Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Men With Brooms, starring Paul Gross (Benton Fraser from Due South), Molly Parker, and Leslie Nielsen, is a very Canadian movie about four members of the Long Bay (Ontario) Curling Club, reunited after their former coach dies and posthumously exhorts them (via video and audio tape) to re-form the team and win the Golden Broom. The production is very much Paul Gross’s creation, as he starred in it, wrote it, directed it, and even pitched in on some of the storyboards. Although it’s his first feature film, he did write and executive-produce several episodes of the third season of Due South, so he’s not a complete beginner. It’s got a foregone conclusion, as is any underdog sports movie I’ve ever seen. However, the characters are interesting and the performances are excellent. While the plot’s not terribly exciting, it avoids being either saccharine or juvenile, and comes off as enjoyable.

Footlite Musicals’ current production is Camelot, (based on T. H. White’s The Once and Future King) starring David Wood as Arthur, Cindy Johnson as Catherine Zeta-Jones Guenevere, and Nathan Welch as an occasionally French-accented Lancelot. Chris Arthur was a very well-cast Mordred, and looked exceptionally fey (I can easily see him as Puck in the next local production of Midsummer Night’s Dream–hint, hint); certainly more so than Claire Wilcher’s Morgan, despite a fascinating black chiffon-chain-and-peacock-feather costume and makeup job. Chris Arthur, in fact, did a very good job with what is bascially a very one-dimensional and unsympathetic character, and commanded my attention more than any other actor in the second act. Catherine Zeta-Jones Guenevere comes off as a manipulative twit, and her scene with Lancelot in the second act seemed entirely out of the blue–despite the fact that the audience knows what’s coming–because there didn’t seem to be any interaction, let alone passion, between the two actors earlier in the show. David Wood does almost too good a job showing Arthur’s uncertainties; one wonders how anything ever got done with Merlyn stuck in a tree. And speaking of David Baker’s Merlyn, I was sad to see him go so early in the show, even though I knew it was coming. (Note to costume designer: Merlyn’s costume is distractingly loud when it drags on the stage. Hem it or replace the lining!)

According to the directors’ notes in the program, the production was intended to convey a more “stark and primitive,” fifth-century Britain, “within the framework of the script and score provided.” Granted, the script and score do contain anachronisms. However, I can’t say that the designers did much to further the directors’ goal, as the costume were not only wildly anachronistic, but came from a variety of periods. Perhaps as compenation, the set was exceptionally generic. Overall, my opinion of the production is mixed…as was more or less every aspect of the production. It’s definitely not the best show I’ve seen there.

Disclaimer: This production was not discussed, debated, chattered or nattered about, or otherwise spoken of with any Encore Awards judge who may have been present.

After having to rearrange Thanksgiving plans a couple of times, Ed and I decided that this year, we were going to lock the doors, draw the curtains, and spend T-day watching football and/or movies, and eating pizza. Alone.

One small problem. There wasn’t a single pizza place open in our part of town. I ended up playing beat the clock, rushing out to the supermaket before it closed for frozen pizza. Doctored up with some extra cheese, it was pretty good. And there’s not a single scrap of leftover turkey.

BBC Headline: New Corporate Abuse Laws Pledged

Reality: New Corporate Laws Abuse Pledged

For those who even remember that there was going to be one…the Lunar Ellipse will launch in late January/early February of 2004. I apologize for having put it off for so long, but life is what happens when you’re trying to get things done, and it’s be very lively ’round here of late.

For those who want to get a head start on builing their “Jules Verne deathtraps,” as one player called them, GURPS Space and GURPS Steampunk will be useful. I now quote, entirely without permission, from pages 83 and 84 of Steampunk:

The heroes of Victorian novels went into space or visited planets by an amazing variety of methods, from being shot out of huge guns to astral projection–but not by rockets

An example of non-rocket propulsion is the Solar Steamer.

Based on reactionless thrusters created by advanced etheric science, the solar steamer opens up the inner solar system to human exploration. Under steady acceleration, its travel time is 25 days X (square root of distance in AU), where 1 AU=93,000,000 miles. It is a deep space craft with no landing gear or aerodynamic features…an onboard greenhouse provides life support for 36…and produces half their food; meat and dairy products must be carried in storage areas. Lead-acid batteries provide 360,000 kWs of backup power. An operating table and a complete mini-workshop are available for emergencies. The ship has heavy compartmentalization. A three-man airlock provides access to the outside.

Of course, Mr. Edison has handily taken care of the rocketry question, but do feel free to explore alternate methods of propulsion, as boosting large things into space from the surface of the Earth takes massive amounts of rocket fuel. (Nations with orbital, lunar, or extraplanetary bases may be able to take advantage of a low gravity environment for building. However, the Ellipsoids still have to leave from Earth.) Scientific American and Discover magazines may provide you with some good ideas.

It’s not that I grabbed my gym bag instead of the laptop case this morning. It’s that I didn’t figure out what was wrong until I couldn’t decide whether to look for cables or change clothes.

Happy birthday to my dad, who shares his birthday with Zachary Taylor (one of our more forgettable presidents), Scott Joplin, Henri de Toulouse-Latrec, William F. Buckley Jr., the anniversary of Jack Ruby’s assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Tasmanian discovery of Dutch sailors.

Indiana–most of Indiana–does not use Daylight Savings Time. Oh, there are a few counties up in the northwest corner of the state (near Chicago) that are on Central Daylight Time, and some other counties in the southeast corner of the state (near Louisville) that are on Eastern Daylight Time. The rest of the state stays on Eastern Standard Time year ’round. That means that Indianapolis is on the same time as New York in the winter and the same time as Chicago in the summer.

Confused yet? This situation has given birth to the term “slow time,” which is classic regional vernacular. It’s how people in earlier time zones refer to the time in the rest of the state during the time that they–the southeastern counties–are on Eastern Daylight time.

The practical (if such a word can even be said to apply in this case) upshot of the situation is that part of the morning commute takes place under nighttime driving conditions. Schoolkids have to wait for their buses in the dark. You may ask why our legislature hasn’t gotten its act together and put the entire state in the same time zone. The answer is that the farmer’s lobby apparently shoots down the proposition every time it’s brought up. I have no idea what advantage farmers get out of the situation, but it’s bloody inconvenient for the rest of us.

Still confused? How about this–sunrise was at 7:39 AM today–Indianapolis time. If my old high school is still on the same schedule, that means that the kids had been in class for nine minutes already by the time the sun came up. I”ll have been at work for about half an hour by the time it starts to get light. Traffic will have been backing up at the usual bottlenecks long enough for hundreds, if not thousands, of frustrated commuters to ignore the entire sunrise. And if the farmers absolutely, positively must get up and milk the cows before dawn, we could set the clocks back an hour and it would still be dark out at 5:00 AM or whatever ungodly early hour they get up.

Just finished reading Erik Durchmeid’s The Weather Factor: How Nature Has Changed History, which contains an account what may well be the only instance in which cavalry captured a fleet (French and Dutch, respectively, mid-1790s). Other accounts include the sinking of the Mongol invasion fleet during its attack on Japan in 1281 (taifun), the complete destruction of Roman legions in the forests of Germany (fog), how Tecumseh was ultimately defeated in the War of 1812 (fog again), and General Winter’s defense of Russia against both Napoleon and Hitler (Russian winters–need I say more). I’m a huge alternate history buff, and this sort of situation interests me. The book itself is well-researched and the final chapter (Mekong Delta/Vietnam War) is based on the author’s personal experience as a war correspondent. However, the going is slow at times, and parts of it are a bit of a wade. I was also a bit disappointed by very military focus of the book–the only non-war chapter is about the Irish potato famine, which actually seems almost out of context with the rest of the book. One last caveat: if you’re looking for scientific information about the weather, look somewhere else.

Thanks to Arref for picking up the slack with a two-parter on this one.

For GMs: when you plan or play your NPCs, do you intentionally leave out some of the story for each? Do you hold something back and let the Players imagine the rest or do you present NPCs from the core of who they are? Is time a factor–a short game or one-shot not allowing much character depth? Does NPC expertise shine through? Or are there character foibles that cloud the better qualities of the NPC? Are there short-cuts to get this across?

Normally, for major NPCs, I start with an outline of a background, and fill in the details as necessary. I like to make players work at finding things out, whether it’s about each others’ characters, the NPCs, or information in game. My minor NPCs tend to be very sketchy, which did come back to bite me in the Grand Ellipse, when Shirley recognized Thug #3 as a former client, and I had to come up with an explanation for his presence both in London and in the current situation PDQ. Thank goodness it was PBeM! As for NPC-expertise shining through, I think it should, but not in a way that’s forced. Going back to the Grand Ellipse, one of the major NPCs (Esperanza, who is a native Spanish-speaker) turned out to be a linguistic prodigy. However, she’d been with the relevant PCs for several weeks (game time) before she surprised them by speaking fluently in the local language at the train station in Madras (after listening to several native speakers on the train for a week or so). I tried to lead up to revealing her talent by having her learn English very quickly, and diminishing her accent rapidly (and that’s not easy to do in writing!). As for the last two questions they relate qute nicely; character foibles are a great way to indicate to your players that all may not be as it seems.

For Players: Do you rely on the NPC as presented, or are you usually looking “between the lines” to figure the elements that are hold-backs? Do you care that the NPCs might have as many conflicted qualities as the PCs? Should a game really revolve around the PCs in every respect, including a certain ‘artificial’ quality to the secondary cast? Or are you happier if the NPCs are ’sticky’?

Because of the way I operate when I run a game, I would be disappointed if the major NPCs were as simple as they’re presented. Good NPCs ought to be well-rounded, and surprise the players every now and again. Relegating an NPC to secondary cast is a mistake, I think, because they are very much the medium through which the GM steers the game. They can be just as important–or even more important–than the characters. As a player, I prefer not to feel as if the world revolves around the PCs, unless they are sufficiently powerful that it would follow logically.