Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 42

Ass Check

The term "high-tone" - problematic?  Been over a couple of dictionaries and not running into any immediate warning signs, but it feels like it could have some unfortunate connotations (I have some quarter remembered notion of a place where it was used with obvious racist overtones, but I could be thinking of a different phrase).  At the same time, it feels like the right word to use in the place where I used it, so I don't want to just drop it without checking.  The only place I reliably remember seeing it used is on Randall Flagg's t-shirt in The Stand.  Which, really, doesn't mean anything.
If it does have some racist or colorist connotations, rest assured, I will find another way to communicate the thought.

I'll be standing on the corner full of gin when they wheel your dead body in...

I have things that must get done.  Possibly today."Courage" could use another draft and to be sent out again."Hermaion" needs a second draft and possibly to be sent out."Golden Stringed Guitar" needs a first draft.I should do something about "Dread Patty's Blues" (long story - csecooney  or sovay  can put me up to just about anything by themselves and when their powers combine,,,) skogkatt  needs art for her chapbook.I haven't forgotten I owe some other people (like shadesong  and benlehman ) some art as well.Oh crap, I was going to send "King of Pine" somewhere and I cannot, for the life of me remember where...As a reward, I'll work on game crap!  Woo!

But you F*ck one Goat... erm... Gout...

My biggest current problem with Facebook is that I made one joke about gout (For the record, I do not have the gout.) about 3 months ago, and they are still trying to get me to join studies and try treatments.  

Pixel-Stained Technopeasantry! "Study of a Young Man as the Monster Takes its Meal"

Published in 2009 by 

A wet black crescent of a beach, formed of smooth, dark rocks, polished and rounded by the tide; the waves here are quiet, the sky is dark, though the sun brightens a patch of it and makes a silver circle, like a mirror that doesn't show, just shines.  The fishing people who live in this harbor will tell of how hands and feet wash up on this shore, and the little crabs that scuttle in the hollows, shells kelp green with watercolor blooms of blue, search the gaps and hollows between the stones for dead-stranded mussels and flesh turned white and flaky under blue nails.  They do not know where the lost limbs come from, or why they come here.  There is a monster in a deep sea cave at the end of the beach, but he, they agree, is very careful with his meals and he eats all he takes.

When the monster rests, and when the tide is out, you can hear his breathing, syncopated with the sound of the waves.  No one says what he looks like, if they've seen him.  At night, he gives off light like a miniature, flickering sun, and sailors can see his cave for miles.  Some people think that the hands and feet come from ships that wreck out in the shoals, their navigations ruined by the light, but no one has seen a wreck in many years.  No one has seen a ship in many years.

Dannay has not seen her pretty boy in many days.  She went to the house where his parents live, they like her, but the last they saw of him was early Monday morning when he went out in his boat with his nets.  His own boat, his own nets, he was proud.  Dannay was proud of him, too.  Everyone was. 

Dannay asked her friends; they had been closer before she caught her boy's pretty eye, but they were close, closer now than they had been for most of a year, Dannay noticed.  They wrapped her arms in sympathy like kelp strands, but they knew nothing, and their looks and arms around her shoulders made the girl want to panic.  She fought that panic, a girl of the sea needs to know how, the water is a good place to die and panic is the sea's best accomplice in murder.  She knows this and she won.  She took a round mirror from her mother's chest and a lantern from the wall, because the night her pretty boy left was also the night the light of the monster took to prowling in the dunes. 

The sea is a murderer, and the sea is, so they say, possessed with a spirit like that of a woman.  Dannay's pretty boy could have caught the sea's eye.  Dannay's pretty boy could be giving a hand or a foot to the beach. He could have caught the eye of a selkie girl with silver hair that fell to her heels and a silver coat that she could wrap around and swim the waves faster than her pretty boy's little boat could ever go.  They lived on the islands just far enough out that you cannot see them from the shore.  Dannay's boy was better than them, sea and selkie, she was certain; her boy was clever as well as pretty, tough as well as clever.  The sea might take him one day, but in a storm, or in the chill of winter and the selkies never cared for humayn'ts; they grew so old and gray and spotted skin so fast in selkie eyes. 

There were other towns along the coast, one to the north who shared their monster, one to the south that didn't.  Dannay had never been, but she did not need to go to a town to know there were girls in those towns, ones that might be prettier than her, cleverer, fewer freckles, longer hair.  Her friends said so, but because they were jealous; maybe they could not see it, but Dannay did.  It had to be the monster.  The monster or her boy was coming home.  These were the only reasonable choices.  Dannay was willing to prove it. 

The stones are hard going.  Large enough to bruise the feet, small enough to shift under any weight, wet and smooth but heavy.  They gnaw at Dannay's shoes, grind at her feet.  The waves come in, high tide, loud enough on the stones to drown out the sound of the monster's breath.  The crabs that eat the remains dodge the waves and the skinny legged, sage colored birds that eat them.  The cave doesn't look like a cave from this angle; it doesn't look like anything, just anonymous, sooty rock at the far edge of the beach, but everyone knows where the monster lives.  Warriors have come out, some who can sweat swords of esoteric metals out of their bodies.  They do not come back to town, but the monster always does.

They say the monster is afraid of the dark, which is why he carries light with him, everywhere he goes.  They say, if you could get him in darkness, then you might be able to kill him, but no one has.  Most people, even the monster's closest neighbors, don't know how he keeps his light on.  The ones who find out tend not to survive the learning, but you should have already guessed that.

The monster's doorstep is close to the tide line, close enough that it must flood at times when the sea is high.  There is a lip of rock, almost too high for Dannay to boost herself over that lies just inside the opening, and from there, the cave slopes gently down and back a few yards before turning a sharp right to a steep slope into bright, flickering lights.  Dannay hears a gobbling, slurping sound.  A wet, dull tear, a wet slap, a deep low crunch.  Her gorge rises.  She pushes it back down, keeps her teeth locked together.  The monster is taking his meal. 

Dannay would leave, but the waves are lapping up against the lip at the mouth of the cave, now.  She would leave, but nothing is proven.  She sees the faces of her friends in sympathy.  She sees the face of the girl she saw driving the wagon through town a year ago, and how her hair caught the light of the sun and held it like a crown.  She sees the sleek bay seals, watching the cave-mouth from the rocks beyond with their black eyes.  She turns back to the earth and her back to the sea.  She turns the first corner.

The sounds of eating, the tooth noises, the tongue noises, lip noises, they are louder, but not yet loud.  The cave curls downward like heavy smoke, hollowed out with hundreds of alcoves, floor to ceiling, each filled with a lamp or lantern.  Blue-green kerosene quivers in their reservoirs with the movement of the earth and the sounds of the feasting below.  Dannay looks at them, at her own lantern that she will not need, but dares not blow out for fear that what they say about the monster and darkness is true.  She wonders what he does when the cave does flood.  She wonders how he keeps the lamps and lanterns filled, where he gets them, where he gets his wicks and fuel.  The cave slopes down to another sharp turn.  The flames of the lanterns and lamps flicker as she passes, when before they had been still. 

The monster does not see with light; he feels with fire, or tastes, like a snake tongue.  The flames flicker; he must know she is here.  Dannay would leave now, but the water is spilling over the lip, now, and to do so, she would have to swim.  She would leave but she cannot make herself go slowly, and if she runs, her passage might douse one of the flames, and then he would be at her.  She descends, she turns the corner.

The slope becomes steep and long, the ceiling high; there are thousands of lamps, here, cut glass and crystal, brass, lamps of quality and cost, lamps that Dannay has never seen, cannot guess at the price and cannot guess why a person would be moved to pay so much for something that sheds light.  Again, the cave descends and turns sharp to the right, where the light seems to have broken into jagged pieces of color.  Down below, the sounds of the meal are louder still, not quite loud, but enough that Dannay, if there were any words in her throat, would have to talk over the sound.  The flames bend toward her; those ahead lean into her coming, and those behind flicker at her leaving.  Dannay moves slowly, and in her mind she holds the image of lobster pots. 

Dannay would leave now, but there's a thin stream in the middle of the cave, flowing down, and she knows that the waves are starting to push into the cave.  She would leave but the flames in the lamps have turned against her like the barbs in a fish hook.  She knows that pulling against them will tear her.  Dannay begins to cry, and her hand on her own lamp begins to shake, but she descends and turns the corner.

The ground here is very steep and Dannay has to steady herself with her hand on the wall, or lean back to touch the floor behind her to make her way down.  Here, there are lamps like she has never seen.  Shades made with cut stained glass, blue, green and red; lamps painted with the faces of children and angels, lamps with tin shades cut with the shapes of demons and flames that spin as the hot air rises and cast shadows.   The cave descends like a smooth, stone staircase to a landing that again hooks to the right.  The sound of the monster's meal is loud now, too loud for Dannay to hear anything else.  The sound of the eating, and the broken fragments of color and spinning shadows cut into Dannay.  They remind her of a bird's crop.   There is a space at the landing, an empty alcove, just large enough for a lantern, plain and rusted among the wonders that spin and break the light into bad, dark rainbows in the earth. 

Dannay could leave now.  These lights do not feel for her.  The stream of water seems to have stopped or dried.  It is hot down here and the air is dry.  Danny would leave now, but the sight of the empty alcove, for some reason, offends her, and that offense, somehow, that lack of symmetry runs deeper than the fear.  She places the lantern in its space and pulls the round mirror from her pocket. 

The monster takes his meal just around the corner.  The level floor of the cave, the volume of the sounds, the smell of blood, they tell her that.  Dannay leans against the stone of the wall and feels the pulse of the monster through it.  She reaches out, her thumb and her forefinger clutching the mirror. 

In her mind, comes the image of it slipping through her fingers and falling with a crash to the earth.  Seven years' bad luck, and the monster turns and runs her down in his larder.  She forces her hand not to make this happen. 

She cranes the hand out.  She sees nothing but lights.  Candles stacked on candles, all of them burning high and bright like little howls at the ceiling of the cavern.  She reaches out further and sees still more, banks of them like in a church, like a kelp bed, dense and swaying.  She stretches until she can feel her shoulder crack and sees a flash of pale skin.  A young man's chest, a nipple, a ripple of ribs and stomach muscles, and a mess of wet red and shining white below.  She sees it turn, manipulated by a force invisible to her mirror. 

What she sees has no arms, no belly, nothing below, no head.  It tumbles over and over, diminishing in the grip of something she only ever sees as the flash of an angle.  There is nothing there she recognizes for certain.  It could be her pretty boy.  Now, now she prays it's not.  She gives him to the selkies and the girl with the sun in her hair and her friends to share, one on each day of the week.  She gives him to the sea.

Dannay could turn this corner and see for herself.  There might be proof here in the monster's chamber among the candles that do not seem to melt.  She puts the mirror in her pocket.  Her pretty boy has run off with another, or else he will be home.  If the selkies have him, they will tire of him when he is old.  She will be old then, too, her children grown, her husband gone into the pyre never knowing he was her second choice, never suspecting for a single day.  Maybe they would be together then.  She climbs and she turns the deepest corner.

If the girl with the sun in her hair has him, maybe she can keep him, and maybe she cannot.  What she can't keep, Dannay can't and what neither girl can keep, Dannay thinks, is probably not worth keeping.  What neither can keep is probably a rake and a cad.  She turns the corner in the middle, where the sounds of the monster and the sounds of the sea are equal.

If the sea has him, then Dannay will cry for him, and maybe he will taste her tears among the salt water and think of her.  Dannay will live, because the sea may as well be God; if the sea decides, then Dannay will abide by it.  She can't do otherwise.  She turns the last corner. 

Dannay climbs to where she can see the mouth of the cave, to where the alcoves begin.  She hears the barking of the seals, and how they sound like human voices from the echoes of the cave.  Dannay remembers, for the first time in months, that there are boy selkies, just as many as girls and she smiles.

The last lantern sits and gutters in the sea breezes.  Dannay remembers a game she played with her brothers and sisters once when her dad was at sea and her mom was visiting their grandma near the end.  They all sat in the dark house around the table and one candle waiting for the child who was it to blow the candle out and try to catch them in the dark.  Like all the best games, this was not you can play when your parents are around.  Like all the best games, it ended in misdeeds that could not be hidden and sore switchings.

Dannay lifts up the shade on the last lantern and holds her breath.

Submissions Don't Matter

Yup.  got "Courage" back today.

The Internet is Not Interesting this Morning

Meaning I ought to suck it up and go mow mom's lawn.  

Back this afternoon.

It's Dangerous to Go Alone. Give Me the Wormhole Technology!

"Live Arcade" is on its way.

Run Blogging

I probably should be proud of myself, being able to jog 4 miles cold with nothing in 2 months, but 17 minute miles are no better than a kind of fast walk, so fuck that.  I'm pissed.

If I Ran the Zoo. Everway (1996 Role Playing Game)

So been thinking about the old game and what I might do with it to make it a little easier to run/more to my tastes - give it a veneer of crunch to fall back on, you know.

Everway had three mechanics for determining how things turned out:
Law of Karma (Does the character have cool enough abilities to manage this thing?)
Law of Drama (a.k.a. Rule 0: Does success or failure fuck up my story as the GM?)
Law of Fortune (Draw a card when you're stuck, apply the results to what happens.)


I think that time and advancements of RPG technology (and it is a technology) have shown that there's a little missing and a little extra here.  We'll start at the low-hanging fruit and work our way up the tree.

1) The Law of Drama - If there is one thing I have learned from the 90s, it's that Rule 0 is Bad Design Always.  I don't always agree with story gamers, but when I do, it's on things where they are right.  Rule 0 is bad, but it is close to a much better thing that the aforementioned group did come up with "Say Yes or Roll the Dice."  Now this doesn't fully apply to Everway, being a diceless system and all, BUT, there's something still in there worth taking forward.  Say Yes or Law of Karma.  Now, here is something about the SYoRtD rule that has bugged me in the past, but I think I can fix my problem by making something explicit: Say Yes or Law of Karma applies to the players as well as the GM.  This lets the GM make things happen and the Players either say yes or try and stop it.  I take it as implicit in many story games, but I want to make it VERY EXPLICIT for Everway, since, again, no dice.



2) Action Economy - I'm going to get to the Law of Karma in a moment, but this one is a little lower on the tree.  Everway was one of the first games to give you the choice between task-based (D&D), goal-based (Burning Wheel) and scene-based (Polaris, kind of) resolution, but since it was one of the first, it never really knew its name.  I like that you get the choice between the three, but I want them to be, again, explicit, identified, right out there where people can see and know them by their fruits and shit.Action Based is the default - We're going through a swamp ROUSs swarm our boat.  We try to fight them off.  Here, both GM and Players have the chance to let the other dictate what happens or we apply Law of Karma to the action and see where that gets us.  Burning Wheel's Let it Ride rule is in effect.  If you do something, it is done.  If you lose something, it is lost.Task Based is something that Players can ask for if something is very important to them.  This is exactly like Bringing the Pain in The Shadow of Yesterday.  Do I hit this rat?  Do I protect my companion from that rat's attack?  The likelihood of suffering is increased, but the likelihood of losing something for good to a bad turn of events is decreased.Scene Based is something that the Players of GM can call for when resolution is more a case of which way things are going to go from here than determining what stakes are won or lost. Do we get through the swamp with a little or a lot of trouble and how are we feeling when we get to the other side? 

3) The Law of Karma -  The simplest version of the Law of Karma was that resolution favored the actor with the highest element, and that applied to how the GM decided the task/action/scene was going to go.  I can totally sneak up on the ogre, but if I fight him, I will win at the cost of my shield or an injury... Stuff like that.  Built in, though, were other things, your Powers, your Specialties, any strategy, arms, tactics, evidence, whatever, and how you approached it.  Fighting the ogre was always going to be about my Fire and his, but since he's a lot tougher than me and I'm a lot smarter than him, if I played into being strong enough to overwhelm him then things were not going to go as well as if I feinted and drew him out.
Since this is where the resolution is going to get done, this one requires a little more than the others.  I'm not a big fan of GM fiat being the baseline and resolution being the best deal I can persuade out of the GM - well, actually, I am, I'm kind of good at it, and in a diceless system, there's always going to be an element of that (a big element of that), but I think, by making it a little more granular, and, again, explicit, you can get something that's a little easier on player and GM and more equitable for both as well.Start with making it Primary Element (as determined by what's going on - I'm Fighting an Ogre, so Fire) vs Primary Element, then give the difference between the Secondary Element (determined by *how* we do our thing - I want to fight smart and trick the Ogre, so Air, and he wants to stand strong and tough and tire me out, so Earth - of dear, I am smart, but he is tougher than I am smart so he gets the difference between his Earth and my Air).  Now here's the painful part.  Put a 0 behind everything.  200 points instead of 20, Element thresholds at every 10 (but no reason why you can't have a 45 in Air and a 25 in Earth).  You get a Specialization for each and broad ones are worth 5 (Fighting) and narrower ones are worth 10 (Sword Fighting).  I don't like it, but it does free you up for certain things.Powers are worth 10 a piece for Frequent, Versatile, Major and Really Major.  When you use them, they either contribute half their value or all their value to resolution depending (I can firebend the hell out of an ogre, and I can use it to entertain children to get the village elder to like me, but it's much better on making ogres sad than it is village elders happy).  Gear can be worth 1 to 5, depending on what it is, how good it is and how directly it applies (rope and grappling hook are great for climbing walls, okay for fighting ogres, if I have a plan, and not very useful for ingratiating myself to village elders unless they have a wall to climb and no rope and hook of their own).  Plans and clever tactics can also be worth 1 to 5, and this is something that GM fiat gets entirely to itself.At which point, this comes down to total and compare, with the winner getting the spoils, EXCEPT:You can bargain at this point - if the Player is behind, they can offer up the loss of a tool, an injury, let the GM have their way on something to get their way in the resolution.  Likewise, if the GM is behind, they can offer up extra goodies or to give the Player their way on something to take a dive.  Either side can just call it and let the totals fall where they may.4) Law of Fortune -  I like the cards, and I think that Players can, come what may, ask for a pull of the cards and see how that changes things.  The only thing I would do differently with the Fortune Deck is make sure every card had some mechanical tie in it. Some do; Summer and War make Fire super effective, for instance, but some don't and I would want to look through that to make sure everything was balanced underneath while remaining thematic.  I think that a pull from the Fortune Deck should probably swing up to 20 points in Karmic terms.  Or, you can just trust the GM and skip right to the Fortune Deck if you think that your Fire, Air, Firebending and Grappling Hook plan are not going to take that ogre down.

5) My Druthers - I think I might also throw in the some of character generation stuff from Minimus, just for the sake of having everyone tied together by something other than "I walked through a magic door."  Still thinking about that one.

So Good News for [s]People who Like Bad News[/s] Democrats

I have a mid '90s song mocking the presumed Republican nominee.

This is a tradition dating back to the '96 elections with Jewel's rousing rendition of "Who Will Save Your Soul Vote for Dole?" (When he's so damn old.  Na-na-naaaa nana oh la-da-daah.)

Nothing for Bush Jr.  I tried.  I'm sure there was something obvious, but I got hung up on the eponymous band, and figured out nothing.

Last time around it was "McCain in the Membrane,"  supplied by the inimitable and allergic-reaction inducing (for me D:) Cypress Hill.

This time:
And he says 'it's not me, look at my family
in our heads in our heads we are not rich
with our plane and our home and our dog on the car
in my head, in my head, I'm unemployed.'
What's in your hea-ed, in your hea-ay-ay-ed 
Romney, Romney Romney-ee-ee...


Came to me out of the blue yesterday morning.  By evening, the honorable Senator Frothy Mix had dropped out of the running.

This is not actually a political post.  In fact, I really want to stop here, but I feel that I need to explain myself to the friends on this list who fail less hard at actually being on the left than I do: my endorsement of the current administration is tepid at best and, really, I think drives home that those people who talked about Bush Derangement Syndrome were right about ONE PERSON IN THE WORLD AND THAT'S ME.  And to my friends who fail less hard at being Democrats than me: that's not to I don't despise the man who CLOSED MY FUCKING TOY STORE (no, literally, Romney closed Kay Bee, and I think I may have briefly worked for the motherfucker, so that makes me hate him all the more) or that I am going to throw a hissy fit and stay home.  Besides 2012 is now in the bag because I have the fucking Cranberries as a...

Wait.  I've got one for Santorum, too....  (SAN-TO-RUM, SAN-TO-RUM, SAN-TO-RUM, get real uh huh-huh, uh-huh-huh, uh huh-huh, uh-huh-huh) ...also the Cranberries.  Hm.