A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Since starting to reclaim some life-space due to paring away extraneous projects and applying some long-overdue organization to what's left, I've been feeling the urge to move my game-playing life in new directions.

Here is some stuff I wanna do soon. Not really making plans yet, but I reserve the right to link back to this post later. If you're totally into any of these ideas (or wish to tell me how wrong I am), feel free to make your interest known!

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After listening to podcasts about them for years, I am hell-bent on trying one of the latter-day crop of storytelling RPGs. Finally picked up a copy of The Shab Al-Hiri Roach, and decree that it shall be the one I finally try first. I appreciate both its tone (which sounds like it plays out something like an R-rated Toon game[1]) and the fact that it has gamey framing elements like cards, scoring, and a win condition.

Role-playing games that are basically audience-free improv theater, or grown-up versions of "Let's Pretend" (and I mean that in the best possible way) do not appeal to me, and that discounts a wide swath of the otherwise really cool-sounding games I keep hearing about. Even though you can lose a game of Roach by an unlucky card draw, I still appreciate just having something to aim for.

[1] Really, I want to say "It sounds like Monty Python at its best and bleakest", but, sadly, "Monty Python" is such a loaded term, especially when we're talking about RPGs. It unavoidably invokes the image of some Cheeto-stained wretches sitting around a table barking "Bring me a shrubbery!" and giggling. No, that is not the game I am trying to describe.

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I wanna host a Race for the Galaxy tournament, maybe in the brief slice of time between classicaljunkie's spring and summer semesters (rather soon). She and I are both absolutely apeshit-bonkers for this game, and so are lots of our local friends. I think everyone I know who loves games loves this game, except for, like, misuba. (What the hell, dude.) UPDATE: ok, ok, several of you don't like Race! I still name it a overall rare phenomenon in my game-playing social circle.

I have never hosted a tournament of anything before. I've barely even played in any. I am not entirely sure what a "bye" is, that's how ignorant I am on the concept. So this is a novelty-driven desire, too. (Which I can sell for two cards, plus applicable trade-phase bonuses. HA HA HA.)

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One of the Gameshelf eps I wanna shoot this year is "The Diplomacy show", an idea I've been kicking around since the Gameshelf started. Both taskboy3000 and I now live in nice roomy houses, and I need something to kick-start my excitement about working on this show again, so now's the time.

The idea is that we shoot a complete, face-to-face game of Diplomacy, but direct and edit it like a reality show. There'll be cameras rolling continuously in the map room, and camcorders following people around during the discussion phase. Players must dress in costume appropriate to the Major Power they represent.

I recognize that this will be... logistically tricky. I've written my crew about it, and await their opinion. I've also written Wizards of the Coast asking if they'd like to get on this action.

Broker than I thought I was. Suddenly unable to pay bills, prior to this check that came in the mail yesterday. I shall toddle down to the bank after I finish writing this. Check is fairly fat, so it'll last for a little while, but fun spendy-spendy time is over for me until my next period of full-time consulting.

I did manage to do my taxes, finally, and I've started to track Appleseed's finances by starting a new file with plain-old Quicken. Now that I use Freshbooks to track my time and invoicing, Quicken does a fine job handling the bank accounts, including tying certain transactions to tax forms.

Hm, I think these events are connected. Suddenly having over $9,000 vanish out of one's bank accounts is liable to cause some distress.

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Picked up "Dogs in the Vineyard" last week, on the grounds that it might make a nice setting for a text adventure game. I didn't know before this that all the PCs are explicitly ~20 years old, and virgins. The notion of roving gangs of indoctrinated, armed youth with little life experience, but a license to carry out God's judgement as they see it, strikes me as terrifying, like roleplaying the Chinese Red Guard. Wondering why I haven't seen anyone else take up this angle.

I haven't actually played the game, and there's much to love about the rules and setting elsewise. I would absolutely be willing to give it a try and see what came of it, but I dunno if that will actually happen, since I am not much of a role-player. I remain interested in checking out indie RPGs that have small scopes and "gamey" rulesets, like "Agon" or "Prime Time Adventures".

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Was disappointed by the XNA user group meeting I attended at Microsoft's Waltham offices yesterday. It was really more of a class, with an MSFT employee behind a lectern, stepping through code for one of the XNA example games (a simple RPG). On top of that, it was a continuation of the same topic from the prior meeting. I lost interest quickly and slipped out after less than an hour.

There were no women in attendance, and I may have been the youngest person there. Two other attendees looked under 40, after which there were a dozen more guys ranging up into deep greybeard territory. This is cool, but the lack of younger folk surprised me, since to my mind the typical person who wants to make an XBox game would be significantly younger. I wonder if the idea of offline user group meetings is becoming increasingly alien to anyone under 30.

(I muttered about this on Twitter, since little else was accessible from my phone during the class. One person responded that younger folk just call user group meetings "meetups" now. I would have liked to go to an XNA meetup; in fact, I think I was rather hoping for one. This was not that.)

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I may sacrifice a weekend to prototype that game scheduler idea. I've made one already, for Volity, and it would give me an excuse to learn Catalyst much better. Catalyst is what one can rudely-but-correctly call Ruby on Rails for Perl, and it's what my larger client makes use of. I like it a lot, but I don't think I'll really grasp it fore-and-aft until I build a Catalyst solution from scratch, for myself. So.

We have GO on rationalization for latest cockamamie project idea, sir.