Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I suppose this was inevitable.

One of my very favorite things about Dorothea as a player is her well-developed sense of paranoia. Mere moments after I announced Thomas Edison’s untimely demise in a Singapore back alley, I received the following:

Dorothea: Oh, and if you frame Hannah for Edison’s murder I will kick your butt the next time I see you, you annoyingly clever GM you.

Me: Now that you mention it, where was the lovely and talented Mrs. Armitage on the night of July 19th, 1899?

Dorothea:You rat bastard.

Nice try, but flattery gets you nowhere in this game.

And the first thing that Cathy said to me at lunch today was “So, less than a week into the game and you’ve already killed Thomas Edison.” True. But only in the one timeline.

In the Presence of Mine Enemies is Harry Turtledove’s latest. It’s set several decades after WWII, in an alternate timeline where the United States stayed out of World War II, which the Germans won. Twenty years later, the United States fought against the Greater Reich and lost, in WWIII. Germany and Japan control the great majority of the globe.

The story itself revolves around a group of Jews hidden in Berlin itself. One of the main viewpoint characters is a ten-year-old girl, Alicia, who has only just found out that she is Jewish. The story opens with the death of the ancient Fuhrer Kurt Haldweim, and the acension of a younger, reform-minded Fuhrer.

I found this book extremely difficult to read, because Turtledove has done such a good job of capturing the furtiveness and desperation that intrude on the Jewish characters’ every waking minute. The setting itself is chilling enough, and he’s managed to convey the atmosphere of an established fascist culture so well. The plot didn’t hold a whole lot of surprises for me, but the story is a great ride.

Ginger asks

What?s your favorite game system, and why? What things don?t you like about it? How much do you have to ?jigger? it from published rules and why?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I am not a game mechanic, never have been, never will be. If a system is playable, I’ll work with it. That said, I like systems that are simple and have a lot of resource material. Two of the simplest ones I’ve encountered are Teenagers from Outer Space and Toon. You can create a character quickly, the mechanics are easy to learn, easy to work with, and very straightforward. Also, both systems allow a lot of room for player and GM creativity. Both are comedy games, and in my experience (YMMV) comedy games really bring role-playing and plot to the fore.

My main complaints are, respectively, that TFOS went all manga in the second edition, and that the source material for Toon is hard to come by. First-edition TFOS was brilliant, and it’s what I use when I run the game. I’ve been to high school in California, and I know of what I speak. The only thing I’ve brought in from 2E are a couple of gadgets (I must admit, I couldn’t resist the popcorn grande) and a couple of the alien powers. As for Toon, I keep hoping that SJ games will put out more and more stuff (a book on settings would be nice–underwater, outer space, etc.) but I can cope.

Because the systems are sufficiently flexible for my needs, I very rarely feel the need to tinker with them. Most of the tinkering that I do is simply adding in skills (Run in Heels and Smile Winningly come to mind), items, traits, and so on. Honestly, I can’t see a simple system working as well in a non-comedy genre, but if anyone manages to come up with one, I’ll be the first to give it a go.

Cathy has kindly consented to let me poke her with sharp objects teach me a bit about fencing. In typical Cathy fashion, she’d told me that she had fenced in college, but didn’t actually bother to mention that she’d been captain of the women’s fencing team. I, on the other hand, haven’t put my hands on any kind of weapon since my single semester of archery in 1989. (What can I say–I’m a hands-on kinda girl.) Eventually, this is going to be fun, but until hen, I hope that she doesn’t get bored and I don’t get perforated.

Ed’s new job is doing help-desk work. Yesterday, he set a new company record spending nine and a half hours on the phone yesterday with a single customer with the world’s slowest, least-reliable dialup service and not enough brains to wet a dish rag. There is no way I could even begin to to cope with that level of stupidity. Not even close. And nine and a half hours is way too much time to ponder questions like “How did this person manage to get hired in the first place?” and “Once you’ve been on the phone with someone for seven hours, do you know her well enough to ask her not to reproduce?”

The Lunar Ellipse has begun. May the best team win, and may every team have a good time.

Never, ever, look at yourself in the full-length, wall-to-wall mirror when you’re in the middle of a cardio workout. Nobody looks good when they’re hot, sweaty, and dressed for the gym.

The latest project, a software manual, is coming along nicely. Got back the first section’s worth of changes from the client today, which ended up being a lot less work than the amount of red ink indicated at first. I love it when the client has legible handwriting, avoids cryptic abbreviations, explains exactly what he wants, and knows how to spell. I never thought this would happen to me.

3. Tiger.
Powerful, freedom-loving, restless, passionate,
magnetic, courageous, seductive, and sensitive.
You might have mood swings a lot and be kind of
intense. You’re probably a natural leader and
quite ambitious. You can be: too sensitive,
impulsive, and bossy.

Whereas my actual Chinese zodiac sign is the boar.