Star Crossed Musing

Sandra Bland. A professional woman who'd gotten a job in student outreach at her alma mater in Texas. She looks like someone who would be good at that, doesn't she? She's got a great smile, good taste, and friendly eyes. Sadly, pictures are all we have to go on anymore, because she's dead. She's not the first black woman or man to be killed in police custody for doing nothing in particular wrong in the first place. She joins a long line of what are by this point martyrs. The list is too long and varied at this point not to acknowledge it, stretching back centuries and renewing itself unwillingly on a daily basis. We deny it at our peril, all of us -- and by us, I mean the people who don't live this reality daily and thus don't have to recognize it. It's our "privilege," by which I mean our fault. An African-American friend of mine, someone I admire, tweeted about how he was really nervous about driving his family cross country to visit hi...

GenCon's next week, and I'm going to be there! I'm wearing a few different hats this year: Co-owner of Growling Door Games, Convention Coordinator of IGDN, and manager of GenCon's very first quiet room, located in ICC 237! However busy I'll be, though, I'd love to say hello to people and talk to them (and possibly sell you some games). So, want to find me at GenCon? Here's where you should look! Wednesday, July 30th IGDN Social! -- We'll be at Loughmiller's Pub from 6:00 to 9:00, with special drinks just for the group. The menu will be available to our guests (or to take out) during that time, and we'll have drink tickets ($5 each, each one worth 2 drinks). Come on down! Thursday, July 31st IGDN Booth! (#734, beside IPR) -- I'll be at the booth bright and early to kick off the exhibit hall opening and there on and off through the day. Clue: A Tragedy in Five Acts -- 8:00 PM, Marriott Downtown, Ballroom 7. I'll be running ...

That sounded way more exciting than it is. It's the weekend. My kids are around, and they're watching screens, as kids do when they're not being forced to do something else. The something else is coming, so they get some screen time this morning without me making a fuss. Choose your battles, etc. Also, it's hot out today and I don't feel I can, in good conscience, make them go outside until it cools off a bit this evening. Went to see Ant Man Friday night, and I really enjoyed it -- far more than I thought I would. Paul Rudd was very good, mostly playing a straight man for Michael Douglas (who completely rocked, btw) and Evangeline Lilly (who also completely rocked). The plot was a bit disjointed at times -- no movie involving significant shape change "science" is going to be wholly on point -- but we got as much backstory as we needed, and a lot of focus on the personal relationships and stuff to keep the plot rolling. I'm looking forward to seein...

So I wrote an entry for Game Chef this year called Vovetas. It's a card game. I've included the link in case anyone would like to take a look: Vovetas game and cards I got my feedback on it today, and I'm really torn. On the one hand, people were intrigued enough to actually try to dig into the mechanics and tell me where they thought it needed more work (lots of it needs more work -- it hasn't been playtested yet). On the other hand, the theme seemed to go right over their heads. I didn't get accused of appropriation, which I pretty much expected, so that's something. I just also didn't manage to make a connection with people that I thought I made pretty obvious. The Game Chef ingredients are, I felt, crucial to the game, but a number of my reviewers simply didn't see it. I'm more disheartened by this than I want to be. I have a goal to actually playtest this, refine it, and bring it to market. I'm going to press forward with this, since t...

No seriously, I can't. As soon as I start looking at them I see all the composite parts and then I get wigged out at finding eyes where there shouldn't be eyes and then I can't really see the image as a whole, it's just all the composite images, and then I start feeling sick to my stomach and panicky and then I look away. That is my brain on those images. I just really can't cope with them. They aren't the only things I can't cope with, but they are definitely on the list. Other things are too much low-frequency sound (makes sci fi movies a real bitch), too many disparate conversations and sound sources going on, too much random sensation, directly overhead or one-directional lighting, polyester clothing, rough tags in my shirts, unexpected textures in my foods, things on my face (like my HAIR or WATER oh god), repetitive sounds or speaking, a certain type of random patterning that kicks in my gestalt response and all I can see are faces where there should...

So, I like GMing, but this latest Rising Waters game has brought home to me that while my players have fun, and that's really the metric I'm shooting for, I am often unintentionally funny as a GM, and thus not as effective at horror gaming as I'd like. I apparently have a hard time judging in advance what's funny vs. what's creepy, for example. This means that my players have very strong reactions to the things in my games, which is good, but that the reactions are largely unexpected on my part, which is less good (not bad, I roll with it, it's just a thing). For example: In the first season, the bad guy was Azael; he's the demon associated with scapegoats and sex, so he's got some goat-like features and he encourages sloth and dissipation. He's Fallen, but got stuck in the body of someone who's dying and isn't happy about the situation, since although he can keep them from dying, he can't fix the weakness of his current body all on h...