Despite the day and title this is not about 9/11, so no trigger warning needed. Most of this was written Thursday morning as I took a break from working on my book/petting Chalupa, who has decided that my lap is indeed structurally sound enough to support him as I try to work at my desk. So brave of him.
Anyway.
On Wednesday I figured the perfect way to top off a day spent working outside in temperatures in the mid-nineties paired with oppressive humidity would be an hour and a half long soccer clinic. Well, no, I'm mixing that up with 'sense of obligation combined with zero knowledge about soccer,' but in any case, there I was at 6:30pm, standing in a field consisting mainly of dead grass and dust along with forty or so others. While I've coached football, baseball, and softball already this was my first foray into soccer and man, soccer clubs in small NJ towns are weird. There's a strange sense of, I don't know, slightly embittered archness, like they know it's always going to be treated like football's little brother in the US but it's the WORLD'S GAME and all that. Me, I've never been a fan. I played the version in which someone got so bored playing it he picked up the ball and ran with it instead. Remember to pour out a forty for William Webb Ellis who not only created the game of rugby but also didn't fight it being named after the school he was at instead of himself, because playing 'Webb' or 'Ellis' would have been weird.
So this was a participatory thing, run by reps from the nearest Major League Soccer team. The Red Bulls, I think. Yeah, the professional team is named after a crappy energy drink. The guy running it was good at what he did, gently mocking but engaging as well. After a few opening comments he told us the general plan and advised us, if we'd brought them, to change into our cleats.
It'd been a long while since my softball days and the only cleats I'd had lying around the house were my rugby spikes, so I'd brought them. Note the name: spikes. Since I was a scrummie I wore boots that featured eight inch-long metal studs designed for digging into the turf as so not to be moved. Well, also for stomping on the nancy-boy cleats of any back who got caught up in a ruck or a maul. Purely accidental, of course. Ahem.
Past gougings aside, I pulled them out of my bag and sat on the baked earth to pull them on. They were a little more worn than I remembered and it was a bit of a struggle, as it always had been, to get my foot all the way down, but . . . damn, they still fit as if I'd bought them custom made. I could say it was like slipping into a comfortable old shoe, but, well, redundant. It was like, uhm, wearing a familiar, well-broken-in baseball glove, of picking up a pen that fits your hand well, or the way you sink into your mattress at night. Not just any mattress, but the one you shopped for, the one that supports you just right, the one that makes you sigh as you settle in.
Evidently my boots came equipped with a nostalgia button as well, because as I laced them up my face split into a grin as rugby-related memories came in a flood: my first post-practice naked birthday Zulu dance, complete with a face-first flop into a mud-puddle (and subsequent walk back across campus); the drink-up at West Point in a cabin in the woods surrounded by a platoon armed to the teeth; standing with my NoJo brothers drinking celebratory beers in the encroaching darkness under the RFK Bridge on Randall's Island, having just crushed Brooklyn to punch our ticket to Nationals; coming to on a pitch in West Orange, having just been knocked out cold by a teammate's heel to my temple.
I never said they were all pleasant memories.
I'll always treasure having had rugby as a part of my life. Giving it up was a tough choice, but at the time I had too many things on my plate in addition to being twice the age of some of our newer players. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was spongy and bruised*. Plus I couldn't justify vanishing for an entire Saturday 20 or 30 times a year any longer - not fair to my kids. So I hung up my boots until now, where they trotted out with me onto a soccer pitch.
They didn't make me a good soccer player. Hell, they didn't even make me a bad soccer player. I bumbled through drills, understanding how poorly I was doing wasn't the point. I kicked balls in the wrong direction, too far, not far enough, with too much English, with not enough English. It didn't matter. My job is the kiddie version of a cat wrangler, keeping them happy and occupied while they run around. My head coach is a lifetime soccer player and they actually give us Red Bull coaches as well, so I just have to show up.
In my cleats.
* hat tip to Futurama
Friday, September 11, 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
Ice To Meet You
Yesterday was a rough day for me at work in a physical sense. First there were the bees - SO MANY BEES - and the gift of multiple stings they shared with me. After escaping them I noticed that my left foot hurt and when I got around to peeling off my boot and sock I saw that during my flight I'd somehow managed to break one of my toes (a side note - this is not as big an issue at it might seem, given that I spent years playing a game that featured me in things called 'rucks' and 'mauls' and included 29 other dudes wearing metal cleats. Since I retired from rugby the scale has slid to the 'MORE days with zero broken toes' side of the ledger. All digits, really. I'm sure some of my OW friends recall me showing up to an afterparty sporting a thumb that was pretty much black in color). Later I was pounding on a brake drum with a ball peen hammer (this is my life ::shrug::) and a sliver of metal shot off, nicking my forearm. The cut was tiny - maybe a 1/4 inch - but blood more or less geysered from my arm. I got it under control, but a huge welt rose up around it. With my right knee doing some freelance barking of its own as well, I was kind of a wreck. Certainly in to condition to play hockey last night, right?
There is something about lacing up my skates and getting out on the ice that seems to soothe all my ills. I have no explanation why. There have been nights I've headed to the rink feeling like my guts were trying to escape through my belly button but once I'm out there, sweating while surrounded by chill, my body enters some sort of zen state. Of course sometimes I play like I'm meditating, but that's part of the learning curve. It's been almost two years since Jeff, Joel, and I first started wobbling on the ice together, and it's been a hell of a fun ride. Are we better? Hell yes. Are we good yet? Hell no. We have our moments and our mistakes. Last night was our final game of Summer season and while I was generally happy with my play, I had a few screw ups that grated on me like sand in a swimsuit. There were a couple of giveaways; I didn't get a few clears out of our zone; some of my passes were about as accurate as Carly Fiorina's 'facts' about climate change (why are people interested in someone who took a successful company and drove it into the ground?); I let a backpass get past me at the blue line when we were pressing for a tying goal.
Fine. More than a few.
We played a good game against a team close to our level in ability, hamstrung by some folk taking shifts that were WAYYYYYYYYY too long. If you're playing hockey correctly then after about 45-60 seconds you should be so exhausted that getting off the ice will sound wonderful, but we had players staying out over two minutes and wandering all over the place. There's times when you can't get off the ice for fear of giving up too much of an advantage, but this wasn't the case. I had to keep being That Guy and yelling about shift times on the bench. I don't want to be That Guy. I like our team. We're fun. We're usually happy. We don't care that we're terrible (but getting better). Still, repeatedly taking too long shifts is pretty much just one thing - selfish. That's something we don't need.
Selfless, now, that's okay. Our poor goalie Chaz deserves so much better - we lost 3-1 last night. One goal was a one-timer on a blown assignment that he had no chance on. The second goal deflected off some jerkweed's thigh (spoiler - it was mine) during a penalty kill. Also no chance. The final goal was an empty netter after we came THISCLOSE to tying it. Lola was watching from above and said the puck was 3/4s of the way across the line after one shot. Arrgh. Seriously, though, with an inept clown such as myself as 1/4 of his defense corps Chaz still posted a goals-against average below 4. To put that in perspective, my GAA in 3 games as his backup is 9.33. I can't believe nobody has poached him from us yet. SCURVY DOGS FOR LIFE
In the laugh-for-the-day category, Jeff is trying to hook me up with a team at another rink who needs a goalie. They are afraid I won't want to play with them because they 'aren't good enough.' Oh, you wonderfully silly people. Call me up and give me the keys to the crease. We're going to get along just fine.
There is something about lacing up my skates and getting out on the ice that seems to soothe all my ills. I have no explanation why. There have been nights I've headed to the rink feeling like my guts were trying to escape through my belly button but once I'm out there, sweating while surrounded by chill, my body enters some sort of zen state. Of course sometimes I play like I'm meditating, but that's part of the learning curve. It's been almost two years since Jeff, Joel, and I first started wobbling on the ice together, and it's been a hell of a fun ride. Are we better? Hell yes. Are we good yet? Hell no. We have our moments and our mistakes. Last night was our final game of Summer season and while I was generally happy with my play, I had a few screw ups that grated on me like sand in a swimsuit. There were a couple of giveaways; I didn't get a few clears out of our zone; some of my passes were about as accurate as Carly Fiorina's 'facts' about climate change (why are people interested in someone who took a successful company and drove it into the ground?); I let a backpass get past me at the blue line when we were pressing for a tying goal.
Fine. More than a few.
We played a good game against a team close to our level in ability, hamstrung by some folk taking shifts that were WAYYYYYYYYY too long. If you're playing hockey correctly then after about 45-60 seconds you should be so exhausted that getting off the ice will sound wonderful, but we had players staying out over two minutes and wandering all over the place. There's times when you can't get off the ice for fear of giving up too much of an advantage, but this wasn't the case. I had to keep being That Guy and yelling about shift times on the bench. I don't want to be That Guy. I like our team. We're fun. We're usually happy. We don't care that we're terrible (but getting better). Still, repeatedly taking too long shifts is pretty much just one thing - selfish. That's something we don't need.
Selfless, now, that's okay. Our poor goalie Chaz deserves so much better - we lost 3-1 last night. One goal was a one-timer on a blown assignment that he had no chance on. The second goal deflected off some jerkweed's thigh (spoiler - it was mine) during a penalty kill. Also no chance. The final goal was an empty netter after we came THISCLOSE to tying it. Lola was watching from above and said the puck was 3/4s of the way across the line after one shot. Arrgh. Seriously, though, with an inept clown such as myself as 1/4 of his defense corps Chaz still posted a goals-against average below 4. To put that in perspective, my GAA in 3 games as his backup is 9.33. I can't believe nobody has poached him from us yet. SCURVY DOGS FOR LIFE
In the laugh-for-the-day category, Jeff is trying to hook me up with a team at another rink who needs a goalie. They are afraid I won't want to play with them because they 'aren't good enough.' Oh, you wonderfully silly people. Call me up and give me the keys to the crease. We're going to get along just fine.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Things and More Things
I have Things to write about. Should it be hockey? Writing? Both, you say? That way lies madness, my friend, but let us not go gentle into that goodnight. Yes, I'm punchy. Hockey game + staying up late to take kids to not see comet detritus (disappointed in you, Perseids ) + STILL getting up at 5am to write/edit/pet Chalupa = tired Kit.
Writing: On the horns of a dilemma. I'm still chugging along on the edit/rewrite of Big Stupid Book, heeding the advice of all three colors of my beta reader Traffic Light. While keeping the stuff that Yellow and Green liked I am addressing the issues Red raised - namely getting conflict in earlier and also showing why the protagonist doesn't end up going the spandex route. It's going well, but the problem is that my creative juices have fired up again and I have a couple of short stories demanding to be written. I need more hours in the day and more energy, but at least I'm doing quick outlines of the ideas so that they don't vanish from my porous memory before I can write them like so many, many others. Waiting to hear back on two stories that are out and for another to be published. Hurry up and accept stuff, editors, so I can write self-congratulatory tweets. IT'S WHAT THE WORLD WANTS.
Hockey: man, the line between having a good game and screwing everything up is so damn fine. More so at goalie than defense, but I was having a decent game last night as we played a team close to us in skill level. Well, we were missing Gary, our ringer, and they were not missing their ringer, who may or may not have been named Gary as well (I just checked. He was not a Gary). He was the difference, but we'd actually kept him off the board and were tied at 3-3 with 10 minutes left. And then some JERKWEED made a good read and pinched in to steal a bad clearing attempt but MISSED THE PUCK, which led to a 3 on 1 the other way that our heroic goalie Chaz stopped but somehow got beat on a bad-angle rebound. Again, I MISSED THE PUCK, just had my stick go right over it. Ye gods. We almost tied it but they punched in another before adding an empty netter to seal their win. Still, we played pretty well and when we didn't Chaz was there to cover our behinds. I think having set lines eliminates a lot of confusion for the forwards, and the line of Brad, Kevin, and Ryan (not Kyle, as I wrote on the combat tracker strips I'm using on a white board. That's right, fellow Scurvy Dogs, I'm a total nerd and play D&D and other games like it and your names were on something geeky ahahahahahah) had a second strong game together in a row. I guess this means we won't be letting Kevin go back to Duke. Sorry, man, I understand college is important and all but thie is BEER LEAGUE HOCKEY we're talking about here. Adjust your priorities, man. Anyway, we should knighting Chaz for his work in net or something. I'm missing a goalie opportunity next week as we'll both be away but I'm sure my family won't mind if I have us leave DC at like 1pm so I can make my game and then drive back down that night, right? Ha no.
Other Writing: If you're not reading the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl I'm going to suggest that you maybe go ahead and do so. It's being written by Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics and the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Hamlet book, who is also an EXCELLENT JUDGE of stories about Machines of Death and so on. It's a series presented with tongue firmly in cheek and a hero who doesn't look like she just stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. Terrific stuff. I'm reading it on Comixology but I'm sure it's in your LFCBS as well. I mean, this issue had Cat Thor. CAT THOR.
Writing: On the horns of a dilemma. I'm still chugging along on the edit/rewrite of Big Stupid Book, heeding the advice of all three colors of my beta reader Traffic Light. While keeping the stuff that Yellow and Green liked I am addressing the issues Red raised - namely getting conflict in earlier and also showing why the protagonist doesn't end up going the spandex route. It's going well, but the problem is that my creative juices have fired up again and I have a couple of short stories demanding to be written. I need more hours in the day and more energy, but at least I'm doing quick outlines of the ideas so that they don't vanish from my porous memory before I can write them like so many, many others. Waiting to hear back on two stories that are out and for another to be published. Hurry up and accept stuff, editors, so I can write self-congratulatory tweets. IT'S WHAT THE WORLD WANTS.
Hockey: man, the line between having a good game and screwing everything up is so damn fine. More so at goalie than defense, but I was having a decent game last night as we played a team close to us in skill level. Well, we were missing Gary, our ringer, and they were not missing their ringer, who may or may not have been named Gary as well (I just checked. He was not a Gary). He was the difference, but we'd actually kept him off the board and were tied at 3-3 with 10 minutes left. And then some JERKWEED made a good read and pinched in to steal a bad clearing attempt but MISSED THE PUCK, which led to a 3 on 1 the other way that our heroic goalie Chaz stopped but somehow got beat on a bad-angle rebound. Again, I MISSED THE PUCK, just had my stick go right over it. Ye gods. We almost tied it but they punched in another before adding an empty netter to seal their win. Still, we played pretty well and when we didn't Chaz was there to cover our behinds. I think having set lines eliminates a lot of confusion for the forwards, and the line of Brad, Kevin, and Ryan (not Kyle, as I wrote on the combat tracker strips I'm using on a white board. That's right, fellow Scurvy Dogs, I'm a total nerd and play D&D and other games like it and your names were on something geeky ahahahahahah) had a second strong game together in a row. I guess this means we won't be letting Kevin go back to Duke. Sorry, man, I understand college is important and all but thie is BEER LEAGUE HOCKEY we're talking about here. Adjust your priorities, man. Anyway, we should knighting Chaz for his work in net or something. I'm missing a goalie opportunity next week as we'll both be away but I'm sure my family won't mind if I have us leave DC at like 1pm so I can make my game and then drive back down that night, right? Ha no.
Other Writing: If you're not reading the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl I'm going to suggest that you maybe go ahead and do so. It's being written by Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics and the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Hamlet book, who is also an EXCELLENT JUDGE of stories about Machines of Death and so on. It's a series presented with tongue firmly in cheek and a hero who doesn't look like she just stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. Terrific stuff. I'm reading it on Comixology but I'm sure it's in your LFCBS as well. I mean, this issue had Cat Thor. CAT THOR.
Friday, August 7, 2015
Biscuit, Meet Basket
The law of averages surely dictates that sooner or later I'd do something that would result in a goal while playing hockey, no matter how inept I am. I've probably come closer to scoring on my own goalie than I had against the other team, as I can think of at least two times I've put clearing attempts off our own posts. I used to get a little bummed out about the fact that I couldn't score a freaking goal but I'm trying to become more zen about hockey. After all, I'm 47 freaking years old and playing against kids half my age on some nights. I try to balance out the bad assessments with some positive notes, although some nights are more difficult than others.
For instance, last night my skating wasn't great. They had a fast dude who beat me to the outside twice, although one instance was aided by my defensive partner bowling into me and sending us both to the ice. Comic merriment for all! But other aspects were good, like, uhm, well, okay I blocked a lot of shots. And my passing wasn't as bad as having a case of dysentery or anything. Plus, I read a play and roared intot he slot as one of my teammates fed me a beautiful cross ice pass that I somehow managed to one-time without falling over or missing (note: a one-timer is a hockey shot wherein the recipient of the pass shoots the puck without stopping it. It's a bang-bang play that usually happens too quickly for the defense to react to, and the fact that I pulled one off absolutely flabbergasted my teammates. Rightfully so, to be fair). My shot was dead center of the goal, which was unfortunate because the goalie got over to make the stop, I was ever so vexed. That should have been it.
Instead, the magic happened with an innocuous wrist shot from the point that floated in serenely and somehow dipped through the goalie's five-hole. My first goal celebration consisted of just shaking my head and laughing, happy to be off the schnide but wishing it could have been something a little more epic. Hell, a few seconds later I actually got off a decent wrister that would have been a little more respectable, but that one he stopped. Oh well. A goal is a goal and a win is a win, and both are rare enough for the Scurvy Dogs that we have to appreciate each one. Ye gods, we have a legit chance at .500 this season. We have just a good as chance of going 2-6. WHO KNOWS? All that matters is that they haven't had to carry me off the ice.
Yet.
For instance, last night my skating wasn't great. They had a fast dude who beat me to the outside twice, although one instance was aided by my defensive partner bowling into me and sending us both to the ice. Comic merriment for all! But other aspects were good, like, uhm, well, okay I blocked a lot of shots. And my passing wasn't as bad as having a case of dysentery or anything. Plus, I read a play and roared intot he slot as one of my teammates fed me a beautiful cross ice pass that I somehow managed to one-time without falling over or missing (note: a one-timer is a hockey shot wherein the recipient of the pass shoots the puck without stopping it. It's a bang-bang play that usually happens too quickly for the defense to react to, and the fact that I pulled one off absolutely flabbergasted my teammates. Rightfully so, to be fair). My shot was dead center of the goal, which was unfortunate because the goalie got over to make the stop, I was ever so vexed. That should have been it.
Instead, the magic happened with an innocuous wrist shot from the point that floated in serenely and somehow dipped through the goalie's five-hole. My first goal celebration consisted of just shaking my head and laughing, happy to be off the schnide but wishing it could have been something a little more epic. Hell, a few seconds later I actually got off a decent wrister that would have been a little more respectable, but that one he stopped. Oh well. A goal is a goal and a win is a win, and both are rare enough for the Scurvy Dogs that we have to appreciate each one. Ye gods, we have a legit chance at .500 this season. We have just a good as chance of going 2-6. WHO KNOWS? All that matters is that they haven't had to carry me off the ice.
Yet.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Lazy Summer Days
Updating once a moth is pretty lazy , I admit. Busy in many ways, not the least of which is diving back into my stupid book after cranking out some new stories to garner rejections. About a quarter of the way through the re-re-re-re-rewrite. Optimistic I'll get it right this time, or at least closer to right. Whatever that is. Still waiting for one outlet to publish a story they bought from me two years ago - the editor and his wife have been having extreme health issues so patience is easily found on my part.
Becky leaves for a week of sleepaway camp on Sunday. This is something she requested and I'm proud of her being brave enough to go without knowing another soul there. Any trepidation I feel is tempered by the fact that it's the same camp I went to and counseled at when I was an early teenager, and my memories of the place are pretty much golden. Chalupa is going to be most confused by her absence, though. The big doofus sleeps in her room in front of her bed every night, like a freakin' watchdog.
Hockey is hockey. We had a great time up in Vermont at the Hockey Fights MS tournament, somehow going 2-2. It was funny to see the looks on the faces of the non-Scurvy Dogs players when we got housed by teams from Philly and Montreal - welcome to our world, gang. My goalie training is suspended as my regular games are on Thursday nights as well, so I'll have to wait until September to have people shoot multiple pucks past me again. My one week of vacation is coming up, with Hershey and DC our destinations. Kids are excited. Trying to decide if I can be enough of a superdad to ride the Great Bear with Becky. Oy, the motion sickness from the upside down stuff. Ye gods, I have issues.
Gaming has been great - between house cons and our usual gaming group we've been playing all sorts of fun stuff. Last night was Elder Sign, wherein amazing luck and skillful playing allowed the others to overrride my usual crappy rolling and allow us to bitchslap Nyarlathotep back to sleep. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, y'all. I also splurged and, for the first time in my life, bought a reasonably powerful PC. It's totally for writing and editing and not at all for Pillars of Eternity which is SO PRETTY AND FUN LIKE BALDUR'S GATE GREW UP AND GOT EVEN MORE AWESOME.
Becky leaves for a week of sleepaway camp on Sunday. This is something she requested and I'm proud of her being brave enough to go without knowing another soul there. Any trepidation I feel is tempered by the fact that it's the same camp I went to and counseled at when I was an early teenager, and my memories of the place are pretty much golden. Chalupa is going to be most confused by her absence, though. The big doofus sleeps in her room in front of her bed every night, like a freakin' watchdog.
Hockey is hockey. We had a great time up in Vermont at the Hockey Fights MS tournament, somehow going 2-2. It was funny to see the looks on the faces of the non-Scurvy Dogs players when we got housed by teams from Philly and Montreal - welcome to our world, gang. My goalie training is suspended as my regular games are on Thursday nights as well, so I'll have to wait until September to have people shoot multiple pucks past me again. My one week of vacation is coming up, with Hershey and DC our destinations. Kids are excited. Trying to decide if I can be enough of a superdad to ride the Great Bear with Becky. Oy, the motion sickness from the upside down stuff. Ye gods, I have issues.
Gaming has been great - between house cons and our usual gaming group we've been playing all sorts of fun stuff. Last night was Elder Sign, wherein amazing luck and skillful playing allowed the others to overrride my usual crappy rolling and allow us to bitchslap Nyarlathotep back to sleep. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, y'all. I also splurged and, for the first time in my life, bought a reasonably powerful PC. It's totally for writing and editing and not at all for Pillars of Eternity which is SO PRETTY AND FUN LIKE BALDUR'S GATE GREW UP AND GOT EVEN MORE AWESOME.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Embracing the Red
In this post I had discussed the reactions from the beta readers of my would-be book, including the scathing comments from the one I dubbed Red. It's not surprising -- to me, anyway -- that I've dwelled on that a bit. Part of me said he was 100% right and I needed to rip it all down, while another part said that he just didn't get it and that I just had to nod my head and keep on keeping on. Seeing things in such black and white is impractical, though, and instead I think I'm going to gravitate toward a happy medium. No, my protagonist isn't going to become a superhero, but I'll create the reason(s) why. I will punch up a little more excitement and action in the first half of the book, and I will maybe do some more pruning. As an author I understand that I'm never going to make every reader happy, but what Red said disturbed me enough that I need to get the manuscript to a place where I'm happy with it first. So, another draft. As Madeline Kahn said, 'Why not? Seven's always been my lucky number.'
Meanwhile, there's been other actual writing going on when I wasn't prepping games for two cons in a three week span. I just sent off a story for a contest because why not, and I'm re-editing the one that drew a positive rejection from F&SF. Maybe I'll write other things as well. Maybe I'll get off my ass and finish my site so I can hang out my editor shingle WHO KNOWS. Who knows indeed.
Speaking of cons the one I went to last weekend was simply awesome. Played a game I instantly bought for the kids (and for adults who like silly games, and drinking, and combining those two passions) called Terrror in Meeple City , formerly known as Rampage. You're a monster trying to destroy buildings, eat meeples, and beat up other monsters. Your breath weapon? Your breath (not the smell. The force of it). Want to jump on a building? Drop your monster on it. It's silly, ridiculous, and fun. If you have kids, why don't you have this? Aren't you sick of Monopoly yet? (you are)
Okay. Summer hockey starts next week. Playing goal game 2, although now that the Rangers traded Talbot away I might be needed at the Garden . . .
Meanwhile, there's been other actual writing going on when I wasn't prepping games for two cons in a three week span. I just sent off a story for a contest because why not, and I'm re-editing the one that drew a positive rejection from F&SF. Maybe I'll write other things as well. Maybe I'll get off my ass and finish my site so I can hang out my editor shingle WHO KNOWS. Who knows indeed.
Speaking of cons the one I went to last weekend was simply awesome. Played a game I instantly bought for the kids (and for adults who like silly games, and drinking, and combining those two passions) called Terrror in Meeple City , formerly known as Rampage. You're a monster trying to destroy buildings, eat meeples, and beat up other monsters. Your breath weapon? Your breath (not the smell. The force of it). Want to jump on a building? Drop your monster on it. It's silly, ridiculous, and fun. If you have kids, why don't you have this? Aren't you sick of Monopoly yet? (you are)
Okay. Summer hockey starts next week. Playing goal game 2, although now that the Rangers traded Talbot away I might be needed at the Garden . . .
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Ant Vomit and Pocket Plutonium - Running Games at Pegcon
So this is a post (written at 5am so the typos are totally features and not bugs) that'll show how I live in two completely different worlds, as it's all about RPGs and not about sports at all. I guess that makes me like Chris Klewe, except I can't punt all that well, aren't famous, and am not the hated foe of the Gamergate losers. So, friends and family who don't share my gaming passion, feel free to scratch your head in bewilderment or make 'Big Bang Theory' jokes. It's okay. I accept and embrace the duality of my nature.
ANYWAY
This past weekend I attended Pegcon, a gathering of 50 or so wonderful gamers at a big ole house in Newton, MA. The couple that runs it decided long ago that the best way to celebrate their wedding anniversary was to fill their home with their friends and play games, and damned if they're not on to something. It's the sort of event wherein the structural integrity of the building is threatened by the constant rumbling of laughter, and your ribs are in danger of being cracked by the hugs of people you don't see often enough. At a 3.5 hour ride from NJ we're only a middling commute - we have folks from Maryland, Las Vegas, California, and even England. Sometimes Canadians, but not this time, I think. Regardless, let me get back to the matter at hand, in which I embraced lunacy and decided to run games in two systems that were brand new to me.
The first was Robin D. Law's Hillfolk from Pelgrane Press. I'm not going to lie, it took me several readthroughs of the rules before I could grasp what was going on and what needed to happen for the game to work. It's a little like Fiasco is that the game is driven by conflicts and conversations between the players, but intended to be a bit more serious. The suggested starter game is as a tribe of, well, Hillfolk, in Iron Age era Palestine. Using a well-crafted mod designed to ease a group into play was far too logical for me, of course, so instead I made things extra weird by picking a different mod by John Scott Tynes that made the players . . . ants. I used his castes and the threat of a zombifying fungus, but chose to have the players be ants that were suddenly Awakened with human-level intelligence. I was concerned that this game was going to flop on its face. I am happy to report that it did not.
My players were superb, overcoming my initial moment of terror when I cited shows like Sons of Anarchy, the Sopranos, and Justified as examples of what we were trying to make and was met with blank stares from everyone but the Emmy-winning writer at the table (all tables should have one of those, BTW She's awesome). Our game wasn't as gritty and dark as the sample campaign in the book, but we had plenty of conflict along with our humor. The Assassin was trying to come to terms with the sensation of new feelings and his extreme ineptitude at expressing them. In addition, he was addicted to the healing vomit of the Honeypot. The Honeypot, who completely broke the table by spending the first 30 seconds screaming in horror as he realized why they kept giving him so much food (they become immobile larders for the colony), was trying to find a different role in life. The Soldier, who had seen all of his fellow soldier ants die around him countless times while he somehow lived on, decided that there was a Ant God and that he was blessed with immortality. In trying to convert the Communications ant on this he didn't skip a beat when she admitted she had awakened them via a chemical mistake, first saying she was the instrument of the Ant God and then later anointing her as the actual Ant God, a title she accepted after a while. The Assassin and his Tank brother sparred constantly. The Engineer clashed with the Soldier over the replacement limb she'd made for him when the Assassin had torn it off in a berserk rage . . . there was so much delicious and hysterical conflict. Drama tokens, given to the person who loses the discussion, were a nice way to be rewarded for conceding an argument and allowed the Honeypot to shoehorn his way into a conversation in a much more cinematic manner. At the end we went back and decided whether or not the characters had each achieved the desire they'd written down during character creation, and it gave a nice coda to the session. The procedural system used for resolving outside conflicts is interesting but had a bit of a flaw (unless I misread the rules about it, which is entirely possible). There's a clever red-yellow-green system that's used which forces the players and the GM to either be strong, middling, or weak in a conflict - all three have to be used before you get them back again. A deck of cards is employed as well. On the GM side, for the PCs to win a easy fight they have to match the color of the GMs up card (they may or may not know the difficulty, based on what's gone on before). If it's a middling fight, they have to match the suit. For a difficult fight, they have to match or beat the value of the card, and that was our issue. I understand the math behind it - for easy you have 25 cards you can draw to win; for middling, 12. If I draw an Ace or a King there's only 3 to 7 cards that can beat me - BUT - in four difficult level fights I drew 4, 4, 5, and a Jack. Aside from the face card, the other fights were too easy. Maybe let the GM draw 2 cards in secret and play the best one? I would consider house ruling it like that next time. That being said, it was an absurd amount of fun. Not for shy, quiet players, though. Your PCs need to be invested and involved in Hillfolk, which mine were. Good time.
The second game I ran was the brand-spanking new Katanas and Trenchcoats by Ryan Macklin. This one is based on the glorious cheesiness of Highlander and I spent most of my time laughing while reading the rules. I had a tough time deciding whether to pre-gen the characters or have the players make them up on the spot, but in the end I settled for a hybrid and gave them skeletons to drape clothes on. For my part generation was easy and FUN - the inspiration for Batman; an actress so good one of her many roles was Jesus Christ ('Oops.'); an ancient warrior trying to come to term with SO MANY DAMN GUNS; and so on. They wrote up even more great background stuff and terrific Thrones of Comfort - things special to them that the SM would never mess with except for when we do because of course we're going to (although in this instance I didn't have to because the PCs kept moving the plot along). Overall, the session went well, I think. Saturday night is a tough slot - everyone has two four-hour sessions already under their belt for the day and energy starts to flag a bit, but my players were great. My wife, suffering from brutal sinus issues, had to bow out during the first fight (of course she's playing the Zulu character who saw her entire village wiped out by the British and she left right before they run into the RMCP Black Ops who are led by a guy in full RMCP regalia) which left me with 6 PCs, still a big number for this system. Still, I felt it worked pretty well. The PCs, Immortals all, were at the mansion of another Immortal. An uneasy agreement to abandon killing each other for the possibly non-existent 'Prize' was put into place 50 years ago, so this was just a friendly gathering that got ugly when three of the waiters, who turned out to be Vipers in disguise, used what later proved to be Fey magic in concert with one another to Permakill the host (and my wife's PC, since she was leaving anyway). After a good fight they questioned one and discovered they were hired by the Twins, a pair of Twilight-influenced Hungarian vampires. At the airport they were surrounded by the RMCP Black ops and I expected a big fight but the doctor made good use of her Always Another Pocket/Pouch ability to produce some weapon-grade plutonium, which made the RMCP back down. They flew to labs in San Fransisco to determine the makeup of the death balls, then went to the Vampires, where through careful negotiation (and some brooding) they found out another Immortal had hired the Vipers through the Twins (another scene that could have been a fight, but wasn't). They jetted to confront the Immortal, who welcomed them with open arms and was shocked that 2 Immortals had been killed - he thought it was a joke. After talking (another expected fight that didn't happen - I had were-jaguars, were-rheas, were-poison-dart-frogs, were-giantbirdkiller spiders, and a were-badger!) the PCs found out who had contacted him to hire out the job - an Immortal-wannabe in Australia who, when confronted in the final scene, revealed that he had made a deal with the Fey and transformed into a massive dragon that could Permakill Immortals, which is exactly what happened to the NPC one who went with them. If we hadn't been running late and close to midnight I would tossed in a few more Vipers with death balls (they had to be in a triangle around the Immortal and all squish the balls at the same time) but it was about time to let them succeed like the badasses they were. The players had a few quibbles with the system but I kind of liked it as it really encouraged them to describe what they were doing. All in all, a pair of great sessions, at least for me.
On Sunday I was part of the scariest horror game EVER. It was set at Fenway. THE HORROR, THE HORROR oh god the Sox are terrible this year. Okay, sports friends, all the geeky stuff is over for now. Let's talk save percentage and VORP.
ANYWAY
This past weekend I attended Pegcon, a gathering of 50 or so wonderful gamers at a big ole house in Newton, MA. The couple that runs it decided long ago that the best way to celebrate their wedding anniversary was to fill their home with their friends and play games, and damned if they're not on to something. It's the sort of event wherein the structural integrity of the building is threatened by the constant rumbling of laughter, and your ribs are in danger of being cracked by the hugs of people you don't see often enough. At a 3.5 hour ride from NJ we're only a middling commute - we have folks from Maryland, Las Vegas, California, and even England. Sometimes Canadians, but not this time, I think. Regardless, let me get back to the matter at hand, in which I embraced lunacy and decided to run games in two systems that were brand new to me.
The first was Robin D. Law's Hillfolk from Pelgrane Press. I'm not going to lie, it took me several readthroughs of the rules before I could grasp what was going on and what needed to happen for the game to work. It's a little like Fiasco is that the game is driven by conflicts and conversations between the players, but intended to be a bit more serious. The suggested starter game is as a tribe of, well, Hillfolk, in Iron Age era Palestine. Using a well-crafted mod designed to ease a group into play was far too logical for me, of course, so instead I made things extra weird by picking a different mod by John Scott Tynes that made the players . . . ants. I used his castes and the threat of a zombifying fungus, but chose to have the players be ants that were suddenly Awakened with human-level intelligence. I was concerned that this game was going to flop on its face. I am happy to report that it did not.
My players were superb, overcoming my initial moment of terror when I cited shows like Sons of Anarchy, the Sopranos, and Justified as examples of what we were trying to make and was met with blank stares from everyone but the Emmy-winning writer at the table (all tables should have one of those, BTW She's awesome). Our game wasn't as gritty and dark as the sample campaign in the book, but we had plenty of conflict along with our humor. The Assassin was trying to come to terms with the sensation of new feelings and his extreme ineptitude at expressing them. In addition, he was addicted to the healing vomit of the Honeypot. The Honeypot, who completely broke the table by spending the first 30 seconds screaming in horror as he realized why they kept giving him so much food (they become immobile larders for the colony), was trying to find a different role in life. The Soldier, who had seen all of his fellow soldier ants die around him countless times while he somehow lived on, decided that there was a Ant God and that he was blessed with immortality. In trying to convert the Communications ant on this he didn't skip a beat when she admitted she had awakened them via a chemical mistake, first saying she was the instrument of the Ant God and then later anointing her as the actual Ant God, a title she accepted after a while. The Assassin and his Tank brother sparred constantly. The Engineer clashed with the Soldier over the replacement limb she'd made for him when the Assassin had torn it off in a berserk rage . . . there was so much delicious and hysterical conflict. Drama tokens, given to the person who loses the discussion, were a nice way to be rewarded for conceding an argument and allowed the Honeypot to shoehorn his way into a conversation in a much more cinematic manner. At the end we went back and decided whether or not the characters had each achieved the desire they'd written down during character creation, and it gave a nice coda to the session. The procedural system used for resolving outside conflicts is interesting but had a bit of a flaw (unless I misread the rules about it, which is entirely possible). There's a clever red-yellow-green system that's used which forces the players and the GM to either be strong, middling, or weak in a conflict - all three have to be used before you get them back again. A deck of cards is employed as well. On the GM side, for the PCs to win a easy fight they have to match the color of the GMs up card (they may or may not know the difficulty, based on what's gone on before). If it's a middling fight, they have to match the suit. For a difficult fight, they have to match or beat the value of the card, and that was our issue. I understand the math behind it - for easy you have 25 cards you can draw to win; for middling, 12. If I draw an Ace or a King there's only 3 to 7 cards that can beat me - BUT - in four difficult level fights I drew 4, 4, 5, and a Jack. Aside from the face card, the other fights were too easy. Maybe let the GM draw 2 cards in secret and play the best one? I would consider house ruling it like that next time. That being said, it was an absurd amount of fun. Not for shy, quiet players, though. Your PCs need to be invested and involved in Hillfolk, which mine were. Good time.
The second game I ran was the brand-spanking new Katanas and Trenchcoats by Ryan Macklin. This one is based on the glorious cheesiness of Highlander and I spent most of my time laughing while reading the rules. I had a tough time deciding whether to pre-gen the characters or have the players make them up on the spot, but in the end I settled for a hybrid and gave them skeletons to drape clothes on. For my part generation was easy and FUN - the inspiration for Batman; an actress so good one of her many roles was Jesus Christ ('Oops.'); an ancient warrior trying to come to term with SO MANY DAMN GUNS; and so on. They wrote up even more great background stuff and terrific Thrones of Comfort - things special to them that the SM would never mess with except for when we do because of course we're going to (although in this instance I didn't have to because the PCs kept moving the plot along). Overall, the session went well, I think. Saturday night is a tough slot - everyone has two four-hour sessions already under their belt for the day and energy starts to flag a bit, but my players were great. My wife, suffering from brutal sinus issues, had to bow out during the first fight (of course she's playing the Zulu character who saw her entire village wiped out by the British and she left right before they run into the RMCP Black Ops who are led by a guy in full RMCP regalia) which left me with 6 PCs, still a big number for this system. Still, I felt it worked pretty well. The PCs, Immortals all, were at the mansion of another Immortal. An uneasy agreement to abandon killing each other for the possibly non-existent 'Prize' was put into place 50 years ago, so this was just a friendly gathering that got ugly when three of the waiters, who turned out to be Vipers in disguise, used what later proved to be Fey magic in concert with one another to Permakill the host (and my wife's PC, since she was leaving anyway). After a good fight they questioned one and discovered they were hired by the Twins, a pair of Twilight-influenced Hungarian vampires. At the airport they were surrounded by the RMCP Black ops and I expected a big fight but the doctor made good use of her Always Another Pocket/Pouch ability to produce some weapon-grade plutonium, which made the RMCP back down. They flew to labs in San Fransisco to determine the makeup of the death balls, then went to the Vampires, where through careful negotiation (and some brooding) they found out another Immortal had hired the Vipers through the Twins (another scene that could have been a fight, but wasn't). They jetted to confront the Immortal, who welcomed them with open arms and was shocked that 2 Immortals had been killed - he thought it was a joke. After talking (another expected fight that didn't happen - I had were-jaguars, were-rheas, were-poison-dart-frogs, were-giantbirdkiller spiders, and a were-badger!) the PCs found out who had contacted him to hire out the job - an Immortal-wannabe in Australia who, when confronted in the final scene, revealed that he had made a deal with the Fey and transformed into a massive dragon that could Permakill Immortals, which is exactly what happened to the NPC one who went with them. If we hadn't been running late and close to midnight I would tossed in a few more Vipers with death balls (they had to be in a triangle around the Immortal and all squish the balls at the same time) but it was about time to let them succeed like the badasses they were. The players had a few quibbles with the system but I kind of liked it as it really encouraged them to describe what they were doing. All in all, a pair of great sessions, at least for me.
On Sunday I was part of the scariest horror game EVER. It was set at Fenway. THE HORROR, THE HORROR oh god the Sox are terrible this year. Okay, sports friends, all the geeky stuff is over for now. Let's talk save percentage and VORP.
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