felt awkward offering that. So I threw myself on the mercy of the Magic Doughnut for most of the slots. For some reason I thought it worked differently in previous years, but I find no mention in previous blog posts that I can compare against. So who knows.

The Magic Doughnut involved forming a circle. Those who were willing to facilitate a game moved to the center and made their pitches. Then people swarmed the facilitators to get into the game they wanted. In general it worked out for me.

Because we were both tired from a long day at work, my wife and I didn’t play in the Friday night slot after dinner. So we fast forward to…

Saturday Slot 1

In the Magic Doughnut I threw myself into a game of Fiasco run by my friend Lee. I first tried Fiasco a couple years prior, and had a lackluster experience. So I didn’t understand why people continued to gush about it for the next couple years. So this was me giving it another shot. For those not familiar with it, Fiasco is a game of bungled heists and other criminal activities. A common point of reference mentioned is Fargo. It’s GM free and uses a bit of dice rolling to help generate hooks between characters, plot twists halfway through (“the Tilt”), and generating how your character ends their story.

We had a total of four players, which was a much smaller group than before. Used one of the playsets to portray down and out would-be criminals in small-town Alaska. It was bizarre and strangely a little believable. We had animal smugglers, disputes over inheritance, a bigamist who had both a wife and a transvestite husband. I died in a blaze of glory at the end. I really had a lot of fun. I wouldn’t say I love the game. But it was definitely a good time.

The main appeal is really the randomization of connections between players so that the story is different each time. I’ve free-formed a game like this with a group, but our character creation involved a lot more of just “what would be a cool character to be in this setting.” And so we totally lacked any significant connection. We went through the basics of a plot structure, so that aspect wasn’t necessary. But the random elements in Fiasco definitely helped also set tone.

Saturday Slot 2

For the afternoon slot, they mixed things up a little and there was The Lottery. We all put badges into a box and had our names drawn out into groups of four. We then figured out what we would play as a group. What we ended up doing was a one-shot of Dungeon World. It bills itself as old-school dungeoneering with new school game design. The game definitely had a feel of that dark fantasy common in Conan, much like In a Wicked Age. I’m not sure how much of that was the GM and how much is built into the game. Even with that caveat, there were a lot of really nice touches. Some mechanics that stood out:

The same die mechanic was used for almost every action in the game. There were also partial successes.
The GM did not make any die rolls except for occasional damage. Players rolled an attack roll when they had a basic attack they wanted to do. They made a defense roll if they were doing something risky. If they only had a partial success, then they opened themselves up for consequences.
All of the attributes, even though they matched the same stats from regular D&D,  felt like they had value.
The spot/perception roll, called “Discern Reality” in this game, gave a list of specific questions players could ask based off of the success of their rolls. These were really big questions to like, “What should I be on the lookout for?” or “What here is not what it appears to be?”
Your ability to aid someone else in an action depended on how much established background you had with that character.
Your alignment provided a specific way to gain more XP for acting in accordance with it, and did not seem to have any vague restrictions for players that the GM was expected to enforce.
We didn’t get to it, but there were also explicitly define mechanical aspects for what you could do during downtime for characters.
You get XP during the game by totally blowing rolls.
Unlike a lot of story games, this game contains mechanics for advancement. I’m a big fan of the ongoing campaign, but many indie games seem designed with the one-shot in mind. So I was very pleased to see this in place.
All of the abilities your character had, plus several levels of advancement, were contined on 2-4 sheets of paper. You just checked off what powers you want.

I liked it so much I jumped on the Kickstarter for it in the last few hours. It will be interesting to see what the final product looks like.

Intermission

We had three hours for dinner, so we drove up to dine at the Elysian Brew Pub. I tried out their poutine and a Dry Soda (blood orange flavor). Sipped from a few beers to try them out. For assorted reasons, we opted not to stay for the third slot that day. The wife had errands to run the next morning, so I didn’t make it back on Sunday until…

Sunday Slot 2

Back in the doughnut. There were a lot of options that sounded sort of interesting. Mostly I just walked forward until I came across a facilitator who didn’t have a mob in front of him. This resulted in me finally getting to play Shock, a game that examines culture in reaction to future shock. We were supposed to play this in half of Grindhouse a few years ago, but incidents conspired to prevent it from happening. (We freeformed it instead.) It was nice to actually put the game through its paces.

The beginning of the game was basically a structured brainstorming session, where we decided on the new science that will impact society (the  ”shock”), issues that arise from this that we think are interesting, and flesh out details about the setting. Each person created a character that interacted with one of the issues, the player to their left played their primary antagonist. The game is GMless, with play revolving each player setting the scene for their character, and their antagonist coming in to ruin the character’s day. The scene then built till there was some conflict and establishing of stakes. The interesting thing is that both the protagonist and antagonist had to define goals they had that were not mutually exclusive. If the protagonist’s goal was “I want to rescue bunnies” the antagonist’s goal couldn’t be “I don’t want him to rescue bunnies.” It had to be something like, “I want to have the warhounds released.” With the die rolls, then, you had d10s that were used to accomplish your goals and d4s to thwart your antagonist’s goal. So the end result could be very complicated and ugly.

Overall fun.

Sunday Slot 3

I couldn’t make it through the weekend without playing Anima Prime. This is one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. My only complaint from poking through the rules is that there isn’t a strong advancement system. From a gaming perspective, I like being able to get new powers and stuff. The game provides options, but not having played an actual campaign of this I don’t know how it would go in the long run.

This time we played a reskinning of the rules to allow us to play in a Star Wars setting. The GM called it “Coruscant Prime.” Set right after the Republic’s victory over the Separatists and the Jedi purge, our characters were an odd mix of Jedi and former Separatists that were looking for some sort of power that would give us an edge against Palpatine.

It was ridiculously fun, of course. We had speeder bikes chasing us through lava tubes, with bikes exploding against stalactites. This would have been impossible to run in the d20 rules for Star Wars, and really damn hard in the d6 rules. But in this setting over-the-top action is the assumed default. There’s no fiddling with relative speeds or risk of falling when jumping. In general if it sounds awesome and it doesn’t seem out of line for the setting, you can do it.

This is everything I wish Exalted was like. A quick google turns up a hack that someone did.

 

Norwescon 2012 After Action Report

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

Over Easter weekend the SeaTac Doubletree enjoyed the presence of the 35th annual Norwescon, the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the area. Due to a number of factors, I was only able to attend one day. Due to continued recovery from my ACUS con crud, I almost didn’t brave the drive down south and the need to be social for several hours. But I made the trek anyway and was glad that I had. I got to see some friends I don’t often see, plus sit in on some excellent panels. So here are some highlights.

The two panels I enjoys the most were, amusingly, ones other friends gave a pass because they didn’t think it would pan out well. The first was a panel on “Writing the Other,” moderated by Caren Gussoff and featuring Diana Copland, J.A. Pitts and Lorelei Shannon. Given the subject matter of Kensei, this was very relevant to my interests. At least one friend had given this a pass because the same panel last year was very unhelpful for writers interested in the topic. But this year it was very well handled, due in no small part to the awesome panelists. I really felt like I came away from this having learned a lot and I was happy I attended.

The other panel that stood out was one of my few non-writing-oriented panels. It was supposed to be a glimpse into the next edition of D&D, which at least one friend was interested in but passed on because he figured it would just devolve into edition wars. The panel was changed last minute to a discussion about the future of gaming. One of the panelists (I think it was Monte Cook?) hadn’t been able to attend, so I’m guessing he was the one with the inside scoop about the new D&D and they couldn’t do it with out him. Instead there was a mostly new roster of panelists up front: Jonathan Tweet, Wolfgang Baur, Erik Mona, Stan!, and Ryan Fucking Macklin from the Internet. (As an aside, Macklin was the only one without a paper sign with his name. Instead he just had his oversized flask that sayz “Ryan Fucking Mackling from the Internet.”) Topics included indie RPGs, games that people were excited about, projects individual panelists were working on. It was a very fun conversation. I had a few items I jotted down to look into later. The first was 13th Age, a project Jonathan Tweet is involved with. Tweet described it as a streamlined d20 with story-driving elements built into the system. I think it might have been Stan! who mentioned working on a project with Harper Collins for their “Warriors” series. It’s basically a simple (and free) RPG for young girls, which I think can only be a good thing. (There’s no direct link to the game, so you have to navigate through the site some to find it.) When some people asked about SF games, both Ashen Stars (GUMSHOE system) and Bulldogs  (FATE system) were mentioned.

Really, more awesome than I have time for. But I really liked what I heard. I get so down about the tabletop RPG market that it’s nice to see that people are doing cool stuff.

I was delighted to see the table my friend Glynis had set up for the web series she’s involved with. It’s called Causality. I’ve heard her talking about it for a while and didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been to several H.P. Lovecraft Film Festivals, and quality can vary significantly on small self-funded project. I’m please to report that it has some very good production quality. I’m interested to see what their first episode looks like.

Several other authors I respect and admire had news of new books this weekend. Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass (sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey), A.M. Dellamonica’s Blue Magic (sequel to Indigo Springs), Stina Leicht’s And Blue Skies from Pain (sequel to Of Blood and Honey), and Matt Youngmark’s Thrusts of Justice (not a sequel, just awesome).

That evening I attended an open book party organized by Bob Boyd. It was a chance for a lot of small local publishers to show of their goods and mingle with writers. Angel Leigh McCoy was on hand to promote her Wily Writer anthologies as well as some Timid Pirate books. Tod McCoy (no relation) represented his company Hydra House publishing with both Danika Dinsmore’s The Ruins of Noe and K.C. Ball’s Snapshots from a Black Hole & Other Oddities. He was also totally rocking a brony shirt. For all the networking opportunities, I mostly hung out with Minerva Zimmerman (no relation) and compared notes about the books we have coming out from Timid Pirate.

After that I spent a bit of time hanging out with some writer friends and learned that there’s a supernatural historical horror game called Colonial Gothic. I’m super delighted that this exists, especially since one of the settings I wanted to develop into an RPG many, many years ago was basically “X-Files in the 1790s.”

On the topic of K.C. Ball, I made it to one of her readings finally. After a few years of failing to make it, I finally got to see her in action as she read a couple pieces from her collection of short stories. They were wonderful stories and clear demonstrations of her mastery of the craft. Following on her heels was an awesome reading by Keffy R.M. Kehrli, which was an excellent way to end the night before starting the drive back home.

All in all, a wonderful (if exhausting) day of fun.

AmberCon 2012 After Action Report

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

Once again the wife and I travelled out to beautiful and scenic Livonia, Michigan, for the 23rd annual AmberCon. For those not familiar, this is a small four-day convention dedicated primarily to playing Amber Diceless and (mostly) similar games. No dealer room, no panels. Just four days of roleplaying in scheduled slots of games. It's held at Embassy Suites Livonia. There have been other Ambercons spawned over the years, and I am most fond of AmberCon Northwest, but this is the convention originally started by Amber Diceless creator Erick Wujcik.

We got up at o-dark-thirty to catch our flight out on Wednesday. The con doesn't start until Thursday, but every year there's an informal potluck dinner hosted by some con regulars. It provides a chance to see old friends and have some casual socializing before the con begins. Wednesday night was also when I started to come down with the bug that is still plaguing me today. This features prominently in my narrative as I go.

On Thursday afternoon we went out and hit Zingerman's, another yearly tradition, to have some yummy food. Usually we also use this time to do some shopping in downtown Ann Arbor, but we had no time for that this year. I was feeling poorly and we had someone to pick up at the airport. But still, Zingerman's was wonderful as always.

The hotel was, as always, the hotel. I'm not particularly fond of the location. It's gotten better over the years, but it's still pretty meh. I'll refrain from whining about the place or belaboring problems experienced this year.

And now, the games.

Slot 1: All the Myths are True: The Weird West IV (GM: Dawn Vogel)

We opened up the con Thursday night with my wife's ongoing game, in which she mashes up Norse mythology with the Deadlands RPG with a diceless system. And it's all set in the mining town of Deadwood. I play a doctor and gambler loosely inspired by Doc Holliday (more specifically, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday) named James Beauregard III. This was my second year playing, and I started the game dead. The second year is when people get their mojo from their Norse patron, and as a chosen of Hel I became a Harrowed. For those not familiar with Deadlands, a Harrowed is someone who comes back from the dead powered by an evil spirit. It turned out to be a remarkably intense roleplaying experience as my character had to second guess all of what he found interesting in life as well as work harder to maintain the trust of the other PCs. This proved extra awkward as the plot revolved evil forces that seemed to be the same ones that granted James his new "life."

Slot 2: The Nano-Victorian Future: Moon Over Beacon Street (GM: Matt Andrews)

I'd played in this game a couple years prior and returned again as Lord Philip Margrave, Count of Cambridge, secretly known as the gentleman thief "Bishop." It's a pretty brilliant setting with a lot of really interesting story hooks to play up the different aspects of the genre. More on it can be found here. This year we had a problem with nanotech vampires. I think my main regret with this game is that, as a Friday morning slot, we tend to be more goofy. I'd really to play a more serious take on this game sometime.

Slot 3: Dragon Cities (GM: Me)

I've played in James Arnoldi's fae noir game Dreaming City for several years, and recently began mulling around the idea of what a non-Eurocentric take on the idea might look like. As I've gotten older, I've become more and more fascinated by what the world looks like when you strip away western expectations. So this was my attempt, taking the Chinese and Japanese myths about Penglai and Horai, mashing them together and advancing the timeline to modern day. The vaguely sketched out history is that this had once been the paradise of Chinese myth. When Japanese deities invaded the island, the peace was broken and it became a cold dark place. More than anything it was a backdrop to have various icons of Asian myth and pop culture, primarily Japanese and Chinese, all dwelling together in one city.

The plot I cooked up involved the players getting caught up in the schemes between the Japanse and Chinese gods of death (Izanami and Lord Yan). The main targets in this conflict were four Japanese school girls who were secretly Izanami's Magical Death Princesses (gothic lolita magical girls). I had no idea how this would go, but I didn't expect the players to be grilling the magical girls, taking away their transformation wands and getting on Izanami's case for employing child soldiers. Once you take away the belief that "this is cool and important," magical girls get very sort of weird and creepy.

I've started a wiki for this game in the hopes of running it in the future.

 

Slot 4: Ill Met in Amber: Epilogue (GM: Kit Kindred)

I think I first attended Ambercon in 2000. I signed up for the first installation of the game as Sir Reginald Bayle, Baronet. (A thinly veiled knockoff of the Scarlet Pimpernel.) It was originally billed as "swashbuckler noir," with everyone playing the non-royals in the city. My attendence over the years, as well as my feelings toward the game, have varied a lot over the years. And twelve years later Kit put the game to bed. Or, at least, the name. He's running another game in this slot next year called "Lean Times in Amber" which is a successor to this game. But this definitely had a feeling of closure.

Over the years, my character in this game suffered over the years from "beautiful internal landscape." He had a lot of secrets and backstory, with every reason not to share it with anyone. I've gotten better over the years, but there's still a lot of his personality that hasn't come out. The game ended with a secret wake for King Eric with a surprise appearance from Oberon. It was interesting, settling into the role of this character as they face a time when everyone will have to give more of themselves in the times to come. I was surprised by how much self loathing the character had for himself, and his anger that people would rest so much hope on him. It was a startling experience in terms of character exploration.

Slot 5: Land of Ten-Thousand Dragons: The Scarlet Throne (GM: Me)

I'm not really sure what to say about this slot.

This was my second year running my diceless Exalted: Dragon-Blooded game. I had a good time last year and wanted to push it for a second year. Because most of the players are not familiar with Exalted at all, it's easier to control information and sculpt them into the Dragon-Blooded mindset.

Saturday morning is the longest slot of the con, and a very intimidating one for me. I usually start flailing as a GM after a few hours and use the lunch break in the middle to figure out how I'm going to spend the rest of the time.

Not only was I living on DayQuil through the whole con, but I started out Saturday morning taking NyQuil instead by mistake. I took DayQuil as soon as I thought I could do it without screwing myself up too much. But still my sense of time felt very slippery, and my awareness of what everone was doing also seemed unclear. I don't think I did great at pacing things and releasing data to the players to fuel choices. In hindsight, I probably made the whole plot a little too complicated. I had too many factions at the edges jockeying for attention. But still, towards the end it looked like the players were locking onto the thinly veiled obvious villain very well. It wouldn't resolve the whole plot, but it was at least a partial victory.

I tossed in a tangential threat without thinking about it and then the whole thing imploded, everyone turned against one another both in and out of character, and then we hit the end of the slot. We could have tried to play through dinner, but some people were just *done* and wanted to go eat. So I kicked off the civil war in the realm and ended it there.

I've never had that happen in a game that wasn't a throne war. And perhaps some people came into this thinking it was a throne war. The plot I was aiming for was, "Someone's trying to trigger a civil war, and we don't want one." instead of "Let's have a civil war." Several years ago I had a game that had a huge schism between new and returning players, but it was nothing compared to this.

After the con I emailed people to get feedback about how I could have handled it differently. The general concensus was that there was little I could have done. At best I could have adjusted the pacing some or reined people in. The diplomatic comments said that it was just a matter of confusion between new players and returning players. The less diplomatic pointed fingers. I've gamed with almost all of these people in the past, they've gamed together before, and they're all fine players. But somehow it all combusted.

For those interested, I have a wiki that includes my clumsy attempt to adapt Exalted: Dragon-Blooded to a simpler diceless format.

Slot 6: The Ashworth Academy: Squashmores (GM: Me)

This was my second year of running this game. I started it as a serial, but it's running more like a campaign. Inspiration for this game included The Prisoner, Morning Glories, and Lost. I messed with time and had crazy hallucinations bombard the characters. I also unveiled the big secrets behind the game, laying the groundwork for the rest of the series. I don't know if I blew anyone's minds, but I was pretty pleased with the results. There was also some great serendipity in terms of how some of the plot came together. There were several moments of, "I don't know why this is happening but it's the right thing to happen" and then it worked out. Very gratifying from a storytelling point of view.

Slot 7: Devils and Details in the Dreaming City (GM: James Arnoldi)

As mentioned earlier, this is James's fae noir setting that he runs every year. I play Diego del Fuego, holistic detective. He's a frankly silly character, a parody of a Seattle urbanite: Vegetarian, pacifist, very sensitive to respecting different cultural beliefs. As part of his holistic detecting, he can also not follow obvious clues. Normally I prepare with some gonzo divination methods to guide him on this strange path outside of the main story arc, but I was off my game this year. (Cf. cold medicine.) Casting runes with a can of alphabet soup was the best I could manage.

The other frustration I had is that it's hard to be involved with epic fight scenes if you're a pacifist. Admitedly, part of the reason for me playing a pacifist was to stand as a contrast to the several players who play badder-than-bad-asses. But really, when the gods are about to have a throw down there isn't much room for pacifism. I bought a couple powers for him, Tibetan Buddhist empowerments that manifested as spell-like effects (protection and healing). But it was hard to find an involvement that felt more significant than just doing support in the background but didn't overshadow others. Because in this scenario, any significant help for one person would result in harm against another. I could put myself between them, but couldn't otherwise influence things. Which ultimately, I guess, is a deeper truth to ponder.

Slot 8: Rebma Confidential: In the Cold of the Tide (GM: Me)

I wrapped up the con with my game of underwater noir and Cthulhu jokes. This year I cribbed ruthlessly from Raymond Chandler's The High Window, with attempts to create counterfeit Chaosian memorabilia and an ancient Triton coin forged from pit gold. I felt less prepared this year and my plot hooks, especially for newer players, felt pretty weak. But people seemed to have a good time and excited for more, so I guess ultimately that's a victory.

Snowflake, Kensei and Mad Scientists

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

Just a few bits of newsly stuff, mostly stuff announced elsewhere but not here.

First off, I have donated a story to Fighting for Gwen. Every other week they will be providing a short story to help raise legal funds for Gwen, who is a high functioning autistic eight-year-old who has been discriminated against by a school district in California. Some really top notch writers are pitching in to help, so I really encourage you to subscribe to help raise money. Or just donate if you're feeling donatey. The story I submitted is "One Giant Leap for Panda-kind." It's the first Snowflake story I ever wrote and its original title was "Snowflake War Journal." The folks at Timid Pirate loved it but didn't have a home for it yet. So I sat on it without a good plan for it. I figure this is a good home for it. I don't know when my story will see the light of day, so you're probably better off signing up for six months.

Second, I got to see some early concept art for Kensei. I don't have any to share yet, but it looks pretty sharp. I hope to have more stuff to show soon.

Third, I've been slowly getting started with my first e-zine, Mad Scientist Journal. I've gotten some excellent submissions and aim to start publishing a story a week starting in April. Very exciting! It's also been interesting to see it n the editor end of things. A startling number of submissions do not follow the submission guidelines. This has not been a clear indicator of whether the story has been publishable. Some have been extraordinarily out of line with the submission guidelines, but I did also have an excellent story from a SFWA author who submitted a story that fit with the zine but did not follow the formatting requests. She's also someone I know personally. I'd give her a hard time, but submissions have been so slim that I'm just happy to get a story that solid.

Potlatch 2012 After Action Report

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

This year I went to my first Potlatch, which is a very small SF convention that has moved up and down the Pacific coastline for twenty-one years. I gather it has some degree of unofficial connection to Clarion West, but I have no evidence of this beyond proceeds from the auction going to support a Clarion West attendee. I'd heard about this for a while and, as I've gotten to know more local writers, have considered attending. So I finally broke down and went this year. It was February 24-26 at the Best Western Executive Inn, which is right next to the Seattle Center. Lacking a coffee shop, it earned my disdain. But it was near some neat little restaurants in that fringe area north of downtown and east of Belltown, including the Five Point Cafe.

At one point before the con, they emailed people to see who wanted to be on panels. As part of my half-assed attempts to build my marketing "platform," I tossed my hat in the ring. I made the note that I was a novice writer, but would like to help out. So this recap will do just a broad overview of the convention and then cover the panels I sat on.

So, to say that this convention is small does not really do it justice. Foolscap and Rustycon are both very small, but they have enough going on for more than one track of panels. This convention had a single track of panels. If you didn't want to attend the panel, you could either visit the half dozen vendors in the dealer room or hang out in the hospitality suite. Since I had no money or room for more books, I mostly avoided the dealer room. The hospitality suite had a pretty awesome spread and even had beer and wine available for those over twenty-one. On Saturday night, the people who run Foolscap hosted the hospitality suite and brought in hand made chocolates, which were entirely awesome. There was apparently a writing workshop on Friday night, which I utterly failed to realize until the last minute.

Saturday night, news was released that Mark Bourne had passed away that day. I did not know him, but he was apparently tied very closely to the regular members of Potlatch. From my perspective, it was a quiet but noticeable ripple through the convention. It was never explicitly said, but I got the impression that some of the people that did not show up for panels missed them because of Mr. Bourne's passing. My well-wishes go out to those who mourn his passing.

Instead of a guest of honor, each year the convention picks a "Book of Honor." Half of the panels are built around that book. In past years they have had books like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and even Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. I'm very sad I missed those books. This year it was A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I'd barely registered that there was a book of honor, had never read it before and didn't think about trying to read it until a friend guilted me into it.

As it was, I barely got a third of the book read before the convention hit. I was pretty luke warm towards it, not having much of a love for Cold War era post nuclear apocalypse fiction. This book was probably cutting edge at the time, but it had fifty years of books and film to compete with in my brain. More than anything I flashed back to Deus Irae by Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick, which I enjoyed more. However, hearing spoilers as they deconstructed the book on one panel left me interested in finishing it. Some strange and amazing stuff apparently takes place over the rest of the book.

Going with the themes of the book, the panels had themes like "Walter Miller reading," "Collapse fiction," "Post-apocalyptic survival skills." In light of this, I'm extra sad I missed Lord of Light in 2010. I mostly focused on writer oriented panels and entered panic mode as soon as I saw who my fellow panelists were.

"Blocking writer's block"

This panel was moderated by Jack Skillingstead, who filled in for the missing moderator, and featered me, Eileen Gunn and Vylar Kaftan. This first panel I was still in a state of high panic and felt like I had little to contribute. It was also hard to follow the stories from Eileen about her old friend Bill Gibson calling her up to tell her the secret of writing a couple of times. (I think one of the secrets was that writing was about getting over the revulsion you have for your own writing.) She also had a great story about a friend who threatened ominous things if she didn't produce 10,000 words a day when she first started writing.

"E-publishing panel"

I'd signed up for this because my writing has appeared primarily in electronic magazines and I'm in the process of starting up my own e-zine. And then I crapped myself a little. Jack William Bell moderated the panel, which featured writer and publisher Tod McCoy, David D. Levine, and VONDA FREAKING MCINTYRE. Yeah, I was a little intimidated by her since she's been publishing fiction since BEFORE I WAS BORN. And she was one of the first authors I'd ever read.

Overall, I really had little to contribute. Most people wanted to talk about ebooks, self-publishing and the latest hornet nests kicked over by Amazon. I tried to insert things when I had relevant things to say, but I had few relevant things to say. And it attracted most of the convention. I think until I start publishing ebooks I need to just avoid this panels lest I look like a bigger dork than I am.

"Short story, novella, or novel?"

This was a harder topic to fill and people were a little faded from the weekend. It was moderated by one of my local writing heroes, Keffy R.M. Kehrli. It also included Jack Skillingstead and Amy Thomson. I think between having been on a couple panels at this point and having a much easier topic than e-publishing left me the most comfortable on this. We were worried we wouldn't fill an hour with this, but the time went by pretty quickly. And I got to mention my short story about a clock radio with existential angst.

Overall I had a good time and made some friends that I had met at some other writing events but hadn't really connected with until now. There had been rumors milling around that there might not be a Potlatch 22 because no one wanted to organize it next year. But I know at least one brave soul who is trying to get things going. I salute him and know that I don't dare because I'm already volunteering for too many things. =/ If it comes together, though, I will try and attend.

Life in Fast Forward

Originally published at Jeremy Zimmerman. You can comment here or there.

It's been a while since I've done a news post instead of an after action report. The last few months have been a little nuts and so I've let some stuff pass without notice. So, in no particular order:

"Snowflake's Chance in Hell," the tale of a sentient panda versus evil tstchotchkes appeared in Cobalt City Dark Carnival.
"A Necessity of the Present," my tale of high fantasy noir was republished in Future Imperfict: Best of Wily Writers, Volume 2.
"Kiss of Death," the incredible story of two necromancers in love came out in Arcane. 
I've handed off the first draft of my book, Kensei, to the folks at Timid Pirate Publishing. This is a young adult piece set in the superhero shared universe created by Nathan Crowder. It's part of the series of YA books that they are producing called "Cobalt City Rookies."
I've opened up to submissions for my experimental e-zine, Mad Scientist  Journal . Here's to hoping I get enough people to get it off the ground.

In less publishing and more gaming related news, it turns out I may be running another kids game. This time it's because a friend has been vocally hoping a few times that I'd run another game so that his fourteen year old daughter can play. I finally figured out where I might have room to do it and have a few other kids that may be interested in playing, so now it's just a matter of logistics.

Of the things I've tossed out, Star Wars seems like the strongest option mostly because it's a better known intellectual property. Sadly, there's not currently any Star Wars game in print. My favorite to date, Star Wars Saga Edition, is out of print. Used copies of the core rules are selling for $60+ on Amazon. I don't need the rules, but it's always helpful if players have copies of them. Granted, the kids in the previous game didn't take the initiative to read game rules until they were much older.

I had also started the first group off on Star Wars. They're all in their early 20s now. I asked them what advice they'd give to a new band of kids playing Star Wars with me. Here's what I've gotten so far:

Don't drive vehicles when you don't have the driving skill.
Don't go back in time and kill the main antagonist when they were a baby. Breaks the universe.
Don't kill everything in sight. It's not GTA.

And, in reference to a completely different game:

Don't let Jeremy make up your backstory for you.

I feel like I've traumatized the last batch of kids. And I'm kind of proud of that.