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Amusement and Meat 8/13/07: In regular enjoying-Denver news, Sandra and I finally gave Elitch Gardens a try, since it's just wrong to live within walking distance of roller coasters and never drop in to visit them! Pricey, as such places tend to be ($3.00 for a bottled water? gakkk), but as good a time as I've ever had at an amusement park. They've got the same rides as everyone, of course (Sandra and I had fun getting drenched on the raft ride, hooting on the big tilting boat thingy, etc) and some fun shows and food that - while not remarkably good food by any means - seems to have been formulated not to upset the tummy, which is a wise tactical move in the rollercoaster business. Made for a nice Saturday (and since my sleep is tilting again, drenching me on a raft-ride served as a handy way to keep me awake). In Cumberland Games news, there's a new freebie in town, and it's a pretty odd one. Spider Meat (now available at the Free Stuff of the Moment page) was originally prepared for a Hurricane Katrina charity anthology, and now it's free for everyone, complete with a few updates and a new made-for-the-home-printer look. It's probably the most substantive Uresia freebie to date, so if you're curious about Uresia and the stuff on Blue Lamp Road didn't settle the matter, Spider Meat may ... Well, read it and see. I dare not suppose, honestly; 'cause Spider Meat is odd. Murphy's Totally Rules 7/13/07: One of the fun parts about living in a new city has been exploring the game shops. So far, I’ve found four stores with enough RPGs and/or RPG-focus to qualify as gen-u-wine gamer meccas, and part of the fun of that is poking through the used/consignment shelves to find stuff I wanted to buy 20 years ago but didn’t have enough allowance saved up for. In that process, I’ve discovered something both wonderful and embarrassing. Long-time gamers will remember Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer, arguably the gaming magazine with the most complicated history of changes in its schizoid multiple runs across multiple publishers’ desks. It was a good magazine, though, in all its incarnations, and of course in the original Steve Jackson Games run it was the home of Murphy’s Rules, one of the coolest concepts in RPG cartooning, ever-ever. When I was compiling the 2nd Edition of the Murphy’s Rules collection for SJ Games lo these many years ago, I was pleased with myself for being the one guy in the building who remembered that Autoduel Quarterly had (exactly once) ran a page of original Murphy’s (Steve’s own memory is notoriously dodgy, and the other folks on staff at that time weren’t very hip to Car Wars, since this was during one of those times when Scott Haring had been let go). By including that page in the collection, I gave it one thing that no other editor on staff would have, so there I was, patty-pat-patting my own back for that ... Like the kind of idiot who had no idea, no idea until right now, that Murphy’s Rules continued in the issues of Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer after the Steve Jackson Games run of the magazine. Granted, it’s probably a moot point because those cartoons are owned by other people (and given the potential for legal confusions in securing the necessary permissions, it’s probably just not something that could reasonably work into one of the SJ Games collections without some serious phone-tag and elbow-grease). And for all I know there's even personal drama hidden somewhere in the mix (the issues don't acknowledge "Murphy's Rules" as an SJ Games trademark) ... So, one way or another, it wouldn’t have made much difference had I known (the 2nd Edition enjoyed a position as “something fun we can get out there quick on virtually no new editorial budget”) but ... It’s like suddenly discovering that there’s one more book in your favorite old novel series, or like a really intensified version of realizing that yes, there actually is one more slice of pizza in the box you believed to be empty. And, as noted above, it's embarassing! 'Cause I should know stuff like that. Sooner than now, I mean. Some of these Murphy’s cartoons are excellent, too. Every bit as good as the classics I’ve already memorized from the books, and with cartoonists I didn’t know existed. Cartoonists that, perhaps, can never appear in a collection, but who deserve to be remembered (Tim Callender, and ... some guy with initials that may or may not be V.G., and possibly others) among the ranks of Murphy’s Rules dudes. So now it’s time for me to start hunting for those issues. Anyone got some they want to swap? Kwik-E-Mart 7/4/07: Monday, while catching the bus down toward Englewood to GM a Risus session, I noticed that the 7-11 a few blocks south of here had completely re-done its exterior as a "Kwik-E-Mart," ala the Simpsons, complete with character statues and a wall mural and such. I did a double-take and chuckled over it - figuring it (rightly) as a promotion for the Simpsons Movie, but didn't think much about it, and rode past, focusing on one more pass through my scenario prep. I figured if one 7-11 did, all of them probably had - or all of them in the region or something. But now I read in the news that there are only a dozen such store-conversions across all of North America (11 here in the States; one in Canada), and one of them just happens to be a few blocks away. Cool. But then I read that they're also stocking the shelves with Krusty-O's and other edible replicas of Simpson's-universe junk-food. Ooo. Now I'm very tempted to go back and actually go in, this time! Home Again 6/10/07: Sandra and I arrived in Denver safely, and the trip was a pretty good time all by itself. We skipped the interstates for much of the trip, choosing instead to cut northwest across the Texas Hill Country, and from there up past Lubbock and Amarillo. We finally met up with I-25 north, for the final leg of the trip, at Raton, New Mexico. The road was a different kind of beautiful every few miles. The new place is pretty great – an old 1940s tenement along a quiet tree-lined street that wears its pulp-era history on its sleeve with art deco entryways and the odd historical-landmark plaque. We’ve got a living-room window that must be fifteen feet wide, giving us a nice westward view toward the Rockies, with just enough Denver in the way to make it ideal. We’ve been on a mad day-to-day rush to get all the settling-in errands done, and also to explore our surroundings. We’ve got our library cards, a season pass to the zoo, and a growing list of local dining and hanging-out spots we’ve tagged as favorites. I’ve been emailing back and forth with a dozen or so local gamers, too, getting my toes wet and preparing to dive in (and in an unexpected last-chapter twist, the core players in my as-regular-as-we-can-manage Uresius campaign are also moving to Denver). Right now I’m settled into a neighborhood bar that may well become my regular Sunday-night writing spot on those Sunday nights when I need one. It’s dark and loud, and the music is decent (okay, at the moment they’re playing the very worst Elvis Presley song in history, but Elvis is like pizza – even when he’s bad, he’s still pretty good). Denver already feels like home. Mile High 5/25/07: As of tonight (or tomorrow morning; I’m not sure which) our Internet connection here in Austin is toast, and as of Monday morning we’re on the road for Denver, Colorado, where our new apartment awaits. We’ll miss this place. Nine years in groovy South Austin really makes a positive impact on a person, and – culturally, at least – I don’t think I’ll ever again encounter a place to equal it. Sandra and I have explored this city pretty well, though (on foot, you get to know the whole city), and we’re excited about having a new place to wander, snuggle, and do that stuff we do. Strange but true: with nearly nine years here, I’ve officially lived in Austin for longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life, at least in a straight stretch. Anyway, with the Net connection gone until we get re-settled in Denver, my email and Web access will be irregular, limited to whatever hot-spots we pause in on the road (and/or the dodgy fortunes of hotel-provided service). Cumberland Games remains open all hours, of course, served ably by Terry over at HyperBooks (and, if you’re in a hardcopy mood, the toner gurus at Lulu). I may be a little slow responding to customer inquiries and whatnot, but I’ll respond as fast as I can get to my email, and I’ll be back to speed 100% sometime early in June. Guide, Be Pricey 5/21/07: Yesterday's post (in which I linked to my picture of the miniature Dungeon Master's Guide), got me re-reading the old review attached to the picture. I joked in the review about paying $10 to avoid having to pay $80 on eBay a year later ... But I didn't really think the dinky little books would ever be priced quite so high. Of course, it's been more than a year, but sure enough, at least some people are pricing them in exactly that range. Yikes. Guide, Begone! No, Wait. 5/20/07: One of the more notable casualties of the recent book purge was my old Dungeon Master’s Guide, which I finally let go just because it was in terrible shape, with the front cover gone and the pages barely clinging to the remainder of the spine. By the time you read this, it will have been incinerated somewhere. This manual – my very first and (with one exception) only copy – served me in heavy gameplay back in the day (and several times since the day), but it was always doomed, since it was a cheaply-made orange-spine edition. The orange-spines had pretty Jeff Easley paintings on them, but they were never built to survive the kind of marathon dungeoneering I put mine through. It’s a miracle it held together as long as it did, really. I kept “my” Player’s Handbook, because my PHB is from the earlier, made-of-steel D.C.S. era. In truth, there is no “my” PHB and never was ... I hoarded them. By the time I’d been a DM for a couple of years I had eight or nine copies of the PHB, because I liked to have loaners on hand for the games. I had a job (working for store credit only, but the owner would slip me some cash now and then) at a Havelock, North Carolina game & comic shop, and I’d pick up extras on the cheap from Marines who were shipping out, or from gamers who’d had a cherished character die and decided to swear off gaming “forever” (often a whole month). Ditto the Monster Manual, but for whatever reason I never wanted a second DMG. I had just the one, and now it’s gone, and I don’t miss it. At least, that’s the official story. Today, only about a week after my DMG met the dumpster, Sandra and I took a break from packing and cleaning to poke in at Half-Price Books, and there was a beautiful DMG (pre-orange-spine) in made-of-steel condition. The edges of the cover had some rounding to indicate use, but the spine-strength was like new and the interior was fresh and clear and flawless, except for one page with some ugly crimps in it from an accidental folding some year in the misty past. Five bucks. I held it for a long time, and I'm grateful for that crimped page. It was on that tiny and really inconsequential flaw that, by my fingernails, I pried myself away from temptation and put the book back down. It’s not like it’s a hard book to find a good copy of. But it does feel awfully strange that, for the first time in more than twenty years, I don’t (with one exception) have a copy anymore. A Glance Back, A Move Forward 5/04/07: Sandra and I are getting ready to change apartments, so we've been packing stuff and tossing stuff out … And there's no time like moving-time for nostalgia. There's a special breed of book, for example: the books I only read when I'm deciding whether to keep them or not. I've had some of these for decades, having never actually read them, but being so impressed in these quick inspections that I've kept them again and again. This time around, even some of those get the boot. It's liberating. We've also taken this move as an opportunity to discard two entire media: videotapes and audiocassettes. So, in addition to hundreds of pounds of RPG material (a floor-to-ceiling stack and then some, I kid you not) the local dumpster has also feasted on quite a lot of movies and music and old TV shows. Also, on the last of my collection of audio-taped gaming sessions from Virginia in the 90s ... But those, before they went to the dumpster, fed my computer to preserve their contents in a more portable digital form. I don't want to post any long excerpts without permission from everyone involved (and I don't even know everyone's address anymore), but this brief clip (with me behind the GM screen, and the excellent Marty Franklin doing the double-take) should serve to demonstrate why I love keeping audio of game sessions, even from more than a decade ago. They were a lot like my sessions now: pretty much constant laughs at the table, no matter how "serious" things get for the characters. Ah, ambrosia. Vacation (Plus 3-D!) 3/21/07: This past weekend, Sandra and I took a few days off, rented a car, and went up to Dallas for a fun little fannish event called Fan Days (it wasn’t anything I’d call a convention – more of a dealer-room swagfest with bonus celebs). There were four folks appearing of particular interest to us: Morena Baccarin and Clare Kramer (two of “Whedon’s Angels,” from Firefly and Buffy, respectively), Ernie Hudson (the human heart of the Ghostbusters), and Walter Koenig (who – and I say this as a lifelong fan of original Star Trek – I’ll always think of as “Bester” from Babylon 5). And some other folks. I had originally considered doing a full-on writeup of the trip, praising this person and that for groovy service in the face of crowds and baby-spew and so on ... But then I decided: Nah. I’ve got a ton of work to do today, so I’ll just say that we had a really, really good time and mark the occasion as our first actual vacation … ever. We’ve traveled together (and, sadly, we’ve occasionally traveled without one another) but it’s always been for work, or for family, or just for a day. This “vacation” thing kind of rocks. Thumbs-up on vacations. I prepared some JPEGs to illustrate the writeup I decided not to write up. Seems a shame to let ‘em go to waste, so I’ll let them speak for themselves. Got any 3-D glasses lying around?
Old Acrobats 2/01/07: Nah; missed it by a day! Of course, real winter did finally visit us for a couple of days, not long ago. It's been many years since I've seen that much ice (barely any snowflakes to speak of - just thick slabs of ice all over everything). It was scary wandering out during the thaw; yard-long columns of ice were falling from the power lines, smashing into the ground right beside me (at which point I stopped walking under power lines). But now, it's all melted and Austin is back to its usual mild-autumn/late-summer groove for this time of year (with rumors of another, drier freeze tomorrow). And as usual, I've been updating the website constantly, but letting any sort of Blue Desk announcements slide. I'll catch up sometime ... For starters, I'll mention that I went briefly anaglyph crazy and posted a couple (this one and this other one) at DeviantArt. Trippy!
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