Historical setting for IARPG

Ian’s Awesome RPG is set to start in a couple of weeks at my library. (For a view from in the thick of things, check out iarpg.blogspot.com.) We’ve gone back to the 19th century as our setting (at least our nominal starting place, since time travel looks to figure heavily in the plot). One of the reasons for that is that I started out by suggesting that we could put together more than one genre, as in the new movie Cowboys and Aliens – and then gave various examples in the format “Cowboys and _______”, e.g. Cowboys and Zombies, Cowboys and Russian Mafia, etc., and the Cowboys part stuck.

The other main reason that the time period stuck is that we had such a good time with it two years ago (some of those sessions are detailed on this blog – look for entries from the summer of 2009). And part of the reason that it was so fun is that playing in a historical setting can be an immersive experience – if you want to know what was actually going on back then, and you want to bring it into the game, you only need to look as far as Wikipedia. Even more compelling is the idea of bringing in historical figures, whether obscure or famous – the famous ones are a good hook, but everyone quickly comes to understand that most of these NPCs have a story, and that these stranger-than-fiction stories are true. It makes it more interesting because different parts of people’s brains are engaged by these “true life” story elements.

Of course, we fiddle with the timeline. The game will be set in the 1880s, but if a certain inventor’s work on a “death ray” didn’t happen until the 20th century, who’s going to complain if we move that up a little?

Finally, the coincidences that happen for the gamemaster are really interesting when you have  a historical setting. I’ll be looking something up for a reference question, or for my own knowledge, and I’ll see something that relates to the game. Just now, an image from the movie The Goodbye Girl came into my head, and I wanted to read about Richard Dreyfuss, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. Found out that when he was growing up he thought himself to be related to Alfred Dreyfus, he of the Dreyfus Affair of 1894. No, I didn’t know anything about the Dreyfus Affair before today. But he’s sure as heck going to appear in the game.

Game of Thrones

Watching Game of Thrones … it’s pretty good.

However, a minor point, from episode 2: If the Dothraki travel in single file (to hide their numbers? who knows), 40,000 of them is going to make a pretty long line. E.g. if we allow 15 feet per person and horse, they’d stretch over 110 miles. Seems inefficient.

And where is Danaerys’ sunburn?

What I’m reading

WWW: Wake
WWW: Watch
WWW: Wonder
All by Robert Sawyer. Fun and interesting reads for the SF/geek crowd – the World Wide Web spontaneously develops consciousness, and with a little help from his friends, undertakes the task of increasing the net happiness of humanity. I’m on book 3, and have really enjoyed them. Additionally, I encountered Mr. Sawyer when I was doing tech support for Wordstar International, back in 1989 – and he tells me that it’s still his word processor of choice! Which I think teeters on the edge of credibility, but finally lands on the credible side, due to my theory (developed while working for Wordstar) that the word processor that you learn first is the one you stick with, no matter the attractions of superior products. Of course, there are exceptions – I wouldn’t touch Wordstar now with a ten foot pole.

Betrayer, by C. J. Cherryh (one of my favorite authors). This is the twelfth book in the Foreigner series, which continues to keep me interested. I think it’s become HER favorite series to write, and that’s why, unfortunately, her Alliance/Union universe is suffering (in my opinion). She recently returned to that universe to write:

Regenesis, a continuation of the story begun in Cyteen, but it was disappointing. It lacked the scope of her earlier work, especially Cyteen and Downbelow Station. It was more tightly focused on the main character and what she was thinking and doing, and while that’s interesting, it wasn’t enough to sustain my interest. In those earlier works, she was able to focus on the politics of four or five different situations, and give a sense of how they informed and affected each other … and that just wasn’t there with Regenesis.

Poker suspended

On April 15, 2011, the US Department of Justice charged a bunch of poker site founders with money-laundering, which led to a chain of events that effectively shut down online poker in the United States. More recently, they’ve allowed US poker players to get access to their Pokerstars and Full Tilt accounts, so that’s something … but what really needs to happen is that they should recognize that poker is a game of skill, not gambling, and regulate it appropriately.

In the meantime … not playing much poker.

Ian’s Awesome RPG, 2011-style

Two new posts at the IARPG blog:

http://iarpg.blogspot.com/2011/03/meta-schedule-for-summer-2011-game.html

http://iarpg.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-system-part-1.html

I am pushing player involvement in the design of the game more this year – beyond setting selection and character generation. Looking for input on a new system. Should be interesting.

WBCOOP events 1-3

Finished 160th-ish in the PLO event Monday (qualified for “Main Event”); missed the NLHE event Tuesday; finished 129th in the PLO Hi/Lo event tonight (good for an $11 SCOOP event entry). Haven’t gotten a lot of traction in any event yet – it’s been slowly-build-chips followed by slow-attrition-of-chips, but careful play has gotten me somewhere, even if not the place I’d really like to be.

Hampered by playing tired, but what are you going to do – there’s a two-month-old in the house.  😀

WBCOOP

Bloggers unite – and play poker!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on (link redacted by wordpress – it’s Pokerstars … you know, Pokerstars?) to play. 

Registration code: XXXXXX 484956

Poker slump

My bankroll is down about 20% from its high in the fall.  Part of this I blame on a change in strategy involving playing more large tournaments … and part of it is due to having a new kid and getting less sleep and getting lax with my discipline and going ahead and playing when I’m tired, instead of taking time off. I definitely should not play when I’m tired. Or sick, come to think of it – I was sick in October, and that might have been part of it too, though mainly contributing through the “tired” angle.

So I’m trying to weather the down period. One thing that I’m looking forward to is the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker, which will be held in January. Game on!

Reading

I’ve been reading some of the Vorkosigan Saga – a series of books by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ve enjoyed some of her fantasy (which it took her a long time to break into, apparently) – The Curse of Chalion and related books, and The Sharing Knife series – but hadn’t tried any of her science fiction since the 80s, when I read Falling Free. Or, more correctly, I read 1/3 to 1/2 of Falling Free, got bored, and stopped reading.

The Vorkosigan books are better … though Falling Free is apparently at least related to the series. I thought Shards of Honor was pretty good, and Barrayar was quite good – these are the precursors to the Miles Vorkosigan books, about his parents. And then the first Miles book – The Warrior’s Apprentice – was pretty good.

Now I’m wondering which direction to go – keep reading in internal timeline order? or go with the order in which they were published? It probably doesn’t matter a whole lot at this point. At least one reader recommends publish order: http://www.epinions.com/content_4838039684 – along with a bunch of other reviews and so on of the books.

Orson Scott Card

I’m a big fan of Orson Scott Card’s writing … but what a whack-job when it comes to politics.

He’s actually quite astute when he talks about kids and education (as long as he leaves politics out of it). He has some excellent essays on why homework isn’t really valuable to education *at all*, among many others. But then he also says stuff like this:

“The Leftaliban thinks Fox News is evil (instead of, as has been proven over and over again, the most impartial of all news broadcasters).”

Yeah, the “leftaliban” is his word for the politically correct left, who he thinks is dragging the country down. But I can’t believe he really thinks Fox News is “the most impartial of all news broadcasters.” *No* news broadcaster is impartial; they all have biases; and the bias of Fox News is pretty clear. To say they’re the most impartial of all is to admit your own blinders. Is it because OSC agrees with them the most that he thinks they’re the most impartial? Please. And “proven”? By who? Who by? It’s ridiculous.

I have a theory about his fiction writing, and that’s that he’s at his best when he’s writing about kids. He has a clear and appealing vision of a child’s world and viewpoint. In several of his books/series, though, his child characters grow up, and then his writing doesn’t appeal quite so much. I’m not sure but that the theory applies to his non-fiction writing as well.

I’m not going to link to him, but if you’re desperate to know, you can google him. His .com web site has “hatrack” in the address, and his .org site has “ornery” in it.