games

Super Fund Sites and Dinosaurs

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Now, for a proper September post.

First of all, one of the interesting things about being a writer is that sometimes you spend a little too much time on Google maps looking for a sign posted outside a super fund site just to see what’s written on them.

In hindsight, I should have guessed that no one would want the word “SUPER FUND” on a sign in their neighborhood. Such and Such Cleanup Project seems to be much more common.

Also, I’ve learned there are a number of websites, like “parkopedia”, that provide databases, city by city, for parking spots. Sadly, they didn’t have the information that I was looking for, but for every little need, it seems like there’s an ongoing competition to create something to meet it.

Anyway, a need to write with the internet blocked makes it easy to be wrong about very basic stuff. In my mind’s eye, I still see small towns by the highway the way they looked in movies and television of my youth: two-lane roads, family-owned businesses, ramshackle buildings. In the current day, there are a lot of stroads (IYKYK) and big box stores with expansive parking lots.

I’ve always said that I am reliant on revisions, and it’s not just stylistically.

The book is currently over 140K words long. That’s probably a little too long for a POD edition. But we’ll see.

Last post, I talked about being a DINO MASTER (exclamation points!) in the Jurassic Park ttrpg that I ran for my family, and how it didn’t really work for the game’s genre if I was reluctant to kill off a PC.

I mean, I love my family. Also, they’re not experienced gamers. We haven’t been playing for very long and we haven’t, at this point, experienced the actual death of an actual PC. We spent months playing Brindlewood Bay, for example, which has numerous mechanics that let you kill off a character and then immediately undo it.

But a game full of vicious dinosaurs? (and also technologically advanced sleestaks riding around on armored T-rexes?) That definitely calls for character death. So I psyched myself up for it.

(Un)Fortunately, in the session immediately after that post, they didn’t roll a single failure in a peril move. It was all successes and partial successes.

The session after? My son, who had chosen the playbook “The Kid” and was playing the dino-loving 12yo child of Dino Island “founder” Ethan Rusk, failed a peril move and took an injury.

In this game, you don’t get three strikes. A second injury meant you make the casualty move, which is that you do something heroic and permanently die, or you fall down and are helpless until another PC carries you to medical help.

Let me tell you, when I announced that injury, the whole tone of the session changed. Voices were hushed. Glances? They were wary. My wife looked at me like she couldn’t believe that I might actually be a man who would kill my own child(‘s player character).

But it didn’t come to that. They worked well together and had a few solid rolls, so both characters made it off the island. (Rusk didn’t, naturally).

Well, this is a little long. More to come in October. I’m hoping to catch up on a few old horror movies I have somehow missed, once Spooktober arrives, starting with Don’t Look Now. We’ll see how it plays.

Dino Master is SOFT! a belated August Post

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Three things to make a belated August update:

First, in this latest (but not final) revision of the book, I’ve completely thrown out the denouement and rewritten it from scratch.

It’s longer now, but I’m not too concerned about that. It’s the denouement for an entire series of novels (plus the shorter stuff, too) so I wanted to give it a chance to breathe. If it feels like it’s breathing too much when you finally get a chance to read it, mea culpa.

The next task is to add some chapters from the point of view of the main villain. That’s not really a spoiler, but it is something new and unexpected. And after so much time spent revising, just sitting down to write new text is very satisfying.

Second, I’m a fat guy who has had two incidents of chest pain over the past year, so the doctors wanted me to do an angiogram, with the potential to implant a stent or two if I needed it. For those who don’t recognize the term, it involves sticking a long wire with a camera at the tip into an artery, usually at the wrist but sometimes at the groin, and sliding it all the way up to take photos of collections of plaque that sometimes builds up near the heart.

A good thing: if I ever need to write a scene where an alien worm is crawling through a body, I now have sense memory to draw on.

Another: they didn’t find anything of any significance. There was a little bit of cholesterol buildup, but nothing they felt particularly concerned about. No stents.

Yet another: the nurse told me that I was the easiest patient she had to deal with that day. Now, I realize that it’s not a competition, but if we’re talking about patients who cheerfully go along with whatever the medical staff wants without being too demanding in return, I’m tops.

(When I made that joke to my family, my son laughed and my wife gave me A Look. Her health mantra is “Be demanding.”)

Third, it’s finally official that I have arthritis in my knees.

Fourth, for Tabletop Tuesday, we have just started a campaign of Escape from Dino Island.

I was hoping they would dig it, and everyone seems to have picked up on the tone and the style pretty much right away. The game itself is meant to be a one- or two-shot, but this might run a little extra.

My wife and son may not be avid gamers, but they do like this family tradition and they enjoy playing. My favorite part is when things take a turn they absolutely did not expect. Last session, while they camped inside a crashed helicopter on the beach, one saw a dino run out of the jungle with a long stick in its mouth. They saw it dip the end into the flames and run back in the foliage with a lit torch. There was, maybe, ten seconds of silence as they stared at me, thinking about what that might mean.

Love that. So much fun.

Sadly, it seems that I’m a wimp of a GM. (Or in this case, a “DM” for “Dino-Master”.) I hate injuring my family’s PCs, let alone killing them, and what fun is a Jurassic Park knock off if the dinosaurs aren’t killing people? Next session I’ll have to toughen up.

That’s my belated August update. Thanks to everyone who supports my Patreon, and I’ll try to get September done on time.

Religious Faith as Superpower, and Other Nonsense

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I had originally written up a long post about religion in fantasy and horror, and the way that having the “right” religion had traditionally been treated at a superpower to use against supernatural evil. But I just deleted it.

First, I was talking about a specific as-yet unrealized project and I didn’t want to name it or kick the people involved.

Second, I was raised in a religious family but I’m an atheist now. As an atheist, I much prefer stories use the concept of a loving god of infinite mercy over the idea of a god who takes sides. Why shouldn’t vampires have the chance to receive salvation? Why shouldn’t demons? God created both. He should love them, too.

Third, all that said, I’ll sit down and watch as many Salem’s Lot movies as they care to make.

Fourth, speaking of that, fuck those Harry Potter TV seasons. We need a deeply faithful Salem’s Lot TV miniseries.

Anyway, the point was supposed to be that lately I much prefer science horror and cosmic horror.

Also, The Boroughs is really well done.

Moving on, I’m more than two-thirds of the way through *this* revision of the final 20P novel and some of these story problems are going to haunt me for the rest of my days. I keep having to stop and rethink/recontextualize whole scenes while trying to preserve the story I’ve already got going.

I sort of feel that Pandemic Me must have hated Current Me to have dropped this vomit draft on me.

In personal medical news, I posted earlier this month about my recurring chest pains. This past week I went in for a echo cardiogram. The result appears to be that my heart has no discoverable defect. I’m sure that’s significant but I won’t have context until I can actually sit down with the cardiologist.

Last thing: for Tabletop Tuesday, we have reached the part of our Brindlewood Bay campaign where I’m allowed to make the villains attack them with “sendings and servitors” and boy, were my wife and son startled by this scene. Both gave me that head-shudder-wide-eyes look of surprised.

Very satisfying.

Take care. Look after each other, and thank you for your support on Patreon.

The Work of Making Things

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Before I blather on about nonsense, here’s a brief progress update for Twenty-One Palaces.

Revisions hit a huge snag, but it was a snag I knew was coming. Also: difficult. I had to take a few long walks to sort out all the reasons why this group of scenes were a bust. Then I went through them, making lists of necessary story elements. Then I had to come up with a new and interesting way to get all those necessaries incorporated into the new scenes.

Anyway, it sucks to be making such slow progress, but I knew going in that this segment of the book was going to need major work, so it feels good to be nearly done with it.

Once I do that, I put the book aside for a day or two so I can do taxes, then it’s back to revisions.

In other news, my family observes Tabletop Tuesday, in which all three of us get together to play a game (and not a computer game, which would be basically impossible for my wife and me). Board and card games, naturally.

Sadly, we don’t have very many, and it eventually became repetitive.

Happily, this gave me an opportunity to introduce a bit of ttrpg fun into our game night. My son tried tabletop role playing when he was 10. After a few sessions, he shrugged and went back to Minecraft. Many years later, he’s a young adult willing to have a bit of fun. As for my wife, she’s never had any interest in this kind of game, but she is all in for family activities, so I have a captive little group here.

Our first effort was A Town Called Malice, which I picked because it’s very structured for an rpg. Playing this let me introduce role-playing elements, but the progression of the story and the overall plot were basically programmed in.

They had real fun with it, so a few weeks later I introduced Brindlewood Bay.

BB is a mystery role-playing game that uses a system derived from the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system. The player characters are elderly women in a mystery book club who like to meddle in the murder investigations that pop up all too often in their little coastal New England town. It’s very Murder, She Wrote, in a good way.

Also, there’s a cosmic horror element, but that will be more important later.

Anyway, the game works like this: There’s a mystery, a set of suspects, a list of clues, and a murdered character. The GM is admonished not to start the session with a preconception about which suspect is the real murderer. That’s determined through play.

The clues are deliberately vague. They might say, for example: muddy boots in the wrong place, a perfumed love letter, a shattered award, a revised will. That’s all the PCs get.

The idea is that the players collect these vague clues and, when they feel ready to accuse a suspect, craft a murder narrative out of them, then roll the dice. Plus one for each clue the players find a way to use in their narrative. A successful roll means you’ve found the killer. A failed roll, oops.

Honestly, I was iffy about this game when I first read it. It sounded less like solving a mystery and more like creating one. Is that really what players want?

The verdict, for my family at least, is abso-fucking-lutely. I really could not have predicted how much they would love Theorizing about the murder and the murder suspects. They do it so much and so enthusiastically that I have to remind them to play the game once in a while. Talk to suspects. Gather clues.

Weirdly, this continues a long-standing trend for me. Games that seem like something I wouldn’t like become absolute favorites, while games I’m enthusiastic to try miss me somehow.

Anyway, I’d call BB a hit.

Speaking of mysteries, Veronica Mars (the TV series) has popped up on Netflix. It’s one of my favorite shows. If you decide to sit down and watch it (and you should) keep in mind that there’s a movie between seasons 3 and 4.

It’s a 20-some year old show, but it has great characters, the story really moves, and it’s highly recommended.

(The links above are DriveThruRPG affiliate links.)

NEW TTRPG STUFF FROM ME (ALL FOR A GOOD CAUSE)

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Quick one this time:

To support charity, I wrote a little something for a role playing game, which is going to be being printed in a zine (called “Killing for a Cause”) currently seeking pledges on Indiegogo. 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/killing-for-a-cause-issue-1-bloodsuckers

The charity in question is the Against Malaria Foundation, which has been getting a big thumbs up from GiveWell for more than a decade. Check out the Indiegogo FAQ. If the goal seems a little high, that’s the cost for AMF to save a single life. 

And all the payments received—after Indiegogo and payment processors take their cuts—goes to the charity. 

Okay. That’s the charity part clarified. What about the zine itself?

The first issue of “Killing for a Cause” is called Bloodsuckers. Guess what it’s about.

The zine comes from Thomas Eliot, a guy I heard about because I backed his Fear of the Unknown Kickstarter some time back. FotU is a zero-prep horror game where you grab (or create) a themebook to play the subgenre you want to run. Apocalypse Mall? Crazed Killer Crashes A Party? Well-Meaning Scientist Creates Something Terrible? Pick a one and start your session by fleshing out the setting as a group. 

There are even rules for running noir. 

Anyway, when the game arrived in my inbox, it came with an invitation to contribute to the zine. I decided to try creating a themebook about ordinary people stuck inside the home of Extremely Terrible People, a plot that covers both Jonathan Harker (to squeak in under the theme), the fun kids from the film Villains, and of course the stranded motorists of The Old Dark House (1930’s version).

It’s not long, literally just a few pages, but themebooks are supposed to be short. They’re only a foundation. Start with a few questions re: the setting, a move to use when violating the dubious hospitality of the people you’re staying with, and a little more. It’s also easily adaptable for use in other games. 

Lots of other contributions, too. Micro-rpgs, art, content for D&D5e, and more. I haven’t seen the finished zine myself, but I’m betting it’s cool stuff.

If you’re a tabletop gamer, a lover of vampires, a hater of potentially fatal illnesses, or some mix of the three, please consider dropping a pledge. 

In personal news, I’m at work on a new novel that’s unlike anything I’ve done before. It’s going a bit slowly, though, as I’m also looking for a new day job. Wish me luck. 

And The Killer Is… You Decide! ttrpgs, genre simulations, and game systems

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For years, I’ve been picking up the odd indie game here and there, trying to find (among other things) one that seems like it could be a great mystery game. I haven’t really found a promising option.

Generally, they fall into two categories. The first is exemplified by a teen detective game called Bubblegumshoe, by Emily Care Boss (among others) and published by Evil Hat Games. Bubblegumshoe uses the GUMSHOE game system which, despite the name, I’ve usually seen in horror games. GUMSHOE separates “abilities” into two categories. First are General Abilities, which let you roll against them and you succeed or fail in the ordinary way. 

Second are Investigative Abilities. If there’s a core clue that you need to solve the mystery, and a PC is on hand with the Investigative Ability that would acquire the clue, it’s acquired automatically. GUMSHOE doesn’t let a game stall or derail because a bad die roll, or a series of them, prevents the characters from snapping up a necessary clue. That’s an essential mechanic for horror games, because the antagonists are supposed to be overwhelmingly powerful compared to the PCs. That’s part of what makes it horror. There’s usually a very narrow path to victory for the players, and if they’re denied the information they need to find that path, the game is an automatic failure and not much fun. 

Like I said, it’s a clever mechanic. But to use it in a mystery story, you also need a GM who is capable of setting up a mystery plot, full of red herrings, fake but seemingly unbreakable alibis, and all the other tropes of the genre. And take it from me, a guy that’s tried his hand at mystery more than once, that’s a challenging skill set to acquire.

Alternately, we have the cozy mystery/cosmic horror game Brindlewood Bay, a Powered by the Apocalypse system by Jason Cordova and published by The Gauntlet. In this game, the PCs are elderly members of a local mystery book club in a small, coastal New England town. Individual adventures are cases, like an episode of Murder, She Wrote in which mystery readers nose around crime scenes, solving murders.

Except PbtA is a “Play to find out” system. The GM doesn’t create a clue trail. That’s actively discouraged. Instead, they create a story prompt and a list of generic clues like “an unsigned will” or “a photograph of the victim”. During play, the players themselves add the necessary details that will separate the clue trail from the red herrings, then roll dice to see if this is the solution.

Which is fine, but it doesn’t give the player the experience of solving a mystery. It puts them into the role of creating the mystery.

I had a similar issue with a Forged in the Dark game I actually got to play some time ago. The game was called Hack the Planet (written by Fraser Simons and published by Samjoko Publishing). It was cli-fi mixed with cyberpunk, and while I can be lukewarm on cyberpunk in general, this was a cool setting. Maybe the most interesting expression of cyberpunk I’ve ever come across. 

But I was very interested in trying out the system. FitD games were the new hotness at the time (and maybe they’re still the current hotness, I wouldn’t know) because they let people role play heist plots.

Personally, I love a good heist film. And when someone creates a heist-oriented fantasy game that not only wins awards and gets raves all over the internet, it spawns a number of clones in other genres, well, I’m interested. I really wanted to try that.

Except once we started playing the game, it turned out that the thing that makes heist plots most appealing to me—that unexpected twist where the moment everything is going wrong turns out to be part of the plan all along, and how did I miss the scattered clues that would have prepared me for that twist—is utterly neutered. The surprise of that moment is replaced by a player saying “I spend two stress.” No surprise. No thrill. 

And it sort of has to be. How else can you play out this sort of story in this medium? And the fact that I stupidly held out hope that the game could replicate the feeling of the movie has to be yet another triumph of hope over experience. I should have kept my expectations low. 

For me, without that surprise, the game was all tension and no thrill. 

I can see why people like that system. Not only does it have some cool ideas, it’s very fussy and is full of little boxes to check. It’s a game for the bullet journal/to-do list crowd. To me, it seemed underpowered and all that fussiness made it feel like a resource management game, which I hate. Cool setting, but that ruleset was actively unpleasant on several axes.

Which is a shame. I like heists, almost as much as I like mysteries. If I could figure out a way to capture the essential parts of them in a way that felt manageable in a game, I’d be pretty happy about that game. 

But I’m not holding my breath. Not every genre works in every medium. 

By the way, I have two new Twenty Palaces novels out:

The Iron Gate

The Flood Circle

A Finished Draft of a New Twenty Palaces Novel, and More

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If you’re a Kickstarter backer for the two new 20P novels, you’ve likely already received the announcement that the zero draft (aka: the vomit draft) of The Flood Circle is done. That means both this new book and The Iron Gate are ready for revisions, and since they sort of tie together, it’ll be good for me to tackle them together. So, Yay for that, and also I wish I wrote cleaner first drafts.

In other pleasant news, my months-long plan to say “Or we could just play Jinkies” every single time my gaming group was about to try a one-shot or switch games has had the desired effect. One of our players is taking a holiday trip, so I get a chance to try out this game I’ve had in my personal, figurative on-deck circle for months. It’s like getting an extra Giftmas present a week before the holiday.

In less happy news, I had to switch to a new doctor this year, and my wife convinced me to make an appointment for a minor health issue that’s been bothering me for (literal) years. Basically, I break out in itchy hives any time I get slightly warm. A hot shower will do it. A walk to the grocery store will do it. A tense conversation with my wife will do it. On the advice of my previous doc, I take an OTC allergy med, but that only eases the itching, it doesn’t eliminate it, and it does nothing for those ugly fucking hives. It’s just so gross and embarrassing, and it’s been getting in the way of my exercise plans for literal years.

So I went to the doc. I told him I’d spent months working hard to lose weight and had dropped 40 lbs. Then I went to my father-in-law’s house to help my wife deal with his estate, and the place was not exactly clean. (Which is not a dig on my f-i-l. He was a good guy, but he was in his eighties and his health had been terrible for years.) It was there, cleaning out that house, when I started breaking out in hives, and it took me weeks to figure out why. (Finally, I googled “I am allergic to my own sweat.” — It turned out I wasn’t actually allergic to my own sweat, although some people can be. It was just body heat.)

That was in January, 2012.  My appointment with the doc was last July, and after I ran through the whole thing, he ordered the usual tests, then said nothing about the hives. When I sent a note asking about it, he told me I’d need to make an appointment for it.

Which I already did. Last July.

I suspect he’s over-focused on my weight, which has indeed gone up now that any sort of exercise makes me look, feel, and act like a leper with fleas.

Eventually, I’ll have to go in for that followup appointment to cover the actual issue I went to see him for in the first place, but the holidays are busy and I have writing to do and whatever. I’d be more willing to go if I thought something good would come of it. Very discouraging.

On the plus side, the internet assures me that this issue usually goes away by itself in three to thirty years, so really, this will might be fixed any day now.

Anyway, that’s it. Take care of yourselves and happy holidays.

Stress, TTRPGs, and Me Getting Evicted

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I’m one of those people who doesn’t recognize his own stress until it erupts at the wrong moment. I feel fine (I’m fine! Really!) for a whole day or week or whatever, no really, I’m okay. Then suddenly a stressful moment hits and I realize I have no reserves left and something inappropriate escapes me.

For example, this past weekend I was playing in my usual every-other-week tabletop role playing game, and one of the other players–who’s been a friend of mine for more than 35 years–made a role-playing choice that was super super annoying.

Normally, we’d handle this in-game, where the characters play out the scene, or I’d meta-game it for a moment first to let the other player know where this was going, to make sure they wanted to play this out. (In fact, if he’d continued to play out the scene that way, it would have meant the end of the party, in a “they go or I do” situation.)

But I didn’t do either of those things. Thoughts swirled around in my head and I had no way to put them into a coherent structure. I looked at my friend’s face in the Zoom window and could not imagine what I should do next. Does it make sense to say I’d gone blank when I had dozens of half-thoughts appearing and vanishing in my head before I could even examine them? I hope so, because that’s what happened.

So, I said I needed to take a break (not in a particularly calm way), hung up my headset and walked away from my computer. It was sort of close to our usual break time anyway, and I refilled my water bottle, had a slice of bread with a fancy Lebanese red pepper spread, and washed my face. And I thought it might be a good idea to step away from the game for a few weeks, when this feeling would (should) have passed.

When I returned to the Zoom meeting, I was embarrassed. I was supposed to be role-playing and I’d fucked up.

The other players understood, because I’d already told them at the start of the session that I was being evicted.

You can tell I never went to Journalism school by the way I bury the lede. Maybe I’ll drop this part in the subject header, so no one misses it.

I moved into my current apartment with my then-girlfriend in Oct 1994. We’ve had our whole relationship here, and in 2019, I bought her a silver necklace to celebrate the 25th anniversary of living together. We raised our son in these rooms, cooked every meal, celebrated every holiday. It’s not, you know, a great apartment by any standard, but it’s where our memories were made.

But I don’t own this space, so when my new (as of the fall of 2019) landlord dropped me a note saying they were going to remodel this whole building–and everyone needed to vacate–it did not come as a shock. It was more of a “Winter is coming” moment. We knew it was possible–maybe even inevitable–and when it finally happened it was like death. I had hoped for more time.

For the record, our landlord has given us a lot of time to find a new place and has offered to pay for a moving company, which is very generous of him.

Me, I’d like a new place in this same neighborhood. I’m about to leave to look at an apartment one block over from my current place, and I’m still put out that the place three doors down from us, which was laid out in the same format as the place we have–our furniture could have gone into the same layout there as here–was snapped up a day before I got that email.

Just got back from the place up the street. This was our third apartment tour, and the first we actually liked. There’s no basement storage, but it’s bright and clean, at least. Also, this was the first landlord/realtor who bothered to wear a face mask. (All we had to hear to cross off one place we looked at was “I think they do more harm that good”.)

To get back to the point: All of my novels have been written, in part, at my local library branch and at the Starbucks down the street from it. I’d hate to spend a whole pandemic year working in an inadequate space at home, checking every other day for news of when the libraries will reopen, only to be forced to work someplace new.

And yeah, it’s stressful. And I’m carrying that stress just under the surface of my day to day, having pleasant conversations with my wife about what we should have for dinner, or what books/clothes we’re going to donate instead of pack, or what we’re going to do with the board games we played when our son was ten but haven’t touched in years.

Until something is suddenly Too Much, and I’m welling up with tears because the Shang-Chi trailer looks so fucking good. Or maybe it’s Harold Finch, injured and stumbling into his library, to ask the machine if it knew his only friend in the world was about to be murdered, but already knowing the answer and also knowing everything is his own fault.

In fact, during the same gaming session, we were chatting about Person of Interest, and I was trying to explain to two of the players why I loved it, and that it started off as a very good show in a specific genre that becomes a great sci fi show as it goes forward, and they kept asking me when it became “good” so they could skip the early stuff. Normally, I would have pushed against that sort of framing, but my thoughts were swirling around and I couldn’t respond. Not the way I wanted to.

Now, a mental state like this might sound like it would mess with my writing and writing progress, but writing is a kind of safe space for me. I’m still making progress. I have less time than I used to, but I’m still hitting my goals.

And this, too, shall pass.

Last thing: When I first received that email, I tweeted about it, then deleted the tweet because I thought people might assume I was asking for financial help. I’m not. This isn’t a financial emergency for us. It’s just going to eat up time that could be better spent and it’s going to add a bunch of bullshit stress. Which is not to say that folks should drop out of my Patreon or whatever. I’m grateful for your support and it definitely helps, but I don’t want folks to think this is a call to action. My family and I are okay for now.

Until someone posts a cute kitten video on Twitter and I just lose it.

Take care of yourselves, get vaccinated when you can, and stay safe.

Quarantine Post 6: Spitfires, Dinosaurs, and Magical London

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Not sure why I get so much pleasure from music with samples, esp audio clips from movies, but I do. I really do.

Over the weekend, we finally got the chance to play the second half of our Escape from Dino Island PbtA game. As an emulation of Jurassic Park, it’s pretty great: fast and deadly. As I mentioned on Twitter, before the game started, I suggested we start with two PCs each, since the game looked like it was designed to kill characters pretty quickly. The others poo-poo-ed that, telling me I could just make up someone new if I had to.

Two die rolls later, I was doing exactly that.

One of the mechanics in the game that I really liked was that the basic moves were broken into categories: Peril Moves and Safety Moves. When you make a Safety Move, you’re supposed to tell a story about your character (each playbook has a number of specific prompts, which you cross off as you go through them). At the end, when the story is wrapped up, either because the living PCs have escaped the island or they’ve all died, you roll for the denouement.

Like all PbtA games, you roll two dice, then add something to it. For this roll, you add the number of stories you’ve told.. 10+ gives you a great result, 6+ is a failure, 7-9 is a modest success. So, the more stories you tell about your character, the more sympathetic they are and the more beloved they are by the audience.

My character had made the Finale move, which was a self-sacrifice play to save everyone and wrapping up the plot. So while the other two players got to roll on the “Safe at Last” table, and both got the result “… describe something (an image or memory) you will carry with you from your time on the island.” which is the modest result, I rolled on the “Never to Return” table.

And I’d told four stories over the course of the game, so my roll was +4. And I had sacrificed myself for the group! And I rolled snake eyes.

That was the only roll I could have made and still failed, and I’d done it. The result I got was “… tell the others why you deserved your fate.”

Is life fair? It is not.

But I laughed my ass off, which I really needed. At this point in my life, I don’t get to laugh all that much. Not that I’m unhappy (I’m not) but I don’t find many things funny. Except when I’m playing in a game with terrific players.

Anyway, next up is a longer game (we hope) and the group has picked Liminal, a contemporary fantasy game set in London. (I’m not doing an accent.) It looks great, and I don’t just mean the art. Seriously, that art is amazing.

But for the meat of this post, and the whole reason I am doing these, let me link to a site I found inside the rulebook:

http://www.guerrillaexploring.com

It’s a site about people getting into places where they’re not supposed to be, and the pictures are cool. I really liked the concrete… rooms? tunnels? in the bowels of the Tower Bridge.

Anyway, worth checking out.

Take care of yourselves.

Randomness for 12/8

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1. Domestic abuse: Killers ‘follow eight-stage pattern’, study says.

2. The real reason hearing your own voice can make you cringe.

3. Water isn’t the most hydrating beverage according to new scientific study

4. Twenty Years Later and the Women of ANGEL Deserve More.

5. The Trajectory of Fear – or How to Use Horror Tropes Effectively in your [TTRPG]

6. What happens when you eat like the Queen of England for a week?

7. People Are Confused About the Usefulness of Buying Fancy Things