Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Ginger asks us:

How does music influence your campaigns? As a GM, do you feel there are ‘soundtracks’ for scenes, and as a player, do you perhaps have ‘songs’ for characters? Name three songs that relate to favourite characters or situations.

I’ve never really done the soundtrack thing for my games, although I think that some of my characters have had theme songs. I did do a soundstrack mix for one of Rob’s Vampire RPG campaigns once, picking as theme song for each character and for some of the NPCs. I haven’t listened to the tape in years, but I just found it, so now I’ll have to.

As for three specific songs…let’s see…

1. Alex, from the abovementioned game, was one of my many non-combatant characters in a combat-oriented game. She was a former cheerleader who became a vampire at the age of sixteen, thanks to her junior prom date. She was quite the party girl, and her theme song (predictably) was Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

2. Fiona was a modern 14-year-old who was transported back to the Middle Ages and became a druid. Her theme song was Great Big Sea’s “Ordinary Day.” She was in one of Doug’s games–the first campaign that Ed and I were in together.

3. Bronwyn, another druid, is my character in Rob’s current D & D 3E game. Her theme song would have to be Portishead’s “Roads,” which you may remember from the soundtrack to the move “Tank Girl.” Or not.

Ed and I were going to help a friend of mine move her things into storage today. She’s got an apartment on the south side of Indy, but has been working in Philadelphia for several months now. This morning, we had 8″ of fresh, wet, heavy snow, and there’s more on the way. Fortunately, my friend was able to extend her lease for a month…and is amenable to hiring movers! I’ll just coordinate it for her. I’m ever so glad she’s practical!

No less funny for the subject matter.

This is in response to Dorothea’s comment below, which deserves more than just a comment in return. She notes that I used less cake flour than all-purpose flour in the cake recipe.

The thing about flour is that its ability to absorb liquid varies wildly with the weather–especially the humidity. This is doubly annoying when you realize that baking requires precise measurements that cooking doesn’t. (This is because baking is a lot more like chemistry than cooking; Harold McGee’s books on the science of food are absolutely fascinating, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.) Anyway, I used less flour that day. After you’ve made the same recipe several times, you get a feel for what the batter or dough should look, smell, and feel like when the proportions are correct. You have to be flexible yet precise, which is difficult when you don’t use the same recipe repeatedly, and bloody near impossible the first time you try out a new recipe. For the record, this cake batter is fairly thick when it’s right. It should be pourable, but only just. You should have to spread the batter around the pan a bit.

Flour also varies wildly by region in North America. Cookwise goes into this in detail, but to make a long story short, it has to do with protein content. (Bear in mind that this applies to regionally produced flours, not as much to national brands.) Generally speaking, Canadian flours have a high protein content, whereas flours in the American South have a low protein content. This is largely determined by the kind of wheat that’s used for the flour. Durum wheat is high-protein, for example, which is why it makes good pasta. (In all the books that I’ve read, “semolina” flour is usually recommended for pasta, but I’ve seen “durum semolina,” on package labels, which can be confusing–are durum and semolina two names for the same thing or what? )

Protein affects the “toughness” of baked goods, which is why if you want to eat good homemade bread in North America, then go north; for biscuits and cakes, go south. If memory serves, Cooks Illustrated usually recommends King Arthur flour.

Just as a side note, I love Cooks Illustrated. The organization is based in New England, and as I’ve said before, these are the most anal-retentive cooks on the planet. Seriously; these people could suck the upholstery off furniture. However, when they print a recipe, it works. When they recommend a product, you can be reasonably certain it’s a good one. And the artwork on their back covers is great. (A fabulous little cafe near the lab has them framed, comprising the majority of their decor. I want to do the same for my kitchen, except I’ve got no good place to put them.)

But wait, there’s more. There’s all-purpose flour, bread flour, pastry flour, and cake flour, self-rising flour. All-purpose flour is a compromise product. It’s for people who are only going to buy one kind of flour, which is probably about 95% of the people who even bother to buy flour at all. Bread flour, pastry flour, and cake flour are fairly self-explanatory; the difference is the protein content. Self-rising flour includes leavening agents; either baking powder or baking soda. I don’t remember. Maybe it’s both. At any rate, it’s convenient, but it’s difficult to adjust a recipe if you’re using it, say, in Houston in August. (Insanely high humidity. See above.)

And that’s just a quick overview of basic white flour. I’m not even going to get started on whole-wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour, rice flour, or any of the other non-wheat types. There are plenty of good books out there.

Here’s my all-purpose cake recipe, to go with the icing recipe from earlier this week. This cake is quite small; makes 9 small pieces or six large ones.

I originally downloaded the recipe from alt.cooking. I got hold of it about eight years ago, and I’ve been tinkering with it ever since. The basic recipe is fairly simple.

Ingredients:
1/2 C. milk
8 T. (one stick) of butter–substitute margarine if you must, but don’t tell me about it.
1 egg (for yellow cake) or two egg whites (for white cake)
1 1/2 C. all-purpose flour (7/8 that amount for cake flour, do your own math)
1/2 C. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 C. semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (I use mini-chips, suit yourself)
1/2 t. vanilla powder (or to taste)

NOTE: If you are using liquid vanilla extract, double the amount. If you’re using an actual vanilla bean, scrape out the pod and add it to the liquid ingredients, or infuse it in the warm liquid.

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Butter and lightly flour a single round or square cake pan. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over very low heat. Don’t let the butter get warm enough to cook the egg. While the butter is melting, combine the dry ingredients, leaving out the chocolate chips. When the butter is completely melted, add the milk and the egg. Blend well and stir into the dry ingedients. Beat the batter either by hand or machine just until the lumps are gone. Stir in the chocolate chips. Pour it all into the cake pan and bake 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

I like to frost the cake with Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Ganache, made with bittersweet baker’s chocolate. Chocolate buttercream frosting is also good, as is milk chocolate ganache–although that’s a bit too sweet for my tastes. It’s also fine without any frosting.

One obvious variation is leaving out the chocolate chips. I’ve substituted cocoa powder for flour in various amounts, and it works fairly well at 3/4 C. flour and 3/4 C. cocoa. However, there’s no shortage of chocolate cake recipes out there, so if chocolate cake is what you want, you might do better to try another recipe, because this variaiton makes a VERY rich cake.

From my husband’s co-worker, Brian:

“Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordian.”

Overheard at work this morning:

“I have Some-heimer’s–it’s not Alzheimer’s yet.”

In the most recent Game WISH, I mentioned that I played a pixie non-combatant in a combat-oriented campaign. The challenge for me, as a player, was figuring out how my character was going to work with a group. (Another character once shoved her into a large lock so that she could open it from the inside, as it were!) It turned out that there are a lot of advantages in being a five-inch-pixie with the psionic equivalent of superpowers. (It’s important to note that the campaign in question went on long enough for us to achieve reasonably high levels.) One of them is that she only got shoved into a lock once. There are a lot of fascinating, non-standard uses for the “psychic surgery” ability.

So, let’s spin off a discussion on the topic of playing a character who doesn’t fit into his/her group. How do you make it work? Why do this in the first place? Anyone have a good war (or anti-war) story?

Game WISH asks

Do you prefer to build a character with a unique concept, or do you prefer a simple or more standard concept to start with? Do you find that your preference correlates with a preference for elaborate initial backgrounds or with background development in play? If you?re a GM, do you find unique-concept characters easy or hard to GM for? What about playing alongside them?

Characters with a unique or unusual concept or background are fun to play, no doubt. I’ve done this in the past, and the one problem that I run into is that I sometimes end up with a character who starts a game with a personal agenda that may end up at cross-purposes with the goal of the GM or campaign. It’s taken me a while, but I hope that I’m moving away from that tendency. I still like to give my characters an interesting background, because I tend to get good plot that way. However, I try to nip a pre-set personal agenda in the bud. That doesn’t mean that one doesn’t develop in game, but then at least it develops in game, if you understand what I mean. As far as a correlation with background goes, I think that if you have an unusual or unique character concept, some level of complexity in the initial background to explain the character’s raison d’etre. Conversely, an elaborate initial background may result in an unusual or unique character, although I suspect that the correlation is weaker in this direction.

There’s no question that standard characters are easier for a GM to handle in a game-mechanics kind of way. Also, “standard” doesn’t have to mean “boring”; a good player should be able to make any character interesting. That said, I don’t really have a problem as a GM or a player with non-standard characters, so long as they aren’t munchkin-y.

From a GM point of view, you can use the non-standard features of a character to drive plot elements. For example, if you have a character with a secret identity, make the player work to keep from blowing his/her cover. Give him/her a good scare with a background check of some sort. If the cover is blown, this can result in a major plot element. Now, a lot of this perspective is a result of the fact that I like games with twisty plots and oodles of character development. Another nasty little GM trick is to take something that the player intended as an advantage and turn it into a disadvantage–or vice versa, which is less nasty but just as much fun. Doug did this to us once; our characters had wings, but no innate flying ability. You had to take the skill “flying” (analagous to swimming) if you wanted to be able to move around effectively. This had the amusing side effect of one character getting the nickname “Lead-ass,” because no matter how many points she put into the flying skill, she’d always blow critical rolls. This lead to some pretty cool outcomes, and she made it work by playing the character as someone who only succeeded when she wasn’t trying too hard.

From a player POV, playing a non-standard character can help you develop into a better player. In a Palladium RPG campaign, I played a pixie mind mage in a group of combat monsters. The character was not, technically, non-standard for the game but was non-standard for the group. In a combat-oriented campaign, I had to figure out how to make a combat-averse character effective. Another example was in a Rifts campaign, in which I went for the baby dragon as a character. The big disadvantage in that game was that dragons attract a lot of attention, so if the group wanted to do anything surreptitiously (not an uncommon occurence) or even just go into town, my character had to shapechange to avoid attracting a lot of attention. I ended up using the shapechanging power more than any other power or ability that the character had.

Finally–and this comes from both POVs–it’s up to the GM to integrate the non-standard character into the campaign, and the player to cooperate with that effort. This goes back to some of my previous comments on party balance and game balance, to some extent. Namely, if one player dominates the game by virtue of her/his inherent non-standardness, it’s not as much fun for the rest of the group–not only the other players, but the GM as well.

Dorothea made mention of her difficulties with cake frosting. She’s been making hers with egg whites, which I’ve heard of but never tried personally, as egg whites tend to be fussy to work with even under the best circumstances.

I had been making buttercream frosting for years, but frankly, it’s a pain to do, even if you have an electric mixer. If you’ve never done it, basically, it involves beating as much powedered sugar as possible into a quantity of softened butter. This is the base recipe. You can add unsweetened cocoa powder to make it chocolate, or add in other flavorings such as vanilla or any other flavored extract. However, it generally involves a lot of patience, a strong arm, and a high sugar tolerance.

The basis of the following recipe has been unintentionally contributed by Nigella Lawson, entirely without her knowledge or permission. It’s from her book How To Be a Domestic Goddess, which is fabulous if you like her show. (The book is written very much like the way she talks on Nigella Bites. If cookbooks with personality annoy you, read something else.)

The only change I’ve made from the version in How To Be a Domestic Goddess was to add ? teaspoon of vanilla powder instead of using a vanilla bean. If you prefer to use the bean, steep it in the warm cream and remove it before you add the chocolate.

In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons of heavy cream, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla powder. Warm over low heat. Roughly chop 5 ounces of baker’s chocolate. When the cream is warm, whisk in the chopped chocolate until it’s smooth. Set the ganache aside to cool slightly, but not so much that you can’t pour it. When it’s cool, pour over whatever it is you wanted to put it on.

This ganache doesn’t have that massive sugar hit that buttercream frosting does. It’s also easier to make and supremely easier to work with, in that the less you fuss with it after it’s on the cake, the better it looks. It becomes wonderfully smooth and glossy as it sets up.

I used this very recipe on my mom’s birthday cake last August, knowing full well that she normally prefers frosting. It was a huge hit, and it’s entirely possible that I’ll be tired of making it long before she runs out of birthdays. I’ve never tried making it with white chocolate, but expect that would be good, too.

I love sushi, but it requires a certain amount of time and deftness which I don’t always have. I came up with this to satisfy my sushi cravings. It’s vegan (which means it’s also pareve) for those who are keeping track. Unless you opt to put cooked shrimp on it, which makes it neither pareve no vegetarian, but very tasty.

Cook 1 cup of medium-grain rice in 2 cups of water, per usual. While the rice is cooking, toast a sheet of nori, and cut or tear into bite-sized pieces. (I folded it quarters lengthwise and used kitchen scissors to cut it into ribbons; very easy) Put on the bottom of the plate or dish. Cut 2 medium carrots, one peeled and seeded cucumber (I cut the cucuber in half lengthwise and use a teaspoon to scoop out the seeds), and one avocado into bite-sized pieces. Toast some white sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat for a couple of minutes, if you’re feeling really cheffy. Finally, add a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar to a scant 1/4 cup of rice vinegar and stir to dissolve.

After the rice is done, stir in the rice vinegar and let cool to room temperature. Spread the rice on top of the nori, and top with the carrots, cucumber, and avocado. Throw in some pickled ginger, if you like. Top with sesame seeds. Dissolve wasabi paste in soy sauce to taste, and pour over.

I suspect this would also work with various other sushi fillings, but I haven’t tried it.