Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I’m honored and touched to have been mentioned by name in this one. And thanks to everyone for their support and sympathy!

How do you go about finding a new gaming group?

I’ve tried a couple of ways. The least successful (not tried recently) is to date gamers until you find a group you like. I don’t recommend this method, as in my experience, it tends to make your gaming life AND your love life more complicated.

The way I met most of the people I currently game with (and I am gaming again–woo-hoo!) is by going to a meeting of the Bloomington Role-Playing Game Association back when I was a lowly undergrad at Indiana University. I’ve been gaming with Rob, Dorothea, and David on and off ever since. Others have come and gone, some have come and stayed. In my little world, there are a pool of gamers, and most of any given group I’m in is from that pool. Every so often, a new person joins the pool. This means that I can still game with the people I like, without having to deal with ones who got me kicked out of Doug’s Friday night game.

Gamer networking is my preferred method of finding new groups. Gamers seem to have a tendency to find each other; either electronically or in person. And is there any long-time gamer out there who hasn’t developed “game-dar?” When networking fails, I’ll start recruiting non-gaming friends. I’ll bet I’ve made more converts than your average door-to-door proselytizer.

Dorothea is far too kind when she says “Li is a good person to have around when a necessary but not entirely palatable task needs accomplishing.”

Just for the record, I don’t do windows or dispose of bodies. Well, only for really, really close friends, who know how to keep their mouths shut.

This one is for Dorothea.

Fifty Ways to Ditch Your Family Reunion

Miss the train, Jane
Be afraid to fly, Sly
Don’t know how to drive, Clive
Get on the wrong bus, Gus
Too short of cash, Flash

Write the date down wrong, Wong
Invitation’s lost in the mail, Gail
Selective memory loss, boss
Lose the ticket, Cricket
Forget the way, Jose

Come down with the flu, Lou
Break a leg, Meg
Eat some bad fish, Trish
Fake a panic attack, Jack
Just get sick, Rick

Flee to France, Lance
Or Montreal, Paul
Go to a Con, Ron
Visit the in-laws, Claus
Spend time in jail, with no cash for bail

Get a new job, Bob
Use up vacation days, Ray
Take a summer class, Cass
Watch your friends get wed, Ed
Be in a show, Joe

Have an alternate plan, Jan
Run away, Jay
Rant and rave, Dave
Have a fight with your mom, Tom
And be rude to your dad, Brad

Gotta wash your hair, Blair
Need to wax the cat, Pat
Car’s broken down, clown
Can’t miss my soaps, dope
Won’t leave the dog home alone, Joan

Arrive way too late, Kate
Hide out in the bars, Lars
Bring work along with you, Sue
Give ‘em the slip, Pip
Traffic’s in a snarl, carl

Already booked that date, Nate
The fates say nay, Kay
Can’t get away that day
Not in the cards, Barb
Magic eight-ball says no, Moe

Just say no, Flo
Stay home with the cat, Matt
Tell ‘em piss off, Geoff
Say no way, Jay
Or you’d rather be dead, Fred

Yesterday was spent in an all-day training class for Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been using Photoshop for a few years now, and I have felt that I was missing half the picture, you should excuse the expression.

No more. I am utterly incapable of drawing freehand, which has always frustrated me. Now, even though I need a software tool to do it, I feel like I can draw, at least a little. (Not that I’d turn down a couple of years’ worth of drawing lessons, but there’s that time-and-money thing.) Woo-hoo!

Update: And I’m going back for Part 2 next month.

Harry Turtledove’s Gunpowder Empire is a stand-alone short novel about two siblings from a later version of our timeline living and working in another timeline where Rome never fell. It reminds me of Philip Pullman’s work, in that the prose is simple enough for ‘tweens, but the story is engaging enough for adults. More than anything, it’s a period piece, and a great introduction to alternate history for younger readers.

Neal Stephson’s work, generally speaking, is amazingly complex and utterly fascinating. Quicksilver, a behemoth of a novel at over 900 pages, is no exception. It’s almost a seventeenth-century version of Cryptonomicon, in that it captures the zeitgeist of an age so completely. It has alchemy, cryptography, pirates, Natural Philosophy, adventure, a cameo appearance by Benjamin Franklin, and a collection of footnotes and clever references that would make Terry Pratchett proud. Go read it. Now.

The Lunar Ellipse wil officially launch on 1/15/2004. The first day in-game will be 9/16/1899. I’ve got a few more Times back-issues to get written, and some rumors to spread, but it looks like all systems are go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, prepare to start your engines.

Ginger asks

What do you think is the best cast size for the games you?ve played? What are the factors that go into your answer: genre, play group, gaming system, etc.?

In face-to-face games, I like a cast of between four and eight people, whether I’m a player or a GM, regardless of genre, system, or anything else I can think of. Given the option, though, I’ll take a smaller group over a larger one. I think that the larger a group gets, the more the game bogs down.

In PBeM, I’d set an upper limit of twelve, because there’s only so much time I am willing to spend in front of the computer. That said, it’s easier to keep track of what’s going on because you’ve got a written record. Furthermore, because you’re not playing in real time, it’s easier to handle more people. I’d also set a lower limit of two, because (for me, anyway) part of the fun is interacting with someone else.

“Why attribute to conspiracy what is simpler to explain as incompetence?”–Dorothea

If this isn’t one of Pournelle’s laws, it ought to be.

Two for one today, which is appropriate given the question.

Do you think allowing one player to play more than one character in a game is a good or bad idea? Does the style of the game make any difference? What about the format (FTF, PBeM, etc.)?

Personally, I prefer a one-player-one-character approach, unless the players are all very experienced AND there’s a very good reason to allow it. At the moment, I can’t think of such a reason. I’ve been in games where the GM felt otherwise, and ended up feeling like I couldn’t give my all to either character. In an FTF game, it can be confusing, as it isn’t always clear which character the player is talking about, unless everyone is very specific all the time, which has not been my experience. YMMV. I’ve not run across the situation in PBeM, and I imagine it might work better, but I can’t really speak to it. I’m willling to be very flexible about a lot of things when I am running a game, but in this situation, the players would have to be extraordinarily persuasive for me to even contemplate going for it. If the party is small or short on certain abilities, I would much rather round it out with NPCs than have the players double up. Perhaps that’s hypocritical, as the GM always plays multiple NPCs, but I am going to defend it by saying that it’s extremely rare to have all your NPCs on stage all the time, the way PCs are.