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(no subject) Convention Report for the Eastern Avenue (Shadowfox-memorial) Game Festival
October 10th, 2010
Current Mood:sad sad
First day of convention. I wore a grey pinstriped 3-piece suit (that I bought, once upon a time, in a thrift store, and never wear.) I was late getting there (partly because I had extra layers to put on but mostly because I missed an exit and wound up having to drive to the next town and turn around.) Didn't matter. I had no players. but that didn't matter- I played Marvel Heroscape with friends and that was fun.
Ran Mutants & Masterminds for three people, although I had to ask two of them if they wanted to so the first could have something to play. borrowed a sourcebook from one of them to use npc stats from. Still, it went well. beginning, middle, and end and everything.
CF and CW bought me dinner at the diner down the street from the Veterans Memorial Hall. nice of them. good meal. No players for Fudge Rifts. I played in Thymewind's Gamma World game (the new, just-out version of the rules, which aren't bad, actually. ditto Heroscape.) and that was fun.
Of the various people that I invited, recruited, or told about convention, none of them showed today, and only one is coming tomorrow. Even the coworker who was scheduled to run a game flaked out with one day's notice, telling me yesterday that he couldn't think of a storyline for a game. (Among seasoned GMs, this is known as a 'lame-ass excuse'. Thymewind and I had a story idea he could've used before sundown that day. Maybe he wouldn't care for "The Antichrist tricks/coerces virtuous characters like Francis Mulcahey into bringing him the Holy Grail so he can drink out of it to attain messianic powers." but the point is, less than 24 hours. )
Things were wrapping up for the day from 9:30 on, and the organizers were counting the till to see if they were going to make enough money to cover the cost of renting the space (unlikely). The Tall Man handed them two twenties as a donation to help out. The Tall Man had shown up in an actual suit, not as a costume. Shortly thereafter, MA jokingly asked if I was working for the Tall Man, since we were dressed the same. This apparently bruised Tall's ego, because he proceeded to make a bunch of comments about how shabby my clothing was, how my shoes were falling apart instead of shiny and polished (his were gleaming, as I only noticed once the topic came up), and how my suit was too small, and 'did I mug a midget on the way in here' and so on. MA and the other macho-male geek toy-using-soldiers teased along playfully. Then, immediately thereafter, it was time for everyone to go home. ...and I'm left, feeling lousy and unlovely even in a suit, feeling like even in a place theoretically full of only freaks and mostly old friends... even among freaks, I'm less cool than the other freaks. like I had a delicious, expensive meal, but desert was manure; like junior high never really ends; and wondering why I worried for months and sweated getting all this ready when all that really matters is the attitude of the people involved.
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1. My Twitter was blank for, like, five days, and today it took me hours to catch up, partly because of the sheer volume of tweets and links to articles on sites that had other stuff, and pics, and so on; but partly because twitter is radiating lag for as long as it's up in any window.

2. Saw in a newsletter from DriveThruRPG that illustrator and indy game designer Jeff Freels and his wife _both_ need kidney transplants, and if they can't afford at least one, they'll be in no shape to do anything beyond struggle to survive at all, so please buy their stuff (company name Fabled Worlds) (and donate) so they can afford needed medical services etc. This hits me where I live. More accurately, it hits me where I used to live, i.e. with my Dad, now passed away due to kidney trouble due to reasons similar to Mrs. Freels. Once my PayPal is stocked again, I'll buy two packs of Stock Art (illustrations on a theme, purchase grants a license to use the art in private or commercial projects, with proper attribution. I've never bought a license for IP before. It seems odd, but childishly intriguing. What would I use it for? Lacking any real business plans or skills to make such plans, where can I paste up said art plus text such that it will drive net-traffic back to the Freels' storefront? maybe the Icons Wiki could use some trolly characters? Is there a t-shirt site that would allow fundraising for a good cause?), some Adventures and comicstrip compilations, and a minimalist rpg called _Bean! the D2 Roleplaying System_, designed for teaching newbies and children the art of RP. Inspired by Tunnels & Trolls, and furthermore _endorsed_ by the creator of Tunnels & Trolls, which makes it somewhat odd that the negative review it received accuses it of being a ripoff, nay, a "plagiarism" of T&T. Maybe this is like in 'Finding Forrester' where Sean Connery has to come out of hiding to give public permission for his protege to use his work? Honestly, I wasn't impressed by Tunnels & Trolls, and yet I assume Bean will be far better and am already plotting what settings to subject to Rule Minimalization. Gritty Street Crime? Shadowrun? Occult Conspiracy? Space Opera? It will probably come down to the quality of the puns. Expect a city called 'Beantown', or Mean Bean Space Marines (actually, they're Navy Beans), or a future post about the Unbearable Lightness of Bean.

3. Taking lots of notes for lots of little creative projects that someday may see the light of day. Wrote two pages today about a game scenario I might run if a certain combination of players are present for an Icons game before that party falls apart or gets recast as different characters or whatever happens. The notes took all lunch hour. I'm not sure why time races while I'm writing. Maybe it's like a trance. all manner of tomfoolery slowly coalescing in my notes: the surreal steampunk fantasy novel, the superhero board game, the gritty realist variation of Welcome Back Potter ( a mashup, not a typo), a letter for the future about what's it like to be living in America now, Christian poetry, superhero poetry, social commentary, a Generic Universal Do-It-Yourself Trading Card Game, geeky song lyrics (eg. what if Voltaire the musician did a song based on my favorite quote from Voltaire the philosopher?), angelic secret agents, three paranormal romances (Martian Kisses, Her Name is Mystery, and Judith & Joshua), a story about a man trapped in a single minute of time, a Die Hard in Orbit / family feel-good action tale, plus the Glory novel, various cartoon scenarios, and the usual vampire/werewolf/panda-bear situation comedies. I haven't entirely abandoned other projects. Maiden Pink lives... somewhere. It's possible when she gets her big rewrite of existing material, I should think in terms of webcomic (page by page serial) instead of 22 pages in a clump. Also, the car music death story at least has a working title now: 'A Pattern in Red and Black'. still unsure what it needs in order to be properly fleshed out.

4a. Arkham Horror is Call of Cthulhu without the Keeper/GM. Munchkin is D&D without the DM/GM. WoW is D&D without the DM/GM. Thing is, as product, they sell; as entertainment and social interaction/quality time, they work. (So does Monopoly, under optimal circumstances, but there is no Wall Street rpg, so put that aside for now.) As a GM, I feel a bit redundant now. Is Instant Mix Gaming the wave of the future, or is that what they said when Magic: the Gathering came out?
4b. AH and Munchkin also seem part of the larger trend of .... let's call them Metaclones. New but with definite nods to old, or newfangled ways of doing old games, or bridging the threefold gamer paradigm by simulating the gameplay of gamist ancestors while leaving space for narrative. Icons and Savage Worlds being examples that are not GM-free Zones. ...and don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to this at all. Icons is my Champions now. However, I wonder where all the nostaliga is coming from. Is the customer base for comics, rpgs, etc. getting older? or has geek culture always relied on pop culture to fuel its evolution, and now that geeks themselves are cool, geek culture must feed on itself: new comics are reinvented old comics, new rpgs are reinvented old rpgs, new movies are old tv shows and new comics based on old comics, and the cutting edge internet frontier is full of geeks talking about new comics, old comics, and movies.
4c. I now understand, by the way, that not only can I _not_ read the entire internet, I can't even keep up with the Net's coverage of one narrow topic. comics? zillions of blogs and news-sites. plus gazillions of webcomics. Heck, it would take me hours to keep up with "what Neil Gaiman did yesterday".
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Title: Archons Speak Louder than Wyrms
Rules: Toon/D&D
The local magical University wishes to hire you to retrieve a number of students that were banished to the Outer Planes by a mishap with a magical stone frog (long story). Employers will, of course, cover the bus fare to and from. (pregens available)

Title: the Children of the Devil
rules: Mutants & Masterminds (2nd ed, mod.)
Maybe it's the green meteor-rocks all over town, or that tainted milkshake incident, or something in the water, but the local supply of super-powered teenagers is skyrocketing... and it hasn't gone unnoticed by recruiters, ranging from the benevolent to the diabolical. When you're one of those teens, who can you trust? (pregens and archetypes only)


title: Law & Order in a Windless City
rules: Fudge Rifts
In the post-apocalyptic cities of the future, the people are protected by two groups: the Police Judges who prosecute crimes, and the ultra-violent mercenary teams hired to hunt down the criminals. These are their stories. (provided pregens only)


title: Living on Island Time
rules: Over the Edge
Life has become so confusing lately. Things have gotten so weird, almost insane, and it's hard to say how you wound up where you are, but one thing is clear: even before you got to the island, you regretted getting on that plane.


title: Don't Push Their Buttons
Rules: Button Men (collectible lapel-button game)
They've come from all over the world. Their skills and backgrounds are very different; but they have one thing in common: they like to beat people up. Play Button Men, the ultimate distillation of the wargaming hobby: roll some dice, do some math, and pretend you're hurting someone.
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Effective January 2006, White Wolf expects that all persons charging money (or paying money more than once) of any amount for attendance at White Wolf system/setting-based games must also be paying members of the White Wolf corporate fan club, the Camarilla. This sort of thing always comes down from suits in Marketing that we've never heard of, who never actually wrote a bloody game in their life. *sigh*

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