Ravings of a Textual Deviant

On a lightning raid at the shoe store yesterday, Alisa left me unsupervised for a few minutes, and I ended up with some highly impractical shoes. I love them. Now, I just need someplace to wear them.

#95 asks

How many colors do you like in your gaming? Do you prefer four-color games? Or should game morality be black and white or shades of grey, and if the latter, how many? Are ?evil? characters acceptable? Does your preference depend on genre? Do your preferences affect the genres you like?

I’m a full-spectrum kinda person, regardless of genre. Like Ginger, I prefer a game in which characters (and NPCs) have free will. It tends to make for much more interesting and realistic moral dilemmas, which are more interesting to me as a player or GM. For example, someone who’s usually inclined toward “good” may find that an action has unintended “evil” consequences, or may decide that in some cases, the end justifies the means. (Crusades, anyone?) Even more interesting (for me, anyway) is when someone generally inclined to be “evil” does something “good” because it furthers an evil end. (Doug is a master of this; it’s one of the reasons I enjoy his games so much.) This is why I find evil characters acceptable, even if I don’t often choose to play them myself. Of course, you also have to consider the circumstances. Ripping the heart out of a live human being is generally frowned upon…unless one happens to be a pre-Columbian Aztec priest, in which case it’s not just part of the job, but actually necessary for the continued existence of the universe.

As I said…it makes things interesting.

#94 asks

How do you handle an obnoxious character who has habits that annoy other PCs? What do you do as a fellow player/GM? What has worked and not worked for you?

When it’s the character who’s obnoxious, rather than the player, I simply accept it as part of the game. At least two of the new characters in my Thursday game could easily fall into the category of obnoxious.

Morgan is a former powerful and evil sorcerer who has been been cursed. His powers have been reduced considerably, and he’s been put into the body of his first victim–his childhood friend. He’ll stay twelve years old until the god who placed the curse is satisfied that he’s actually reformed himself. (Said reformation to be pursued under the guidance of one of the other PCs, but that’s another story.) This character is frustrated, bitter, arrogant, angry, and evil. He’s already managed to get on the bad side of one character, and the “evil” thing definitely does not sit well at all with his (lawful good) erstwhile mentor. On the other hand, from my character’s point of view, at least he has some manners and he’s intelligent. My character puts a great deal of stock in manners, courtesy, and appropriate behavior (she was brought up at a court with detailed and complex protocol), so the fact that he at least knows how to be polite is worth something. Voluntarily or not, he’s making a fresh start, and my character’s approach is to encourage appropriate behavior with positive reinforcement…while watching her own and others’ backs very carefully. I suspect that so long as Morgan remains reasonable and courteous, the two of them will simply agree to disagree without any emnity developing. So far, it seems to be working. Of course, it’s only been one day.

Onyx, one of the other new characters, is another story entirely. My character can deal with evil; that’s not the sticking point. The problem with Onyx is that he’s rude, odiferous, and entirely lacking in culture and refinement. Also, he persists in propositioning her in the most crude and cliched ways imaginable. Although my character would never stoop to rudeness, she’s definitely giving him the cold shoulder, and I suspect she’ll spend a lot of time ignoring him. So far, it only encourages further efforts on his part. (If she were British, she’d pointedly not invite him to dinner.) My character hopes that eventually he’ll simply get bored and find something else to do. In the mean time, she’ll continue discouraging improper behavior with negative reinforcement. On the other hand, if he provokes her sufficiently, he may well find out that the other characters aren’t joking when they say that she’s considerably more dangerous than she looks. It’ll be fun finding out.

We’ve had half our cast turn over in the Thursday night D & D game. Two characters did something stupid and one ended up dead as a result. Another player painted his character into a plot corner and ended up making a new one. Two other player have switched characters for reasons I’m not aware of.

The upshot of this is that the group dynamic amongst the cast is in for some dramatic changes. We’ve got a wide spectrum of alignments–I’m not sure any of the eight characters are the same. My character is right in the middle (I figured that a Taoist would be neutral). Interesting times ahead, I’m sure.

“They described our security as ‘crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.’”

Last night, around 3:30 AM, I was awakened by a huge lightning flash and thunderbolt directly over the skylight in my bedroom. I did what any self-respecting geek would do–jumped out of bed, ran into the computer room, and unplugged everything. Getting back to sleep was a challenge, not because of the thunderstorm (I’ve slept through medium-sized earthquakes) but because I was focused on listening for any indication that the bedroom skylight was leaking. (Given that it actually did leak during a storm the first year we moved in, this isn’t totally paranoid behavior. Getting out of bed twice to check the carpet for water is obssessive, perhaps, but not paranoid.) By the time I finally convinced myself that the roof was intact, I kept waking up thinking that the water was running in the bathroom–because there’s a downspout right on the outside wall opposite where the sink is indoors. Ed probably slept through the whole thing. Goodness knows, he’s slept through far more.

We had some seriously severe weather last night. I was amazed that our power wasn’t knocked out–especially after the lightning strike that looked and sounded as if it were directly over my living room. (Hooray for skylights!)

As it turned out, the power did get knocked out at my parents’ house, which is only three blocks south of mine. I know, because my mom called at 11:00 last night to tell me. Because my parents have a well, rather than city water, when their power goes out, the water does, too. We’ve got city water, and we had power, so an impromptu sleepover was a definite possibility. Mom came over later, and told me that the outage started a couple of houses south of mine.

“You must be living right,” Mom said.

Hardly. Just in the right place.

I’ve managed to make some space. If I could only figure out how to make time, too, then I could build my own universe.

Last weekend, I went into an organizational frenzy–the kind that makes Ed crazy and prompts him to hide in the computer room. (Not that he needs much incentive.) Lately, it had been very frustrating to cook and clean the kitchen; I never had enough space to do anything, despite the reasonable large amount of contiguous counter space and kitchen cart. Decluttering helped, but never enough.

My solution was to take all the small appliances (coffee maker, bread machine, etc.) and other items that I use only infrequently and get them off the counter. I’m amazed at how much larger the kitchen looks. Of course, it helps that I have two closets in my kitchen (an architectural oddity, but I’m not complaining!). I had enough motivation left over to organize the pantry closet, too.

Two of the last three days, my body has decided to hijack…itself. On Tuesday and Thursday this week, despite the best of intentions, I completely failed to make it to the gym. Instead, after an early supper, I’d stretch out on the couch to read, and fall asleep. And wake up about 12 hours later. Now, this has been known to happen to me occasionally, but I can’t remember when (or even if) it last happened twice in the same week. I mean, I knew I was tired, but I had no idea I was that tired.

…but definitely top ten.

Last night, I dreamed that aliens cloned Celine Dion and put my mind in the clone’s body. Celine was pretty cool about it, though. She took me to a liquor store and helped me stock my new home bar.