Coining the Coronavirus: Terms that Might Be Useful

Cultures are going to change. Not just ours, everybody's.

I've heard a couple new uses of language and there will certainly be more. I don't expect that the terms I've started using work for anyone else, but they provide a less-boring way to talk about changes-in-progress. 

It's easy to go dark very quickly in the coronavirus hole, so this note on vocabulary is deliberately on the lighter side. That's probably helped by the fact that I'm not in on medical jargon. 

baabaas: What I'm calling ironically vulnerable populations, demographics, and politicians who have made the mistake of listening to the wrong leader, against their own survival prospects. For the term to apply, both conditions need to be present, so most applicable to elderly religious organizations and states like Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. 

bc: Before coronavirus. I've heard this used already. It feels right. I'm not at all sure that 'ac' will go anywhere, it feels more like there's a bc and a now. 

cv: Sorry, curriculum vitae, your stuff has been taken. 

cv-lite, cv-medium, heavy cv: One way to phrase the virus' levels of effect. 

  cv-lite is asymptomatic or about as much trouble as a regular cold for only a couple days. 

  cv-medium is a multi-day problem, heading into weeks, but not involving marked difficulty breathing. Maybe a little but not much. (If what I've been having this last week is actually cv, it's looking like cv-medium.) 

  heavy-cv is high fevers, trouble breathing, complications with pneumonia, and so on. In Seattle, you can maybe eventually get tested if you're in the middle of heavy-cv. 

cv-maybe: The status of suspecting you have had cv but not having been tested and therefore not likely to be sure anytime soon, as of early April in the USA. 

emissary: Someone friendly and helpful who tested positive already, survived, cleared the time limits and is now running errands and shopping for friends and family. Eventually emissary status probably needs to be extended officially into being able to return to work, but that's future-talk. For now, emissaries care for their community. 

mask-maker: Self-explanatory, but relevant to both private individuals and larger organizations like NanoLeaf. Maybe also useful to describe companies and organizations that are converting to making medical supplies instead of what they usually make. 

necromancer: Politician or pundit who argues that those most vulnerable to the virus should be willing to greatly increase their risk of death so that everyone can get back to work and keep the economy rolling. Not necessarily applicable to every scientific argument that heads this way, but definitely applicable to talk show hosts and politicians who claim they'd be willing to die to save the economy so everyone else should be too. 

returner: Version 1) Player who left a familiar roleplaying group behind because of a move or other circumstance, who is now returning to the table because everyone has to be online, not just them. 

   Version 2) Future possibility: what emissaries could become, people with antibodies against cv who get to return to wider life and helping people without worrying about spreading the disease; requires wide distribution of antibody tests and yes, hopefully science that proves that antibodies matter. 

tree-counting: Paying too much attention to the reported numbers of cases, because the forest is so much larger than the trees. Only positive tests make it into the numbers, and tests that are pending don't make it into the numbers yet, and so many people are asymptomatic. Morgues and mortuaries in the USA, at least, may be a bit of a Wild West in terms of how deaths can be classified, perhaps especially in places that don't want to have cv deaths. 

I said I'd stay on the lighter side, so I'll sign off with links to two good things. 

First, an article about communities bonding to fix problems that government isn't. 

Second, a link to the Humble Bundle of games and gaming books that's sending all its proceeds to organizations fighting cv. 

Gaming this week: Book of the Underworld, Wingspan, Cypher System

The wonderful car-web photo above was taken by Lisa Eschenbach, and I'm using it to acknowledge that I finished the development phase on Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan's Book of the Underworld earlier this week. Yeah, it took a few weeks longer than I expected. The book is now with the editor. All the art is coming in on schedule so it won't be too long before it's in layout.

Also this week, I made huge progress on two new designs. The secret card/boardgame I've been designing for my own personal satisfaction has achieved harmony. Players have been enjoying it for awhile, and now I'm also simply having fun rather than seeing things that need fixing. Notably, I'm no longer winning every game. There's a specific type of imbalance when the designer's advantage in knowing what might be unbalanced pays off too often. Happily, I'm losing now, so that development phase is over.  I'll be looking for a publisher soon.

Meanwhile on a different unannounced boardgame project that has a publisher already, I solved the last of the design problems that was bugging me and am making a pass through the cardset and other components to live up to the new solutions. I'm looking forward to playtesting next week.

I also enjoyed a couple first-plays this week. I've only been able to find the European supplement for Wingspan, but friends Brittany and Miguel brought over the core game. We all loved it. Lisa used the Audubon app on her phone to accompany turns with the calls of the newly played birds. Brittany arranged a ridiculous combo and stuffed what she called a 'Christmas goose' with 20 VP, so curses accompanied the bird calls.

I also got to play my first game of the Cypher system, in a highly diverting fantasy genre session run by Bruce Cordell. I had fun as a Resilient Speaker Who Keeps a Magic Ally. Specifically, I'm playing a priest of a war god that died in apocalyptic fashion (the god I mean), and now I get my spells from random deities, changing every day, who are using me as an experiment, or a bet, or something. More or less a One Unique Thing that will definitely make for fun prayers. Also: I'm a kite-fighting and bocce ball aficionado. My comrades are considerably doughtier (more on them next time), so all shall be well.

And though we didn't play The Gods War this week, it launched a Kickstarter with Gloranthan gods of War, Secrets, and Magic, and I'm pretty sure I never shared this method-acting photo from our Gods War game. From right to left, Sean pulled faces as Chaos, Jonathan was a stickler-for-rules Solar, and I was a Storm player who never rolled a 6 after mistakenly using a wargaming plan in an area control universe. The sword was an attempt to compensate for 6-less-ness. Paul, the Darkness troll photographer, ate us all.

This week's games: 13th Age, Rising Sun, Up Front, and Manoeuvre

For a change, this was a week without serious playtesting on unannounced projects. Instead I ended up playing one session of 13^th Age and a couple sessions of boardgames.

In our Wednesday night 13^th Age campaign that will at-some-point-in-the-future drop us into the Stone Thief, we were in Horizon tracking down an expert on living dungeons. He had managed to overdose himself on his own magic cloak and become a monster known as a bonded, so paying him a visit led let to a fight where I had the sense that this monster we were fighting should really be tearing us up a lot more, remembering something of the Bestiary 2 writeup. (Page 15, a monster by ASH LAW.) Afterwards the GM indicated that he’d never rolled the magic even-numbers, and I’m glad I hadn’t seen the stats during the game because I’m pretty sure I would have realized they were even worse than we experienced, and would I have been able to keep my mouth shut? No. We got off lucky.

I’m having a great time roleplaying and freewheeling with icon relationship narrations in this campaign, but so far in combat my monk’s slogan, borrowed from Mark Jessup in our old 3.5 campaign, is: “I’m 39 hit points you don’t have to lose.” (It would be 40 points but I'm spending one point to maintain the illusion that I'm human. When mom is a rakshasa and dad is an ogre mage, sacrifices must be made.) 

The next night we tried a four-player game of Eric Lang’s Rising Sun. It was fun, despite the fact that I screwed up the game’s logic by introducing the autumn cards ahead of the summer cards. Yes, we played in a twisted fantasy world where spring-autumn-summer-winter led to my Bonsai Clan’s natural rhythms being horribly disrupted. Stunted trees were chopped up and fed to the Koi Clan without gaining the attention of the Imperial poets. The Turtle Clan conquered all.

The Dragonfly Clan also acquitted itself well but had one of its bushi eaten under the table by the newish monster in our home, our eleven-month old puppy, Sammi. Sammi managed to ninja miniatures off the table with no one noticing until she was done chewing. No more under-table game nights for Sammi.

(To give Sammi her due, here's a much more typical photo. This was the evening that Lee Moyer introduced Sammi to her first picture book.) 

I’m looking forward to playing Rising Sun again. It’s gonna make more strategic sense with the seasons aligned properly.

Over the weekend our 12-year old godson Lucas and I played a couple sorta-wargames that are also cardgames. First I taught him how to play Up Front, the amazing old Avalon Hill WW2 game that bills itself as the Advanced Squad Leader card game. It’s a fantastic system that handles actions, terrain, and combat resolution with a single deck of cards. I’ve played so many games of Up Front that even though it had been Many Years since I’d last played—so many years that the rubber bands holding the decks together all snapped immediately—I remembered the game well enough to teach it with fewer missteps than I’d added to Rising Sun. I made sure to play the Italians against Lucas’ British, but the Brits suffered mishap after mishap (a malfunctioning STEN gun!) and it was a proud day for Italy.

Then we played a couple games of Jeff Horger’s Manoeuvre from GMT. We both liked it a lot, the game hits a sweet spot for evoking Napoleonic battle without a complex rules set. I played with the Ottoman Turks and the Chinese 8-Banner Army against Lucas’ Brits. The photo shows Lucas’ finger pointing to where he intended the battle to be fought, instead of over to the right where a couple doughty British regiments had fallen to my Bannermen.

The Chinese are from the expansion, Distant Lands. It’s on sale for $25.00 on the GMT website. If you’re looking for a fast-playing light game that blends Napoleonic maneuvers with a touch of fantasy, this is a steal. It’s worth mentioning that Distant Lands has everything you need to play except the polyhedral dice, terrain that's more vanilla, and a box. The game is better with the core box added, which I'm sure you can still find in game stores, but the expansion alone creates fun battles.

this week in gaming

 

This week I absorbed the rules for four new games: Gloomhaven (cunning boardgame dungeon-crawler and Kickstarter darling) Magic Maze (unique co-op game getting in and out of a delightfully illustrated fantasy shopping mall), Wild Blue Yonder (the new version of Dan Verssen’s Down in Flames WWII air combat card game from GMT), and Centerville (Chad Jensen’s new Euro-style urban planning status and prestige game). So far the only one of the four we’ve played was Magic Maze, which was hilarious fun but demonstrated again that I’m a turn-based gamer and a real-time bumbler.

In the world of playtesting, we played a great session of one of my new card game designs that the publisher has not announced yet. The game has gone well enough for long enough that I’m going to finish up its rulebook and call it done as soon as I can carve out two focused days.

Also in the world of playtesting, Lisa and I played a friend’s new card game a number of times on a couple of nights, but that’s not announced either so I can’t write details.

And the Wednesday night RPG group enjoyed another session of the Over the Edge 25 campaign that Jonathan has been running for a while now. The campaign doesn’t have a name yet. Our other OTE campaigns seem to acquire a name when things go horribly wrong, names like “Ann Thunder Escapes,” when Ann Thunder was our nemesis. So far, so nameless.

Meanwhile in the world of actual work I’ve been acting as editor/layout overseer for the Book of Demons for Pelgrane. And getting art orders ready for three other Pelgrane books. And cobbling together the credits and appendices for 13^th Age Glorantha, which Chris Huth is busy laying out the final chapter of. I’ve also been dealing with art direction on two other game-projects we’re not talking about yet, which raises the point that I’m often working as the art director for games I design or develop. That was something I leaned towards at the end of my WotC shift, when I was writing art orders for books I hadn’t worked on. But WotC had excellent art directors, trained for the job. In the world beyond WotC my untrained aptitude has frequently put me in the director’s chair.

When I get through the art direction, I’ll be back to developing Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s Book of Ages, a fun 13^th Age project with three different takes on portraying a world dominated by icons-over-time. Which means that this week, my only effort that qualifies as actual game design was a lunch time conversation with Logan Bonner about two in-progress card games. Extremely worthwhile, but I haven’t even have time to follow up on his thoughts. We’ll see if I can get back to design next week. 

Crazy Boss Monster

A couple years ago there was a pivotal moment when a close friend of ours had started a job that immediately looked like it was going to be a disaster. My wife Lisa helped save us all, saying “I’m sorry, I just don’t have the energy to spend the rest of the year being surprised by how crazy your boss is. You need to quit. There’s no mystery here, it’s just going to happen again and again.”

That’s how I feel about mass shootings in America. We can’t be surprised. The pieces are all set up and the shooting will begin. As the Gun Violence Archive indicates, nine days out of ten, it’s only a question of who and where.

Our friend quit her crazy job. Then she chose a path that was four times more sane. Judging by American political history and our current president and Congress, I don’t have hopes for a similarly rapid shift to a sane approach to gun ownership. But first steps are important. A gun lobby that fights against background checks for gun owners, restrictions against mass-murder-certified assault weapons, and against keeping silencers more-illegal-than-not is no one’s friend. It’s a crazy boss monster, and it’s time it was opposed by our elected officials, even the ones whose campaigns were bankrolled by gun money.

Voting & Supporting Hillary

The stamp felt perfect for this ballot! 

On the way back from casting the ballot, I passed Neil Stephenson, out for a stroll in the neighborhood he works in. I'll take passing a socially progressive writer who appreciates good weaponry as a good omen. 

Earlier in the day, I appreciated this Rolling Stone summary of why voting for Trump is a terrible thing to do. Parts left out include the GOP's position as the major political party in the world that denies climate change and Trump not caring that Russia is mucking around in USA electoral politics because it has been in his favor. That would have been some sort of deal-breaker in previous Republican candidacies--but not this one. 

Earlier in the weekend, Jonathan Tweet, Mike Selinker and Gaby Weidling and I organized a game designers' support letter for Hillary Clinton. It's called #gamers4her and it's up to 327+ signatures and still growing, as seen here. 

I'm aware that Clinton isn't perfect. In politics as in creative work, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Clinton will be a good president, maybe even a great one. It's time to prove that a powerful woman can be President of the United States and make a way for great women leaders of the future. 

Monk & Frogfolk Today, GottaCon in Victoria Friday

Greg Stolze’s TheForgotten Monk 13^th Age novel is wrapping up its Kickstarter in a few hours. Jonathan Tweet and I are on deck to write short stories using Greg’s characters and the novel is huge fun for fantasy readers, martial arts fans, and readers who like truly smooth and infuriating villains.

For a different type of villain, check out Temples of the Frogfolk, the second issue of the 13^th Age Monthly, out today to subscribers! Author Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan is also on board to write a short story for The Forgotten Monk. Sign on to the Monthly now and you’ll also get caught up with last month’s installment, Dragon Riding.

A couple days from now, Friday the 27^th, Jonathan Tweet and I are among the guests who will be running and talking about games at GottaCon in Victoria. I’m running 13^th Age in Glorantha Friday night, Shadowrun: Crossfire Saturday afternoon, and also helping with a Saturday workshop on Crafting Hooks (along with Ryan Macklin and Rodney Thompson, to name the workshoppers I already know) and a Sunday workshop on running Kickstarters. 

Six Kobolds walk into a bookstore. . . .

I'm used to getting together with friends for gaming on Wednesday night. But this Wednesday is different, with a different set of friends, and we'll be on a panel at a bookstore talking about games instead of playing.

Kobold Press is publishing the Kobold Guide to Combat. Editor Janna Silverstein has brought together a few of us Seattle-area contributors for a panel/reading/minotaurshit session (if you have to ask, that's triple the experience point value of a bullshit session) at the University Bookstore at 7 p.m. That's the main UW bookstore at 4236 University Way NE and of course it's a free event. (Some early reports showed the event at 6 p.m. Ignore that disinformation campaign by jealous hobgoblins. 7 p.m. is the hour.)

The panel will be huge fun. With Chris Pramas and Jeff Grubb and Steve Winter and Wolf Baur and novelist John A. Pitts, Janna is going to have her wrangling-facilitator hands full.

Come by to say hello, roll a couple dice (I'll bring them!), buy a copy of the new book, and acquire autographs for handwriting analysis.

Weblings

My sprite-like pieces of self that get things done on the internet were busy this week. Here's a short list of surfacings. If you already caught them all, thank you and good night!

I wrote a 13th Sage column for Pelgrane Press about when it might be a good idea to let the monsters use the escalation die in 13th Age. Should be helpful to many GMs. And if you're a player it will give you a couple signs to watch out for!

Pelgrane also helpfully posted the schedule of 13th Age seminars at GenCon. Which turns out to be exactly the same as my seminar schedule at GenCon. One seminar a day, and I'll be using the Pelgrane booth as my main home base during the show. I get to team up with ASH and Gareth for a couple seminars on adventure and monster design, with Ruth Tillman (CthulhuChick) and Mike Shea and Wade for another on GMing, and then there's a Year One seminar with Simon and Wade.

If you're not going to GenCon and you still want to hear me run a game, the Reverend En Fuego's crew at BJ's Geek Nation just started posting the first installment of the game I ran for them using 13 True Ways characters. I admit that the full session didn't get around to including a lot of gaming. The character creation process took me by surprise. I usually run demos freeform and just respond to what the table gives me, but for once I thought, "Hey, I'll have something ready and actually bring minis and monster stats." So I made the mistake of preparing three different battle encounters that I thought I'd be able to choose for an action-packed first session. Of course the players surprised me with something I really wasn't ready for, so we're going to get into the meat of the adventure the next session. Was character creation and story set up fun? Oh yeah. Especially if you'll enjoy learning from my mistakes.

Most all the monsters I had planned to introduce to the BJ's Geek Nation crew were from the 13th Age Bestiary. Which coincidentally had its PDF-only version go on sale at the Pelgrane shop and on DriveThruRPG yesterday.

Meanwhile Catalyst has released the full rules for Shadowrun: Crossfire as a PDF and we have confirmation that there are going to be many boxes of the game for sale at the show! I'm not going to be helping with Crossfire stuff as much as some people in Fire Opal, I'll be more focused on 13th Age, but I will help with a Crossfire event or two and teach a few friends how to play.

Speaking of product that will be at GenCon, 13 True Ways has shipped, apparently just ever-so-slightly behind our friend Bruce Cordell's Kickstarter book, The Strange. But that's OK because Bruce started his book long after.... oh. Right. OK. The point is: 13 True Ways will also reach many people soon and will also be at GenCon!

And even as 13 True Ways is en route, the wonderful secret 13th Age project that Jonathan and ASH and I are working on is going to be announced this Sunday! ASH and I will be able to talk about the early stages of the design at GenCon.

Many Trumpets: this week in 13th Age

A wonderfully eventful week that opens several doors.

Early in the week, Pelgrane sent out an update of the 13th Age Bestiary's Hatchling Edition to those of you who have pre-ordered it. If you haven't pre-ordered it, now may be a good time, because Simon's note about possibly increasing the price later isn't getting any less likely with me dropping the couatl into the book and adding at least three new monsters (one fungaloid, two jorogumo). 

A day or so later, ASH LAW sent a short seasonal adventure out to the 600+ groups participating in 13th Age Organized Play.  600 groups!  ASH did some cunning work here that I'm planning to adapt into an-entirely-different campaign. 

Yesterday the new Page XX from Pelgrane announced the release of our Archmage Engine SRD. Thanks to Chad Long and Cal Moore, it turned out very well. Apparently some people worried that it would be a fakey-SRD, but the point of doing 13th Age as an OGL game was to get people playing it and using the system. Yes, it's a real SRD, and it should prove useful to people looking to overlap with our game engine. 

On 13 True Ways, Jonathan and I are running our Daily Workplace Simulator experiment at my place. Playtesting of the commander went well and I'm processing feedback for the commander and the monk to get new versions of these two classes ready for external testing. Discussion of all the other new character classes has led Jonathan to dig into work on the occultist. He has surprised me with an entirely new type of spellcaster. I'm not using the words 'new type ' lightly, I don't think these mechanics have been tried before. I'm simultaneously excited to have Jonathan working directly on character class design and scared because I'm the GM in the group these days and this occultist is going to spring occasional reality-wrenching ambushes on whoever wears the GM-cap. 

We'll update again on 13 True Ways next week.

Happy Tweet Day

Jonathan had a birthday this weekend, with personalized cupcakes arranged by his girlfriend Stef.

Jonathan had asked for presents to be given to charity in his name instead of given to him, so it was just as well that I couldn't find the present I'd intended to give him. Instead he handed me the slip of paper pictured below, torn out of next year's desk calendar that he clearly means to use as a messaging tool instead of as a calendar.

It's a good collaboration.

Today's Fortunes

The quotes and dialogue that follow are from the last couple weeks, alternating between quotes from 13th Age game sessions and our section of the real world, far from the game table.

The photo above is apparently also from the real world, since it's what I found on the path from my house to my garage-studio this morning, dropped more or less where birds discard the pits after they've feasted on our plum trees.

Special Teams
It's time for CSI: Cleric Sorcerer Investigations.
      How long have you been waiting to say that?
A little while. Not long.
      Except with your autistic bard it's more like the Special Buses Unit.
The big bus . . . is just too much freedom for me.

Movement Fumble
I stepped on a dying elephant seal. And lived.

Alignment
I don't really know what position is correct.
      Snake on top.
What?
      Sssssssssssixty-nine.

1-point background
Yes, it's true. I worked as a phone sex operator for four weeks and didn't realize I was a phone sex operator. They always said just be welcoming and friendly to the people who would call in and it was called welcome wagon so I just talked with people. They called back!

Charity
Oh this is sad. Zombie dad just wanted the chance to take little Crispin fishing.
      Don't worry. It's the Make a Lich foundation for dead children.
'It's Never Too Late.'

Truth
What good is a throne if you don't take it by force?

Royal Family
Wait a minute. How does this work? Do we ALL get to be king?
      Yes. One at a time. For a very short time.
I volunteer to be the last in the succession. Just saying I'm OK with that.

Cat Stuck in Tree for One Night, but Not Two Nights (from a friend's email)
I got out my climbing harness, a helmet, and a back pack.  Up I went.....up and up until I was about 8 feet from the cat.  The tree was swaying and getting thinner and thinner.  It was starting to get dark.  I strapped myself to the tree and my presence gave the cat the encouragement to lower himself to me.  Now i am about 40 or 50 feet off the ground with a wet, scared cat clawed to the tree and it needs to get into the back pack, which is still on my back (This just maybe be the same backpack that saved us from the killer grouse!).   I am not sure how it all happened, but within about 10 minutes I was at the bottom of the tree with the cat in the bag.

Museum Fantasy

Sometimes working at what you love pays off in ways you would never have predicted. I've always loved the Science Fiction Museum at the EMP, even in the early days when it felt like not much more than the seriously-impressive handwritten manuscript of Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon alongside a whole mess of robots.

The Museum has been upgrading the past few years with nifty new permanent exhibits on horror and yes, science fiction. Opening next Friday, Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic completes the triumvirate.

I helped with the brainstorming and planning stages of the fantasy exhibit and worked with the museum's Erin Wheeler to choose the characters for the Archetypes display. Erin piloted the display and brought in characters from media I'm more-or-less-illiterate in (anime, cinema). We handled the writing together with some help from a few other folks.

One of the best aspects of working on the Archetypes display was bringing in characters from writers whose works I love and who might otherwise not have been recognized. Fafhrd as a Barbarian and the Gray Mouser as a Rogue? That might or might not have happened without me. But getting N. K. Jemisin's Nahadoth the Night Lord into the display as an example of the The Earth-Shaker, and using Sethra Lavode from Steven Brust's Dragaera as an example of The Iron Woman? A sweet way to repay a bit of the pleasure I've had reading these books.

Ditto for the painting above, by friends who are two of my favorite artists, Catska and Cory Ench. This painting of Suldrun originally appeared as the cover of Lyonesse on my friend Bob Kruger's electricstory.com site. Now Cory and Catska allowed it be used as Suldrun's illustration in the Damsels section of the Archetypes display. I love it when friends' work comes together.

The exhibit opens on Saturday the 27th, but on Friday the 26th there's an opening gala involving archery, scavenger quests, sword-fighting demonstrations, photos sitting on the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones, and games run by Card Kingdom and WotC. Come sit by the river a spell, wander the gardens, or cast a spell.  

Good news, bad news

The good news is that no one got hurt. As good news goes, that's pretty much the absence of truly terrible news.

Chris Huth's apartment building in Toronto burnt down, making Chris and his girlfriend temporarily homeless.

The link above details part of Pelgrane Press' response to Chris' problem, a fire sale until tomorrow that gives Chris all proceeds. Simon's post also covers details like 13th Age's most likely new publishing date.

Chris has been doing great work on 13th Age. You can see most of the laid out final book (8 of 9 chapters) if you are one of the many people who have pre-ordered the game from Pelgrane Press. Cal Moore and I had sent comments on six of the nine classes in chapter 4 back to Chris and were waiting to comment on the remaining three classes after Chris caught up with the earlier work.

I have more to say about restarting the layout (a job that should go much faster the second time through) and working on 13 True Ways (finishing monk second-draft today, working on battle captain). But I'm going to wait until Monday to give a full assessment. I confess that my personal reaction to this type of setback is to communicate in private and spend time working harder instead of communicating widely. I'll get over my old-fashioned approach next week.

If there are any Pelgrane books you've been waiting to pick up until the right moment, the moment is here.

More next week.

--Rob

new this week

This week the 13th Age campaign I'm running that's testing aspects of Shards of the Broken Sky hit its stride by starting to tell its own unique story. The icons are not all who they seem and the PCs are descended from a former icon whose history and existence has been suppressed for centuries. Pitting the group firmly against an icon they had ambiguous relations with at the start of the campaign has kicked our group into gear. That and getting all the players back, some of us had been too busy to play much, but the picture below is the whole group (minus Jonathan), miming extreme excitement about a single d20 roll. Followed by a more accurate candid shot of the moments following when we all went back to teasing Mike over the result of that d20 roll. (And yes, I'm avoiding naming icons because I'd rather not spoil one angle on Shards of the Broken Sky too much...)

This was also the week when two members of the group reported their first experiments with teaching D&D to the next generation.  Paul's son Silas, 5.5 years, created a wizard. When Paul told him that most D&D characters were part of a group of allies, Silas overcame his disappointment by saying that his friends were ten rangers. Who ride on the backs of ten werewolves. "That makes twenty," says Silas, well on the way to expressing his father's blend of minimaxed storytelling.

Meanwhile Rob D began to pass on the legacy to his boys. In his words,
this past weekend i reffed a marathon d&d meets gamma world session with my boys. aidan beheaded a rampaging ice golem, but the head could not be destroyed — just smashed into smaller and smaller pieces that kept coming. (gave roan a nightmare that night… bad DM/father).

I think it's more like....

GOOD DM.
Bad father.

"T-shirt!" says Paul.

I’m starting over as a blogger here on Blogspot. Livejournal has issues. Blogspot offers synergies. 

The end of the year has been all about finishing projects. I turned over a new card game to the publisher today, finished work on an electronic game design team a couple weeks ago and finished the playtest version of a new tabletop game in-between.

But enough about things that aren’t properly announced yet. My friend Lee Moyer has also managed to finish a long-term project recently and his project is already published. Given that his is a wonderful 2012 literary pin-up calendar, it’s just about the last moment for me to give it a plug. I bought more copies than can be counted on one hand to give as gifts. You should try one, especially since the purchase supports the Heifer International charity and I’ve heard the hopes for the future of the project. 

http://thetinkerspacks.bigcartel.com/product/literary-pin-up-calendars