Hey All,
Last year around this time I was frantically working on the first draft of a novel, for National Create The First Draft of Some Form of Creative Project In a Month Month, or whatever the blessed acronym was. Well, this year February wouldn't really work for me, and besides, it's the shortest month in the year. This year, I think March would make a really good month to write the first draft of some form of creative project -- and also, I think that making the name a bit shorter might be handy as well. So, I am proclaiming March as the second annual First Draft month. The goal of it, as you may recall, is to create the first draft of some form of creative project in a month. Last year my goal was to write the first draft of a novel. I may very well go with that again. In any case, if you want to participate, simply contact me in any of the following ways:
1. E-mail me, if you know my e-mail address. (Hint: my first name dot my last name at the google web-mail domain.)
2. Send me a message via facebook. This can be a note, or a post on my wall.
3. Leave a comment on my blog. This will no doubt prove the least popular of the options, as I doubt anyone reads my blog any more anyway.
It might be helpful to include what you are planning to create in the text of your message.
More details on First Draft Month to come.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Tolkien vs. Jackson, Pt 2
The Tolkien estate is suing New Line Cinema, claiming that New Line has not paid them a cent, other than the initial upfront payment of $62,000. They claim that New Line owes them 7.5% on all three films' process. Apparently, they have been trying to negotiate a settlement with New Line since the release of the films, but have been unable to settle out of court. New Line has also prevented them from auditing the receipts of the last two films.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_en_mo/tolkien_lawsuit
If successful, the suit would effectively cancel the upcoming two Hobbit movies.
(So, it's not really Tolkien vs. Jackson, per se, but you get the picture.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_en_mo/tolkien_lawsuit
If successful, the suit would effectively cancel the upcoming two Hobbit movies.
(So, it's not really Tolkien vs. Jackson, per se, but you get the picture.)
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Tolkien vs. Jackson
I know a lot of people are posting this, but I thought I'd go ahead and mention it too, as I agree with it whole-heartedly. Even more than Aragorn making out with a horse, it was the thematic changes in Peter Jackson's films that were problematic to me.
"The age of man is over. The age of the orc has begun!" Ha-rumph.
"The age of man is over. The age of the orc has begun!" Ha-rumph.
Engel, Pt 2
The characters, of course, were the first thing to set up when Bekka and I started playing. Even though Bekka was the only (consistent) player in the group, I felt it was important that there actually be a group of characters traveling with her: her character wasn't some lone inquisitor out on her own, but was part of a team of some sort. Also, we figured that if other people from our Planescape campaign wanted to join later, they could take the parts of the other members of her staff.
To that end, we gave her another full-fledged Inquisitor partner, and three specially trained body guards. So the Inquisitional team looked as follows:
1. Naimah (Bekka's Character) - Bekka envisioned Naimah as a sort of liberal, laid-back type, who was interested more in solving issues peacefully than with purging heresy. She comes from a Romani family, but was taken into the church by the Grim Riders when she was young.
Name: Naimah
Background: Complicated History
Stats
Acuity: 6
Body: 5
Heart: 5
Will: 3
Traits:
Understands Scriptures 2d8
Curious 3d4
I am a Gypsy 2d10
Easygoing 3d10
I am an Inquisitor 4d6
Relationships:
Inquisition 2d6
Vlad 2d6
Belongings:
Horse 2d8
Copy of the Scriptures 1d6
Jar of Earth 1d6
Long Dagger 1d4
Bow 2d6
Rope 1d6
Cooking Utensils 1d6
Backpack 1d8
Holy Symbol 2d6
Gold Jewelry 2d6
Notes 1d6
Cloak 2d6
Armor 2d6
Naimah's first conflict involved
2. Vladimir (or Vlad) - We created Vlad to be Naimah's foil, and so made him a hard-nosed, devout heretic-stomper specializing in interrogation. The game is set in Spain, but I wanted the Inquisitional characters to have been assigned there from somewhere else. Vlad is from russia, and we tend to give him a horribly stereotypical russian accent (originally his name was going to be Boris, you see). He's sort of an action hero, as he sees everything in black and white, and can tend to spout one-liners. Vlad is also something of an oddity as far as character-control: Bekka and I "share" him, and either of us can dictate what he does or says in a given situation.
3. Finneas - The first of our three body-guards, Finneas was going to be my friend Lauren's character if she ever played with us. (Thus the vaguely male name for a female character, which Lauren seems to enjoy doing). Finneas is a bit naive in the ways of the world, but excels at personal combat. Lauren later on gave her a special defensive fighting technique involving two short swords. She is specially assigned to Naimah.
4. Josef and Johannan - The other two body guards started out fairly generic, and in fact I wasn't sure how long they were going to last, being the expendable extras and all. Josef and Finneas have since then begun something of a romantic relationship, and Johannan and Josef have had a falling out. (Johannan remains the most expendable character of the group, and bad things tend to happen to him. Bekka and I have decided that this tendency towards bad luck makes him a little paranoid, and a little twitchy.)
The Towns
Town 1 -
One of the reasons that Engel worked so well early on is that I didn't know how long we would be playing it -- it might be one session, it might be a long time -- and so I didn't hold back any ideas for later. Town one, though, was an experiment, a pilot episode, where we started figuring out who everyone was and what the world was like, so it was largely a new idea.
The Inquisitors came to the town and presented themselves to the local priest (or Padre). "Oh, thank God you've come," he said, and explained that one of the local men, an uneducated farmer, had lately begun receiving visions of an apocalyptic nature, and had actually predicted that the end of the world would come within a few months. The other townsfolk were wary of him at first, but his descriptions were so vivid, and his manner so certain, that they began to believe him. The upshot of this was that many of them had ceased to work their fields, because they didn't see any point in it if the world was going to end soon.
Naimah saw the problem as two-fold. First, they needed to get the townsfolk working again, and second, they needed to investigate the farmer to see what was behind his visions -- insanity, deception, or a true gift from God. The priest had the villagers assemble, and Naimah spoke to them, telling them that as the emissary from the Pontifex Maximus, she would be investigating the claims with all the respect and diligence it deserved, but that in the meantime the villagers should get back to work. After a lengthy discussion, she managed to convince the town to split its time between working and prayer. A few of the people, fanatical in their belief, walked out angrily.
The inquisitors immediately set out for the farm. The farmer ended up being a fairly humble, illiterate man, quite frightened, who didn't understand what was happening but who felt that God must surely have given him a great gift in the form of the visions. Though Vlad wanted to take him in for questioning, Naimah simply pointed out that if the Pontifex Maximus hadn't received any news about the impending apocalypse, it seemed odd that the message should be sent to a farmer with a limited audience instead.
Through the conversation, it was revealed that the farmer had begun to receive the visions after meeting a mysterious glowing figure in the hills outside the town. He agreed to take the inquisitors to the place where the meeting had occurred.
After searching around the hillside for a little while, the Inquisitors found a hidden entrance on the side of a hill near the area where the farmer had indicated. Inside was a ladder leading into a pit, and at the bottom of the pit they found a hiding spot with a bedroll and several items of technology from the Time Before; the source of power was unclear. Near the bedroll was a book, with scraps of writing about a "God Machine", with several vague allusions to a broader cult deifying technology. (The cult was mentioned in the Engel sourcebook, but I mixed it with the cult of the God Machine described in the nWoD core book.)
Underneath the bedroll, they found several syringes filled with a green liquid, and one empty syringe. Deducing that this was the source of the farmer's visions, they confronted him with the evidence. His reaction was almost relief, and he accepted that his visions were probably the result of having been drugged. Naimah suspected that he might be bluffing; that perhaps he'd been making up the whole story. She told Vlad to see if he could collect samples of the farmer's handwriting when they returned to the house so as to compare with the writing found in the bunker. As they approached the town, however, they saw smoke: and running, they found it was the farmer's house, on fire. Apparently the fanatical group of people who had stalked away from Naimah's speech had lit his house on fire in an attempt to ensure that the farmer would not "waver" in his faith. As the inquisitors arrived, they had the farmer's wife at knife point. Vlad wanted to attack straight out, but Naimah ordered him down, calling rank as the senior inquisitor. Instead, while she and the farmer tried to talk the small group of people into letting the farmer's wife go, Vlad bashed in the door of the house to see if there was any evidence to be found inside.
For a moment, it looked as though Naimah's arguments were calming down the crowd, but the negotiations soon failed, and the leader of the group slit the throat of the farmer's wife, there in front of everybody. Naimah called for Vlad, who came crashing out of a window of the burning building, papers in his hand, and before he'd even reached the ground he threw a knife into the ringleader's heart.
The rest of the mob settled down at that point.
The papers that Vlad had found proved the farmer's innocence, by was of displaying that he was illiterate (like all good laymen of the Angelitic church). Naimah told Josef to fetch the priest, and as an after-thought sent Johannan as well, to see if he could sneak a peek at the priest's handwriting while the padre himself was out. Josef and the priest arrived moments later, and everything was explained to the priest, who seemed to get more and more nervous as the events were laid out. Finally, Johannan arrived with papers, and it was shown that the priest's handwriting matched the heretical writing in the bunker.
Vlad wanted to interrogate the priest immediately, but Naimah was reluctant to allow this, detesting torture. When it was discovered that the priest had burns on his arms suggesting training to resist torture, they tied him up securely and sent him and one of the full syringes (for analysis) with Johannan to the regional Inquisition office in another city.
After the session, Bekka used one of Naimah's Free Relationship points on the farmer.
To that end, we gave her another full-fledged Inquisitor partner, and three specially trained body guards. So the Inquisitional team looked as follows:
1. Naimah (Bekka's Character) - Bekka envisioned Naimah as a sort of liberal, laid-back type, who was interested more in solving issues peacefully than with purging heresy. She comes from a Romani family, but was taken into the church by the Grim Riders when she was young.
Name: Naimah
Background: Complicated History
Stats
Acuity: 6
Body: 5
Heart: 5
Will: 3
Traits:
Understands Scriptures 2d8
Curious 3d4
I am a Gypsy 2d10
Easygoing 3d10
I am an Inquisitor 4d6
Relationships:
Inquisition 2d6
Vlad 2d6
Belongings:
Horse 2d8
Copy of the Scriptures 1d6
Jar of Earth 1d6
Long Dagger 1d4
Bow 2d6
Rope 1d6
Cooking Utensils 1d6
Backpack 1d8
Holy Symbol 2d6
Gold Jewelry 2d6
Notes 1d6
Cloak 2d6
Armor 2d6
Naimah's first conflict involved
2. Vladimir (or Vlad) - We created Vlad to be Naimah's foil, and so made him a hard-nosed, devout heretic-stomper specializing in interrogation. The game is set in Spain, but I wanted the Inquisitional characters to have been assigned there from somewhere else. Vlad is from russia, and we tend to give him a horribly stereotypical russian accent (originally his name was going to be Boris, you see). He's sort of an action hero, as he sees everything in black and white, and can tend to spout one-liners. Vlad is also something of an oddity as far as character-control: Bekka and I "share" him, and either of us can dictate what he does or says in a given situation.
3. Finneas - The first of our three body-guards, Finneas was going to be my friend Lauren's character if she ever played with us. (Thus the vaguely male name for a female character, which Lauren seems to enjoy doing). Finneas is a bit naive in the ways of the world, but excels at personal combat. Lauren later on gave her a special defensive fighting technique involving two short swords. She is specially assigned to Naimah.
4. Josef and Johannan - The other two body guards started out fairly generic, and in fact I wasn't sure how long they were going to last, being the expendable extras and all. Josef and Finneas have since then begun something of a romantic relationship, and Johannan and Josef have had a falling out. (Johannan remains the most expendable character of the group, and bad things tend to happen to him. Bekka and I have decided that this tendency towards bad luck makes him a little paranoid, and a little twitchy.)
The Towns
Town 1 -
One of the reasons that Engel worked so well early on is that I didn't know how long we would be playing it -- it might be one session, it might be a long time -- and so I didn't hold back any ideas for later. Town one, though, was an experiment, a pilot episode, where we started figuring out who everyone was and what the world was like, so it was largely a new idea.
The Inquisitors came to the town and presented themselves to the local priest (or Padre). "Oh, thank God you've come," he said, and explained that one of the local men, an uneducated farmer, had lately begun receiving visions of an apocalyptic nature, and had actually predicted that the end of the world would come within a few months. The other townsfolk were wary of him at first, but his descriptions were so vivid, and his manner so certain, that they began to believe him. The upshot of this was that many of them had ceased to work their fields, because they didn't see any point in it if the world was going to end soon.
Naimah saw the problem as two-fold. First, they needed to get the townsfolk working again, and second, they needed to investigate the farmer to see what was behind his visions -- insanity, deception, or a true gift from God. The priest had the villagers assemble, and Naimah spoke to them, telling them that as the emissary from the Pontifex Maximus, she would be investigating the claims with all the respect and diligence it deserved, but that in the meantime the villagers should get back to work. After a lengthy discussion, she managed to convince the town to split its time between working and prayer. A few of the people, fanatical in their belief, walked out angrily.
The inquisitors immediately set out for the farm. The farmer ended up being a fairly humble, illiterate man, quite frightened, who didn't understand what was happening but who felt that God must surely have given him a great gift in the form of the visions. Though Vlad wanted to take him in for questioning, Naimah simply pointed out that if the Pontifex Maximus hadn't received any news about the impending apocalypse, it seemed odd that the message should be sent to a farmer with a limited audience instead.
Through the conversation, it was revealed that the farmer had begun to receive the visions after meeting a mysterious glowing figure in the hills outside the town. He agreed to take the inquisitors to the place where the meeting had occurred.
After searching around the hillside for a little while, the Inquisitors found a hidden entrance on the side of a hill near the area where the farmer had indicated. Inside was a ladder leading into a pit, and at the bottom of the pit they found a hiding spot with a bedroll and several items of technology from the Time Before; the source of power was unclear. Near the bedroll was a book, with scraps of writing about a "God Machine", with several vague allusions to a broader cult deifying technology. (The cult was mentioned in the Engel sourcebook, but I mixed it with the cult of the God Machine described in the nWoD core book.)
Underneath the bedroll, they found several syringes filled with a green liquid, and one empty syringe. Deducing that this was the source of the farmer's visions, they confronted him with the evidence. His reaction was almost relief, and he accepted that his visions were probably the result of having been drugged. Naimah suspected that he might be bluffing; that perhaps he'd been making up the whole story. She told Vlad to see if he could collect samples of the farmer's handwriting when they returned to the house so as to compare with the writing found in the bunker. As they approached the town, however, they saw smoke: and running, they found it was the farmer's house, on fire. Apparently the fanatical group of people who had stalked away from Naimah's speech had lit his house on fire in an attempt to ensure that the farmer would not "waver" in his faith. As the inquisitors arrived, they had the farmer's wife at knife point. Vlad wanted to attack straight out, but Naimah ordered him down, calling rank as the senior inquisitor. Instead, while she and the farmer tried to talk the small group of people into letting the farmer's wife go, Vlad bashed in the door of the house to see if there was any evidence to be found inside.
For a moment, it looked as though Naimah's arguments were calming down the crowd, but the negotiations soon failed, and the leader of the group slit the throat of the farmer's wife, there in front of everybody. Naimah called for Vlad, who came crashing out of a window of the burning building, papers in his hand, and before he'd even reached the ground he threw a knife into the ringleader's heart.
The rest of the mob settled down at that point.
The papers that Vlad had found proved the farmer's innocence, by was of displaying that he was illiterate (like all good laymen of the Angelitic church). Naimah told Josef to fetch the priest, and as an after-thought sent Johannan as well, to see if he could sneak a peek at the priest's handwriting while the padre himself was out. Josef and the priest arrived moments later, and everything was explained to the priest, who seemed to get more and more nervous as the events were laid out. Finally, Johannan arrived with papers, and it was shown that the priest's handwriting matched the heretical writing in the bunker.
Vlad wanted to interrogate the priest immediately, but Naimah was reluctant to allow this, detesting torture. When it was discovered that the priest had burns on his arms suggesting training to resist torture, they tied him up securely and sent him and one of the full syringes (for analysis) with Johannan to the regional Inquisition office in another city.
After the session, Bekka used one of Naimah's Free Relationship points on the farmer.
Friday, November 30, 2007
New Car, New Phone
I have a new car:
Well, not new. It's quite used. It is a '92 Toyota Four Runner, white in color, or at least presumably so, at some point in its past. My license number is not CTHLHU or anything like that, sadly; but I do intend to put my tasteful plush cthulhu doll in the car.
My phone number has also changed today: if you are someone I would want to have my new number, e-mail me for it.
Also, and most importantly, as of tomorrow, around 10:30 in the morning, Janelle and I will have been dating for three years.
Well, not new. It's quite used. It is a '92 Toyota Four Runner, white in color, or at least presumably so, at some point in its past. My license number is not CTHLHU or anything like that, sadly; but I do intend to put my tasteful plush cthulhu doll in the car.
My phone number has also changed today: if you are someone I would want to have my new number, e-mail me for it.
Also, and most importantly, as of tomorrow, around 10:30 in the morning, Janelle and I will have been dating for three years.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Benandanti
The Benandanti, or "Well-farers" were a small agrarian cult that came to the notice of the Roman Inquisition in the 15th and 16th century. I've been reading up on them recently after being linked to the wikipedia article about them.
Essentially, the Benandanti seem to have been the remnants of a vaguely shamanistic european religious tradition. The Benandanti claimed that every Thursday during certain times of the year they would leave their bodies behind and their spirits, either in the form of or riding various animals, would battle against the Malandanti, "Evil-farers", or witches. The year's crops were at stake in this nocturnal war: if the Benandanti were victorious, the harvest was plentiful. If the Malandanti won, it would be a very lean year.
The Benandanti (especially the female members of the order) were apparently able to perform other supernatural feats, such as seeing the spirits of the dead and so forth.
The interesting thing here is that the Benandanti of the 15th and 16th centuries identified themselves as Christians, and thought that the tasks that they were accomplishing were done in the will of the Lord. This attitude befuddled the Inquisitors that took notice of them; and in the various interviews recorded by the Inquisition we see the Inquisitors continually attempt to place the Benandanti into the established mythology of witchcraft, essentially by marking the Benandanti themselves as witches, and the Benandanti refusing (at first) to allow the destruction of distinction. The Inquisitor would ask the Benandante if they had attended a ceremony obviously intended as a black mass, and the Benandante would reply that no, of course not -- they had gone there to break up the ceremony instead.
Over time, however, the increasing attention shown by the Inquisition and the subsequent lowering reputation of the Benandanti saw the gradual replacement of the Benandanti's original view of themselves with the view given by the church: in the end, many Benandanti gave up their activities, and many began to see themselves as the witches the sect had traditionally battled.
(I haven't gotten to the part yet where it says if the crops suffered as a result).
In any case, this plight of the Benandanti has struck an inspiring note in me, and when I have a bit of time on my hands I am considering writing about them -- either as a story or two, perhaps, or as a role-playing game. Probably the latter.
If you're interested in reading more about the Benandanti, the wikipedia article has some fairly good links, but pretty much everyone references the book "The Night Battles" by Carlo Ginzburg, which I am reading right now.
I'm sure I'll have more information on the game as I write more, if and when I have the time.
Essentially, the Benandanti seem to have been the remnants of a vaguely shamanistic european religious tradition. The Benandanti claimed that every Thursday during certain times of the year they would leave their bodies behind and their spirits, either in the form of or riding various animals, would battle against the Malandanti, "Evil-farers", or witches. The year's crops were at stake in this nocturnal war: if the Benandanti were victorious, the harvest was plentiful. If the Malandanti won, it would be a very lean year.
The Benandanti (especially the female members of the order) were apparently able to perform other supernatural feats, such as seeing the spirits of the dead and so forth.
The interesting thing here is that the Benandanti of the 15th and 16th centuries identified themselves as Christians, and thought that the tasks that they were accomplishing were done in the will of the Lord. This attitude befuddled the Inquisitors that took notice of them; and in the various interviews recorded by the Inquisition we see the Inquisitors continually attempt to place the Benandanti into the established mythology of witchcraft, essentially by marking the Benandanti themselves as witches, and the Benandanti refusing (at first) to allow the destruction of distinction. The Inquisitor would ask the Benandante if they had attended a ceremony obviously intended as a black mass, and the Benandante would reply that no, of course not -- they had gone there to break up the ceremony instead.
Over time, however, the increasing attention shown by the Inquisition and the subsequent lowering reputation of the Benandanti saw the gradual replacement of the Benandanti's original view of themselves with the view given by the church: in the end, many Benandanti gave up their activities, and many began to see themselves as the witches the sect had traditionally battled.
(I haven't gotten to the part yet where it says if the crops suffered as a result).
In any case, this plight of the Benandanti has struck an inspiring note in me, and when I have a bit of time on my hands I am considering writing about them -- either as a story or two, perhaps, or as a role-playing game. Probably the latter.
If you're interested in reading more about the Benandanti, the wikipedia article has some fairly good links, but pretty much everyone references the book "The Night Battles" by Carlo Ginzburg, which I am reading right now.
I'm sure I'll have more information on the game as I write more, if and when I have the time.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Kester's Avatar
Anyone that wants to read and critique the first draft of my new short story, working title "Kester's Avatar", should either e-mail me or leave a comment. The story involves a trapper living near the small town of Grevinstone who sets out to check his traps and finds something rather else instead.
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