So, my cousin tells me that she’s “currently writing a scene for playwriting class where we have to base the characters loosely on two relatives and I’m using you as one of them.”
I suppose if I had the same assignment, I’d pick me. too, as I’ve got my personal life written up for public consumption. I don’t know whether to be frightened or flattered. Perhaps both?
Stereotypes : Weapons of mass description
This week’s question is about magically making friends and influencing people.
This spell shows up in several roleplaying games by many different names. Leaving the target charmed by the spellcaster, it can turn an enemy into a friend. Generally, the target will be susceptible to suggestion by the caster and will completely believe anything the caster says.This effect is not restrained to the fantasy genre. A telepath might gain the same effect through mental powers and one of the most famous examples of this “spell” was in a certain film by George Lucas. “These are not the droids you are looking for.”
Now your job: How does this spell get weird?
As a caveat, I almost never use charm spells as a player; when my characters are ethical, they usually avoid mind-bending magic, and when they’re not, they’re usually too insane to pull off anything that rational.
I’m always up for the comedy created by a spell that backfires. Usually, this happens when the spell is either exceptionally successful, or fails miserably. The success aspect of this has been partially covered by the questioner, so I’ll move on to exceptional failure. On one occasion–and I wish I could remember which game–I had a character who attempted to use a charm spell as an assist to a seduction. The result was bad enough that it could have been the second act of a farce.
This week, Ginger asks
What five games would you love to run/play if you had a willing group and a weekly time slot?
Frankly, I could play whatever Doug and/or Rob is running five days a week, but that’s the easy way out.
GM
Teenagers from Outer Space, by popular demand
Some Ellipse or another; The Magnificent Seven is first in line
Player
Shadowrun, because I love a good crossover
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, mandated by outrageous fangirldom
Any game in which I can actually use the character who’s the ghost of a Siberian shamaness
In my never-ending, near-obssessive quest for tidiness, I bought a shredder and attacked the filing system last night. I discovered that a 3″ stack of paper before shredding fits approximately one kitchen garbage bag after shredding. It makes absolutely no sense to me that cutting something into smaller pieces actually makes it take up more space, but there you go. One of life’s little mysteries, I guess.
Disclaimer: This is post not an amusing anecdote about my weekend, despite the title.
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, by Chuck Klosterman (Senior Writer for Spin)
If my good friend Doug were an armchair sociologist from North Dakota, this is probably the book he?d have written, which goes a way towards explaining why I liked it. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is part pop-culture spelunking and part biography. The book is a collection of eighteen essays, with an underlying common thread of the author?s awareness that he?s entirely inundated by media of all kinds, and how that media creates his reality. I suspect that this is one of the few books that really does make more sense if you?re Gen-X or younger, not so much because of the pop-culture references, but because of the zeitgeist. The only problem with getting so deeply into a zeitgeist is that it?s hard to get out. In ten or fifteen years, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs will be just another period piece. It?s hardly a manifesto, but the low-culture part is totally covered.
Klosterman holds forth on Pamela Anderson as the Gen-X Marilyn Monroe, why Saved by the Bell is awful yet compelling, how interpersonal relationships are affected by the engineered unreality of reality TV, and how the Celtics-Lakers rivalry ?reflects every fabric of male existence?, and manages to back it up. Even if you don?t agree with his conclusions, you have a good laugh as the author constructs the argument. He?s got a sharp memory for entertainment; not the facts themselves, which can be dug up with a little research, but for his personal reactions to the events and products he?s discussing, and how he sees the results reflected in his world. He?s also got a great collection of anecdotes and tells them well, but I think his real talent is being able to pull a variety of seemingly-unrelated elements into a cohesive concept.
In an interesting display of media convergence, Klosterman has given his chapters track numbers. I interpreted this decision as an indication that the book is intended to be consumed as an album; you can read the chapters in any order, skip the tracks you don?t like, etc. The book isn’t cohesive in that the essays don’t really flow into one another sequentially, but I don’t expect they’re intended to do so. The themes are consistent enough to hold the collection together.
I?ve seen a variety of other reviews for the same book, and they all describe Klosterman as either ?ironically self-aware? or ?un-ironically self-aware,? which surely must be significant, though I couldn?t tell you how. Personally, my take on irony and Gen-X is that it?s like air to us; taken for granted so that we don?t notice it until it?s gone…and how often does that happen?
Miracle, starring Kurt Russell, is Disney’s retelling of how the U. S. Men’s Olympic ice hockey team beat the Russians in 1980. Other than the fact that I have difficulty believing that any hockey coach went seven months with a PG-rated vocabulary, I can’t find much in the way of fault with the movie. For once, the actual story is good enough that it didn’t need much in the way of Disnefication.
The film opens with a brief review of the 1970s, for those who either missed or don’t remember the decade. Beyond that, the film doesn’t go into cold-war politics very much, although the undertone is certainly present throughout the film. The primary focus is the players and especially coach Herb Brooks (Russell). This is a hockey movie above all, and if you’re not interested in hockey, you’ll probably be bored.
There are two tricks that Miracle had to pull off in order to be successful. The first is one that’s common to any sports movie–specatcular game action sequences. The other is creating suspense about the outcome of a game that was over twenty-four years ago. The first trick has gotten easier and easier with the remote-control cameras used by ESPN and ABC sports to shoot regular NHL games and special events like the all-star weekend. The sequences were well edited, and while I’m sure that archival footage was used, I couldn’t tell you exactly where. As to the second trick…most sports movies have the same challenge, just in a lesser degree, but there are people in the audience who actually saw that game on TV. To my complete and utter astonishment, I was rapt during the entire U.S.-U.S.S.R. game sequence.
Most of the time, I can miss a Disney movie and not think twice. This one is a glaring exception.
What are your characters? mottoes, in ten words or less? Quotes and formal mottoes encouraged.
Annika Olausson, failed Olympic athlete turned alien fighter: “Anything’s better than teaching piano in Nebraska”
Celia, a very poorly socialized neophyte vampire: “Play with your food”
Zhao-ling, a Taoist sorceress: “Follow your Way and stay out of mine.”
As if my entire week isn’t weird enough…
The challenge for the first Wednesday Weird is: the mugging. It’s a classic scenario that anyone who has ever played a “street-level” superhero game or read a lot of noir fiction has bound to have run across before. Variations of it can be found in almost any genre. I am sure that countless D&D characters have stopped some thief or half-orc from roughing up some nobleman in an alley. Someone with a weapon is stealing from some (presumably) helpless victim. This gives a chance for our protagonists to swoop in and save the day…or perhaps the protagonist is the muggee and the poor mugger has picked the wrong victim. Either way, it’s been done a million times. The mugger is usually hopelessly outclassed by our stalwart hero or heroes. A few classic examples of this cliche being used in film are Superman (Clark and Lois are mugged leaving the Daily Planet) and Crocodile Dundee (”That’s not a knife….”).
From the GM’s point of view, the best thing about a good mugging is that it presents two opportunities: a shaedown cruise, if you will, and a plot twist. The Grand Ellipse had a series of attempted muggings very early on, and one of the best things that came out of it was the opportunity for character development. Various players lied to, confused, threatened, and beat their respective would-be attackers. There’s nothing like a seemingly minor encounter to get a bunch of experienced, paranoid players going.
From a player point of view, a mugging puts you on the spot. In my current Planescape game, my character is highly unlikely to interfere with a mugging under normal circumstances; everyone has their own fate, and when you start interfering with fate, you’re asking for trouble. Unusual circumstances are another thing entirely; if something out of the ordinary is happening, and you’re there, obviously it’s your fate. Figuring out what you’re supposed to do about it is another problem entirely. In my other current game, my character is a newly-made vampire. She’d probably wait until the mugging was over with and then feed on the victim afterwards. (Celia wasn’t well socialized in life, and death hasn’t improved her.) My general rule of thumb is that when a GM throws me a “typical” situation, it’s anything but.
I can’t tell if it’s rain, freezing rain, sleet, or snow. And even if I could, it would probably change if I waited ten minutes. Or went over to the next block. It’s a good day to be inside with a hot beverage.
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