Gone Missing

[subplotkudzu]

 I've been radio silence around here for a while for which I apologize. I've been fighting a head cold since Saturday, which is a bummer, and things have been alternating slow and crazy at work. I am very much looking forward to things getting back to normal, starting with the Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw game this Sunday. They're closing in on the end of Book 1 and I have to admit that the game has been an absolute blast. A&E Readers will be seeing the write up of the first game session in this month's issue - I'll post it here as well if I hear that anybody is interested in it. 

I have also been deeply absorbed by Greg Stafford's masterful Great Pendragon Campaign. This volume rocks. A monster of a sourcebook it's everything one needs to run up to a hundred sessions of Pendragon running from Uther's kingship through Arthur's death. The players are in the thick of the story without breaking it, and things move smoothly from the heavily narrated bits to the times when the player knights have vast control over their own actions. I got totally sucked in and have to pull myself out to finish planning for this weekend's game. I will do something with this at some point, but the question is "when"? My CT players have been, for the most part, disinterested in the setting in past prospectus voting. My MA group would no doubt go along, but it would mean putting the Emirikol game on extended hiatus. The difficulty with a surplus of good options - once monthly games are not ideal for things that demand a lot of time. At least the sourcebook breaks it up into 10-15 year chuncks so we could do one bit, take  break and then come back. 

I've also been spending more time than is healthy keeping up with the Democratic primaries. In a game design sense it is clear that they have devolved into something akin to Monopoly, where we are past the point where the outcome is not in doubt but the second place player insists on dragging the game out to its soul-numbing conclusion. Here's my open plea to the Superdelegates: Just Vote Now. I don't care who you vote FOR, and I freely admit that by the rules you have to right to vote for whomever you choose, but do it now. It's clear that neither candidate will enter the convention with the magic number of pedged delegates, so it will come down to your vote whether we do it now or in 3 months. 

We also know which of the two candidates will enter the convention with a lead in peldged delegates, popular vote and states won. Until recently both of your remaining options beat out your designated opponent in head to head match ups, but now neither of them do - a trend that is likely to continue the longer this drags on. To me, that makes the superdelegate's choice pretty clear, but I don't care of they agree with me or not - I just want them to declare and end this. Just like a endless Monopoly game, it's no longer enjoyable in the slightest, the crowd is getting restless. Let's kill the opening act and start the actual election process between two candidates whose policies aren't pretty damn close to one another and figure out how the country is going to be run for the next four years. 

Or, as Vampire Willow would say: "Bored now. When do they start running?"

 
[Edited - spelling and clarity corrections]

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I'm not completely sure that I understand what you mean by The difficulty with a surplus of good options - once monthly games are not ideal things that demand a lot of time. One possible parsing seems to be "Games that are run on a schedule of one session per month demand a lot of time to play out a campaign, and in that respect are less than ideal." Is that the meaning you intended?

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Not exactly. Though I am going to go in and add the word "for" in that sentence. Thanks.

I have a lot of ideas for things I want to run, some short, some long. If I played weekly I'd be able to get more short things done and cut into the backlog of ideas rattling around my brainpan: the Gene Wolfe inspired Gamma World game, the Zero Project game, the short Doris the Vampire Slayer chronicle, and some others. I'd also be able to more reasonably plan for longer games: the 60-70 sessions of the Great Pendragon Campaign, or my ongoing USS Carter game, for which I have ideas in my heads to capture all 3 TOS seasons plus all the movies before shifting to a USS Carter TNG, where the ship is captained by the cadet we met in season 1.

Monthly games provide me a lot in the form of a reliable player base willing to commit to 6 hours of game time at a stretch rather than weekly 3.5 hour games. But some ideas are better served by more frequent meetings.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Color me VERY interested in the proceedings of your H&R game.

[mylescorcoran]

The Great Pendragon Campaign is a beauty, isn't it? It's sitting on my shelf gently chastising me for even thinking of playing other games.

There are simply not enough gaming hours in the month to address all the games I'd like to play, nor arrange games with the people I'd love to be playing with. Our weekly sessions aren't really long enough to fit the one-year/session model (leaving aside our notorious digressions).

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I don't have it on my bookshelf, but that's because it's on my hard drive. For reasons not understood it is no longer in print and only available through PDF. All of the references in Pendragon 5E and GPC about things appearing in later sourcebooks just make me weep. While I'm thrilled that the book was printed at all, why was there no support for the line? It obviously did well enough to sell out the entire first print run.

[mylescorcoran]

Yeah, I'm not at all sure of White Wolf's reasoning with Pendragon in general. Stafford is selling some additional stuff from his website for the interested fans, but it's a crying shame that the game is already out of print.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The new edition of Big Eyes Small Mouth seems to have vanished in the same way. On the other hand, I like the second edition better than what I've seen of the third; the design is simpler and more elegant, to my taste. White Wolf seems to like to buy up brilliant gaming properties, bring out one edition in a small print run, and then archive them.

[thecoughlin.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I tend more towards the almost car-crash rubber necking in the Democratic Primary.

And don't be mistaken, it is a car-crash.

Actually, biggest thing that needs to happen is that the two dems and McCain need all their dirty laundry drug out equally RIGHT NOW, instead of FOX news and the rest of the Neo-Fascist eeerrrr I mean Conservative establishment holding the cards back until AFTER the democratic primary.

Every more ire-inspiring is the review of Bush's War on Frontline.

As much as it pains me to quote a comedien who is talking about picking women/spouse, I am going to have to call back on the name of Ron Whites recent tour (one of the blue collar comedy guys from Comedy Central):

You can't fix stupid.

What amazes me is that there was such a disconnect between what Majors and below assumed/thought about the challenges invading Irag and what the Pentagon/Bush administration believed (note the change in verb).

[(Anonymous)]

Not starting a flamewar, just saying: as a Republican I find the current Democratic primary contest to be fabulously entertaining. Almost enough to make one believe in karma...

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I just find it irritating in a bad game design sense: we all know what the phase 1 outcome is so the game is now boring or pissing the players off; the longer it goes on the worse the team's position will be for the phase 2 outcome. Now, I know that it is this particular mix of players who are introducing the "pissing players off" part, but still, bad game design.