Wings Over the Pyre

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: KMFDM - Xtort (2007 Remastered) - Craze (Squid's Redoubt)

I love Google Calendar. I really do. Combined with some other life methods changes, it’s making it far easier to keep up with my life.

Next up, if you want to know what’s up with the krewe and where we’ll be at Dragon*Con, possibly to join us, you can subscribe to seeing the schedule here:

Look, does anything get any easier than having your times and places to be all laid out for a Con? What time, where it is, and you can even set events to remind you on your cell! Life gets little better.

If you want to get in on this, let us know and we’ll pencil in your event or appearance for the krewe. You could have us appear at your party, just for the cost of a drink or, in my case, a cute schoolgirl!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Cephalic Carnage - Xenosapien - Molting (Squid's Redoubt)

I’ve written of Dragonstaff before.

The original idea was a totally over-the-top fantasy setting, roughly inspired by the kind of insanity one finds in DragonLance, but expressed through Capes mechanics. The possibilities for comedy and pathos were always massive in such a thing and the original plan was just to go the whole 9-yards and let the madness flow.

But we can do better.

At Dragon*Con, I plan to go somewhere out even beyond that far outpost of limitation. Just as Marvel has created the Ultimate line of comics to bring their characters into the 21st century, and largely managed to screw up everything that made the originals cool, so I plan to bring Dragonstaff into the modern era and screw up everything — OK, no one but point5b and I really saw it, so no one can really be horribly disappointed, but that’s not the point! The point is that I’m fully intending to bring the most bizarre mix of crazed over-the-top-ness ever to a gaming convention.

I want people playing in the RPGA Living City games to look over and wonder what in th’Hell we could possibly be playing … and how they can get in on it! I want it to get rowdy and disturbing and bizarre by turns. Sometimes all at once.

We can do this.

Ultimate Dragonstaff takes what few limits there were on the Dragonstaff setting and throws it out the window. Ultimate Dragonstaff will make Exalted look like pikers playing in a sandbox. Ultimate Dragonstaff takes a look at Nobilis and scoffs at such a low-level campeign!

OK, maybe not that last one. But close!

Ever wanted to play Fistandantilous / Raistlin? How about The Scarlet Empress? Drizzt Do’Urden? Elric of Melnibone? Conan? John Carter of Mars? John Galt? Elminster the Wizard? The Black Adder? Arthur? Lancelot? The Lady of the Lake? That Guy on the Dead Wagon?

You can do it all in Ultimate Dragonstaff, and probably should!

But you can’t have a Capes game without a Comics Code, the list of things that cannot come to pass … and, which, incidentally, the villains and sometimes heroes of the piece try to do constantly, since almost achieving them gives Story Tokens as a pay-out.

So, let’s rough a little something out. This can be refined as we go, but as a first pass:

• Characters with Powers cannot be permenantly killed.

  The distinction here is any character with Powers. That’s heroes and villains alike. Falling off a cliff to your “certain doom” pointedly does not count as being permenently dead, nor is being left in a deathtrap. If neither of those happened, there’d be no fantasy novels!

• Exemplars cannot be permenantly killed.

  Well, if we’re giving Powered folk the out, might as well give it to Exemplars. This pretty much just means your Exemplars will be constantly in some kind of danger, as folks go for the Gloating pay-off.

• The root conflict between characters and their Exemplars can never be resolved.

  • Corollary: Unspoken love can neither be revealed nor abandoned.
  • Corollary Exemption: A character in love with a villain must make it repeatedly, brutally obvious to everyone but the target of their love.

  Those pesky root conflicts. It’s just no fun if Aunt Mae tells Peter she’s OK with his web-slinging and hires a goon army to protect her from his rampaging rogues’ gallery, and neither is it fun when the cute red-headed wench the burly Adventurer is smitten with but too shy to tell has it all ruined if he confesses his undying devotion like a sane, smart person. Just doesn’t happen. Ergo, can’t.

  Why the thing with the villainous love interest, you ask? Because it’s necessary.

• The world cannot be destroyed.

  Pretty obvious stuff, that. Can’t blow up the setting. Note what’s not covered, though: political revolutions, murdering heads of state, ruining economies … and that you’re intended to be playing characters that can do such things reasonably on a whim. Feeling a bit unconstrained yet?

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Slainte Mhath - Foxhunter's

My slideshow presentation pitching a new Superheroes track at Dragon*Con is up on SlideShare. Thank you nyxsis for doing most of the heavy lifting in the design and content, frankly.

What is SlideShare, you say? It's YouTube for PowerPoint / slide presentations, with an embedded Flash display player that does a decent job (though not a perfect one; it strips out pretty much all of the cool focus tracking / presentation bits). However, it'll do for just getting things up online in a place they can be shared with folk, which might be good for Heather and her medical school lot, who do a lot of slide-showing ...

Anyway, the proposal's up and Starchild is supposed to be making sure the right folk see it. We shall see if I hear anything.

Current Location: Hyatt Regency, Atlanta, GA
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Mint Royale - Rest Your Head

After much work, cropping, and the occasional colour editing, the few photos we got from Dragon*Con 2006 are up on my Flickr site.

Yes, there are a lot of pictures of hot chicks in scanty clothes.

No, I never once had the camera in my hand.

So, nyah.

Current Location: 33°45'40.24"N, 84°23'7.75"W
Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Ookla the Mok - Stranger in the Mirror (live)

Ugh, back from Con. Lived. Organized.

Decided that I need my own track devoted to Superheroes, since the Comics track had two and only two superheroic-focused panels. That's it. No Spider-Man, no X-Men, nothing but a one-off Superman panel and an Avengers panel, of all things.

Avengers.

So, yeah, we'll be putting together a PowerPoint presentation over the next month or so and looking to get it in front of Pat. I already have two staffers picked out (Eric the .5b seemed to enjoy Conning in Hell (Alpha Company CO), and nyxsis will make a fine XO in getting things together and organized.) That is, if I get it. If not, I'll try to get on Independent Film Festival or SFLit, both of whom I'd fit in well with.

I either picked up a case of Con Crud that no one else in the room has managed to develop symptoms for, or discovered a new allergy to goose down and finally hit overwhelm on my ritual Zyrtec dosage. Regardless, right now I'm miserable.

Drugs. I need bigger drugs.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: predatory
Current Music: Nickelback - Animals

Its that time again.

Its go time!

Well, alright, its not quite go time, since I'm the only one up, quite yet. But not even lingering Ambien and Zyrtec effects could drive me far enough down into sleep to stay there a full eight hours. And my father gets ready for work loudly, right next to my room.

But, nevertheless ...

Go time.

Current plan is to be onsite at the hotel around noonish, and get Cairo set up ASAP. We have until 5p or so to finish that and get stuff moved into the hotel room, then ...

Eric the .5b flies into town! Voot!

Grab him, throw him into the shower to wash off the flight-gel, hook up with nyxsis once her work is done for the day, and the game is well and truly on.

Anyone that has my cell number knows how to get me. The rest of you mooks'll just have to use my email, which I'll try to remember to check while I'm out.

If you're onsite, I'll be the short, tentacled thing with the flat-top haircut and a penetrating stare, possibly playing Let's Kill in the corner.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: Momus - I Want You. But I Don't Need You

Dragon*Con is coming.

Let me repeat that with the proper emphasis and effect. Let me turn on the distortion mic.

Dragon*Con is coming.

And, of course, just like every year, I really, really want to run some kind of game. Predictably. These things just happen.

On the up-side, the move toward "antagonistic narrativism," as it were, means that I can actually get to play as much as I run. The advantage thereof is incalculable, because, damn-it, I want to get to enjoy the give-and-take as much as the players. Ergo, I'm pleased thereby.

The question becomes, thus, what should I run?

Luckily, I think I have a plan. There are two things I really, really want to run.

• Capes

Well, it is kind of obvious, right? Adversarial narrativism, relatively fast character generation, you get to play with index cards and my hungus oversized d6s. Its an utter win.

Setting: Demon City: Atlanta. If you haven't read the script, well, probably all for the best given I wrote it six years ago and my writing has increased at least marginally since then. But still, probably a good background briefing if you're interested in playing. Just assume that none of the events in the script are important to your characters, and we're talking a whole new side-story. Call it ...

Megalanta.

Well, I like it.

I'll probably be looking to run this on Friday afternoon, around 2p or so, after our lunch schedule, in Open Gaming. If any of my readers think they're interested in getting in-game, let me know and think about a few characters you think might be interesting. Hades knows there's enough info linked from my blog to do chargen beforehand if you want, or just catch me on-site, or wait 'til the game. Whatevah.

• My Life With Master

Oh, come off it. You guys know I've been dying to run this, forever. While it doesn't do adversarial narrativism, as such, its so formulaicly structured and so mechanically simple that I don't think it'll be much of a hardship to run.

Besides, who more than I was born to play the role of Master to a group of horrid, socially and physically warped Minions?

Right, s'what I thought.

Again, we're looking at an early afternoon session, Saturday around 2p, Open Gaming, yadda yadda. We will be doing all chargen in this session, because chargen in MLwM is so bloody fast and easy.

Both games will probably have a max run-time of 3.5hrs or so, simply because nothing is so much fun I intend to miss my scheduled dinner for it, and nothing is so important that I can't pick it back up after dinner if, you know, there's no concert or other evening occupation that seeks me out.

So, who's up for gaming?

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Cramps, The - Sado County Auto Show (Squid's Redoubt)

"I'm off to Dragon*Con,
I'm leaving my Dark Lair
To flay the human race!

Our ConRaiders!"

Yes, off to D*C in a few minutes here, and then ... I'll figure that out later.

Current Mood: enraged
Current Music: String Quartet, The - Awake (Squid's Redoubt)

Today has been quite a day.

Up at 9a, thanks to my good buddy Dub / Jon calling to say he's inbound. That puts me at roughly 5 hours of rough, imperfect sleep because my subconscious is stressing over exactly where my bloody kilts are, and I'm off my usual sleep schedule. I know I have to be at the airport around 2p or so to pick up Mike's Britgirl and Craig, so we hustle off to Topolino's, enjoy the rapturous food, then I get a deeply and badly needed pedicure.

Incidently, a pedicure is absolute bliss. If its good enough for kings and emperors, its barely good enough for me. Besides, how often do I get to have attractive Asian women kneeling before me for half an hour at a time?

I digress. Regardless, I finish up at Gwinnett Place, hit the road with Dub following the Kowai, and arrive at the airport comfortably on time ... to find Dub waiting for us with a pained expression.

Turns out due to miscalculation on Craig's part, the Brits missed their flight and are on one two hours later. Fine. There goes the post-pick-up mall run, but its livable. We adjourn to upstairs in Houlihan's and I sip on a few Cokes, as my batteries are starting to fade. Geeking on Disney story design and web comics, we blow off two hours pretty handily.

Where are the Brits? They're not in the terminal. They're not ... apparently ... anywhere. Now we're kicking around, one side of the terminal to the other (not inconsiderable, if you've ever seen Hartsfield). Up and down, around and 'round. We can't even find the traces of their arrival.

Its at this point I can feel my moorings start letting go and my flesh irradiated with the mighty hatred which drives me.

To summarize in short, they finally burrowed out of the guts of Customs on the other side of the airport about 2.5 hours after we came down from our drink. Rush-hour traffic is well underway.

I'm tired.

So, back into the car, thud through the car parking attendant, and hit the highway. The HOV lane is relatively staid, considering, and we make decent, if not amazing time. The fuel-pod is getting low, and I figure I'll pick up some gas at the QT near the house on arrival.

Please note, when I left that morning and drove around through town beforehand, there was no indication of anything but the usual. By the time I got home, there wasn't a gas station within 5mi which had a drop of gas available.

Re-read that again.

Here I am, surfing on fumes, and this ludicrous insanity is something else to put up with.

I get everyone in, and ensconced in the den briefly, then started cranking out rough planning to actually get my tentacles on some gas. This is very much like trying to force spaghetti through a wire mesh strainer; not impossible, but not the easiest thing imaginable. Finally, it occurred to me that as one moves away from the central transport arteries, accessibility should increase. I stole some gas from the lawnmower for my ride, and Dub, Mike and I set out in search of fuel sources. Imagine a paleolithic hunting party seeking the mammoth; that pretty much covers it.

Needless to say I found it, at the Grayson Kroger gas pumps, which were likewise being mobbed, but Kroger was wise enough to station folks at the entrances to orchestrate an orderly procession through.

Incidently, this probably solidifies my shopping with them for the foreseeable future. Insight and action earns my coin.

We fueled. I'll pay $3.20 for premium, folks. Way better than some of the rumoured $5+ costs.

By this time, it was closing on 8p, and there was no way we'd get home and go out to dinner before I had to be on shift, so we grabbed some boneless pork ribs, chicken, and pita bread, and headed home for Mike to cook.

Oh, yes, I have to work tonight. I expected to sneak in a nap before the nightmare started. Guess what?

Mike put together some Greek ribs and panko chicken while Dub and I did our net.duties, and we fed a bit.

Now, everyone else is crashed out in the den, on couches and floors, while I'm on duty for another [checks] 8 hours. Which, by the end, will put me at 25 hours awake.

Then I'll goddamned well get some sleep, or the piles of bodies will begin to stink in a couple days of this weather.

I'm almost tempted to say "I can't believe the stupidity of people that pushed this gas panic," but unfortunately I can. Basic principles of economics are lost on these Luddites. Basic systems of understanding are wasted. I'm sure they were taught, its simply that the bulk of mankind of congenitally incapable of learning, and for that reason among others must be razed, destroyed, burned by cleansing flame.

I fully intend to bring that flame.

But first ... Dragon*Con.

I hear a camera crew will be on site at Trader Vic's Thursday night, for those who've decided to accompany us to the luau. Remember, its $40 a person for the vast pleasure of watching me barely contain my hatred and despisal of humanity, so make sure you get to the waiting room at 6.30p and be sure to short, "We wish to live, Squid!" upon seeing me so that I know not to destroy you. Immediately.

If you want to know the full schedule, I'll put it in here:

( Schedules Are Good For You )

If you'll be at D*C, find me and enjoy watching the bile level of the world's only living squid-demon as the inevitable meltdown occurs and possible bio-warfare as I explode messily, leaving only a noxious residue of sleep-deprived hate.

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Suckadelic - The Malace of Mezmeron (Squid's Redoubt)

Y'know, I think I'm offended by this quiz, which is no small feat.

Look at me. I'm not exactly the world's least geeky guy. I'm public about my vast collection of war games and board games, my obsession with RPG design, my virulent political distaste for damn near anything ... its not exactly without geek-nature. But the author of this quiz figures unless you're obsessively twinking about sleeping in the Con Suite, or creepily dug in with the fan tracks, you must have a terrible distaste for the lot.

Well, I kind of do, but that's another issue.

Not another question about gaming, which I'd likely get sucked into answering on, simply due to my inclinations (though I'm scrupulous about hygine). No goth-mocking, which is worthy of a whole thread unto itself. I mean, you're talking about a tightly limited and woefully under-sighted view of D*C.

With such a vast raft of mockery to be had, why do anything half-assed? One has to wonder.