If I Were Super.

I've played this game with a lot of people over the years. Feel free to respond.

If you could have a super-power, what would it be?

Flight. The more I live, biking through the city, catching the bus or rides with friends, the more I walk alongside everyone else living in what can be a horribly banal world, my answer becomes more and more firm--I want to fly. Sometimes when the weather is nice (it happens if you're not paying attention, I swear) I look up into the fair-weather sky--you know the kind, with nothing but wisps of clouds--and I realize just how BIG the sky is. I think about shooting through all that bigness, wind trying to catch me, trying to say, "Hey! Wait! You're not supposed to..." and then I'm gone. I imagine looking down at everything that's familiar and mundane, but from up there it would look magical, somehow--and for the people looking back up at me, it'd be the same. Only one thing changed, one man hanging there in the middle of the sky, but it makes all the difference.

It used to be teleportation. I'm enough of a comic book fan to even take a limit to it, that I could only teleport to places I can think of, visualize in my mind. I'd never have to get up early to get anywhere. I could see anything I wanted, I could make money moving things around, or steal what I needed or wanted. I would be unstoppable.

But, for the sheer wonder of it, flight wins. There's a reason a popular movie used the motto, "You'll Believe a Man Can Fly!"

~j

Dungeons.

I like D&D 3.5. I have some friends currently running games in completely different styles, and that's fine. D&D can be an excellent system to RP in-character in, and it's pretty good for busting in and killing things, too.

Now you get to hear about my characters, lucky you.

In one corner, weighing in at...a lot, is Arcanist Nils Gaup, a 4th level wizard. In a fine tradition of picking celebrities or actors to use as a description of my characters, Nils is portrayed by David Ogden Stiers. Not your adventurer type, he's career wizard--an astrologer with a wife, and two girls that he hopes will follow in his footsteps. His most distinctive feature may be his familiar, Lars--an albino rat that's been with him for the last 25 years, drinks from a thimble Nils carries around, gathers things in little spoons, and spends a great deal of time hiding in Nils' voluminous clothing. Nils is a conjurer, and likes to solve various problems with Summon Monster spells. He's from conquered racial stock, but has bought into the dominant race's society and values. He's True Neutral.

In the other corner, wearing slightly darker trunks, is Tala, daughter of the chieftan of the Rovers of the Barrens, a 3rd level druid. She escaped from slavery after her tribe was raided by followers of Iuz--she was forced to watch as her father, the best shot in the tribe, had his hands slowly broken to teach him and his people a lesson about how serious his captors were. Though relatively wise, she's reckless, hates anything that seems like slavery or imprisonment, and she doesn't even really get along with animals that well. She fights like a barbarian...and one day, her understanding of the cruelty of nature will gift her with the ability to take the forms of deadly predators--if she lives that long. She runs fast, defends herself with bravery and ferocity, and will probably die while the rest of her party blinks after her.

Tala is in the hack-n-slash game, Nils in the RP game--not that we don't pause for a bit of IC banter in the hack-n-slash game, or get into interesting fights in the RP one. If I could change things, I'd have a nice talk with a few players in the hack-n-slasher, asking them to please, for the love of Wee Jas, respect that other players may have their own interests, and that the game isn't about them, with the rest of us as supporting cast. I'd ask that people bother with some of the RPing, because it could be cool. I'd ask that we move things along otherwise, that being more ready to start closer to start time is probably simply polite to the others, that constant OOC tangents during play are funny and interesting, but not why we got together during that particular block of time.

I'm probably guilty of most of the above to a slight degree, and I would never ask it if I weren't willing to pay more attention to my own actions.

What I think really helps is having non-gaming time set aside before gaming time, in order to feed and fraternize, so that we get some of it out of the way and we can concentrate on killing things that are different than us, and taking said things' stuff. It's worked in a number of games I'm played and GM'd. I should mention this idea first, and then criticize other players if it doesn't help enough. Yeah.

~j

Digital Memories.

When I was a lot younger, I wanted a camera. My dad had a series of the things, big, clunky black cameras with straps, and he took pictures (and home videos) all the time. I got a little 35mm camera of my own one Christmas.

I think I used 3 rolls of film, total.

Now, I was sorting through some randoms photos and images on my computer, and I noticed the startling changes in my niece from since she was 3--she's 6, now. And I thought, "I want to have a picture of her for every year, just to remember what she was like when she didn't like me and she was X years old." And I was looking at pictures of my girlfriend when we started dating. And I thought, "I want to have a picture of her--and of us--every so often, to show how well we age." And...lots of things.

Until now, I just wasn't excited about pictures. But looking back, I realize how many friends I've seen move away, how many relatives I almost never see, and how many people I don't like have grown twisted and horrid looking. I'm getting older...ish...and now I see how great pictures are. I wish I had kept taking pictures when I was a kid, no matter how much a pain in the ass actual film is. So, I'm going to find a cheap little digital camera, and I'm going to start before I lose anything else that should rightfully be immortalized on my hard drive.

Say cheese!

~j

Topic.

Because I missed last night, and Friday night, and I need to keep my momentum up.

Sometimes, I paint myself into a corner with stories. Tonight, I managed to have a rather significant number of powerful NPCs show up in game. I tried to set things up so that they weren't dominating the dialogue, but by their very nature they draw attention. The PCs kept deferring, in some cases the players didn't think they could really do anything significant in scenes with so many major players. I ended up narrating. And talking to myself. Argh.

This from someone who is trying to be very careful about these sorts of game sessions. I complain about them all the time, and then they sneak up on me and I can't seem to do much about it. I suppose it should make me more forgiving of other GMs, but it just makes me more determined to stop it from happening.

The issue with Nobilis and this particular problem is Imperators. The gods of the game, they give the PCs their power and usually send them out to do things. But they have their own relationships. They're big, they're powerful, they're forces of nature. And they make the PCs feel small. Even though they should do something in the world, they should often do those things off-screen, away from the PCs.

For my Nobilis game, I want to have big, cataclysmic stuff happen to the PCs and their home and their boss, so we can take a step back to look at the game. I want this so that we can decide what we want next. Are the stories we've played the sorts we want to continue playing? If not, how do we want things to change? Imperators showing up and being impressive is one way to do this--but definitely not the best. I'll remember this for the next time I want to shake things up.

Play and learn.

~j

I Wish May Wasn't So Needy.

Seriously.

Parts of the state are experiencing rather heavy flooding already. We had a wet winter, and a wet fall before that. I'm rather tired of the rain. April should come up with a better way to bring May flowers.

I want to try not to post about meteorological phenomena more that once a week, but it's really getting to me. I mentioned how positively sunshine affects my moods. Rain just pisses me off. I don't think I believe in a nice, refreshing rain. Showers are refreshing--I control the temperature. Rain is a discomfort. I don't choose to get wet, it just happens to me.

And, most likely, the sun isn't shining if it's raining. Especially if it's been raining for two days.

The farmers can't claim we need the moisture. I'm sure that some crops are starting to get into trouble with flooding.

And, as previously mentioned, my method of transportation is riding my bike. So I have to cross streets with grumpy motorists. I think we have a way of forgetting that other drivers are real people--this goes double for pedestrians and cyclists that may slow things down on the road. So, I get wet and grumpy, and I get to deal with grumpy motorists--who aren't even wet, and will get to their destinations way before I get to mine.

I think rain is designed to set up murders.

~j

The Sunshine State.

So, my parents are moving to Florida.

I was born in Florida. We moved from there to Hawaii, then to Florida again (Pop was in the Navy), and then up to Illinois. Illinois is where my dad's family lives. It's where he grew up, where they grew up, and now, where I grew up--we moved here when I was 5ish.

The kids have moved out, they're both retired, and it's time to find a place that isn't so freaking huge and a waste of energy. It's time to find a place where you don't have to drive 45 minutes just to go grocery shopping, wasting gas and time. It's time to move very far from their families, children, and lives, and start over with other retired folk.

I think some of the family isn't crazy about the idea. I guess I'm not extremely exited about it--I barely get home to visit them now, without a car. Plane tickets? Ugh. But, as my dad put it, "...if we move there, people will want to visit," or something similar. It's true. I mean, if I have less chances to visit my folks, at least I get to go someplace nice, like Florida. I like where I grew up, but not only does this help my parents out, but it gives us an excuse to do new things, to explore a little bit. It's not Illinois, but...it's not Illinois.

It could be fun--for everyone involved.

~j

Black, Black Emptiness.

Yes, I like Byronic heroes.

The trappings of darkness and danger are cooler to me. Knights in shining armor are fine, but I like menace, I like creepy and spooky. There's something to be said for Batman picking his theme to scare the crap out of his enemies, the cowardly and superstitious criminal element.

I don't think I scare easily--perhaps a lot of people think that, but I'll stick by it. I'm not talking about being startled, I mean deep, bad Fear. It's an interesting topic for me. I remember one of my first comics as a kid--it was Robin versus the Scarecrow, and Robin seemed screwed--until he used the Scarecrow's (not-irrational) fear of Batman to good use.

Later, I started reading the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman. The creepy, frail mage Raistlin was instantly my favorite character, and hasn't been dethroned since, even with all of the stories written for that setting. His style and the choice of evil--as I see it, in order to save the world. Fantasy stories are different. Our heroes kill people all the time in them, so the major shift with the character of Raistlin was mostly the trappings of evil--the black robes, the nastier sorts of spells. In later books, we see he's even more willing to hurt people close to himself...but we can still see noble, if prideful goals.

Nowadays, my favorite characters to play in RPGs are usually at least a little like Batman, a little like Raistlin. Most games don't give me the flexibility to play truly evil-focused characters, but I'm not sure I'd want to. I like the bad guys that fight the worse bad guys, or the dark characters that just want to dabble in nastiness and would rather the world not end--it's just inconvenient. I want to play the characters that use the trappings of evil to fight evil. I've had a sort of signature character that has evolved through the years--the necromancer who would rather keep the real threats from ending/taking over the world. He was human at first, and now I usually see him as an elf--elves are nice for the creep factor, I like to accentuate how they aren't human, and don't think like humans. In Nobilis, I want to explore how a power that adheres to the Code of the Dark or the Fallen Angels can help work to make Creation a better place.

I'm not sure what kind of person it makes me. It's just more fun this way.

~j