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Posts Tagged ‘gaming’

today

Today, I think I shall set aside research for Midnight Never Come (partly because the next thing on my plate is More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Elizabethan London, Vols. 1 and 2 — oh, wait, misread the title, that would be John Stow’s A Survey of London, Vols. 1 and 2), and let myself loll around with Patrick O’Brian instead. I can only watch Master and Commander so many times in a limited span, and I’ve gone through all the Hornblower movies; since I don’t need to be sewing at the same time anymore, it’s time for a book.

And things like laundry, maybe. But not until later.

I think I need a day just to relax.

nearly there

I’ll quit posting costuming updates pretty soon, I promise. Some of you will be disappointed. More of you, I suspect, will be relieved.

Accomplished yesterday: four more buttons, seven pair hooks and eyes (actually eight pair, as I had to take one set off and sew it back on), lots of topstitching my coat, and the waistband of my pants. Still to do: pants buttons (which will finish the waistband; may or may not involve buttonholes), vest collar, topstitching the armholes of the vest if I have the time.

And ironing the thing, so it will look good.

This may be the only complex project I’ve ever done entirely on my own. My mother assisted with the sleeves of the Morwen dress while she was here last year, and kitsune_zen saved me from the zipper on its skirt; other things I’ve done on my own, but they weren’t this complicated.

At least I get to watch a lot of movies while I work.

buttons

Twenty-three down, six to go.

And seven or so hooks and eyes.

And finishing the waistband and cuffs on my pants.

And topstitching the edge of my coat.

And figuring out a collar for my vest.

. . . and probably ironing the whole mess so it looks good.

I’d intended to do my last four coat buttons tonight, but my button-sewing skills went sharply downward all of a sudden, and I decided it was time to stop.

But it’s a good accomplishment for one day. Twenty-three buttons, and seven buttonholes. I have successfully committed buttonhole: it’s a first for me. (The first attempt was during the original Boggan Deathmatch, when moonandserpent‘s velvet vest foiled me utterly. Man, that was a night full of failures for me.)

Sleepytime now. Who wants to bet I dream of buttons?

sigh

I’m learning to expect that, when the thing I’m sewing becomes recognizably the thing I’m trying to sew, I may still be nowhere near done. When I last worked on this costume (circa March 11th), my coat looked like a naval coat, minus collar, cuffs, and buttons. Many hours of work later, it has a collar and cuffs, no buttons — because a fair bit of that time was spent on the fiddly little finishing details, like stitching down the edges so they’ll lie flat and the lining won’t peek out. (And I’m not even done with that.) This is the crap that takes forever for little noticeable result, but the garment just looks better with it done.

Buttons will be my next priority, since the coat will look dumb without them, but once they’re on, it will be back to stitching all the rest of the edges I haven’t gotten to yet, finishing my pants, and retrofitting a collar onto the vest; the pattern doesn’t give it one, but in period they had ’em, and like an idiot I forgot I was going to add that on until the vest was done.

Game’s Sunday. Will I be done in time? I had better be. Here’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a Saturday night button-sewing marathon.

At least there aren’t any zippers in my immediate future. It would be a shame to torch my costume, so close to game date.

Oh, and? khet_tcheba is the awesome, yet again. You’ll see why, on Sunday.

Evil BAPA

I’ve fallen out of the habit of making post-game posts (which is probably a good thing, since these days a large percentage of the people reading this journal aren’t involved in the games, and therefore probably don’t care), but yesterday’s Bloomington Angel Post-Apocalyptic (BAPA) game was fuuuuuuuun.

(Short description of the game in general: Buffyverse, set in Bloomington, demon apocalypse happened about a year ago, we’re some of the few free humans left.)

In the fine tradition of Joss Whedon Buffyverse stuff, this was the Evil Game, the alternate universe in which we were all bad guys instead of good. (Well, most of us, though I didn’t learn that until later.) It was interesting to see the ways that people re-imagined their characters; since there are a lot of people I almost never interact with in that game, in some cases this gave me much more insight into who and what they are normally. In contrast with them, I think my own tack was pretty tame: I was just the Dr. Mengele of enchantresses, a cold-blooded experimenter, more interested in the question of how something could be done, and whether I could do it, than the consequences. (But honestly, I tend to find those people creepier, since they’re a lot more common in real life than the out-and-out psychotics.)

I must confess, though — I suspected that when the game ended, our normal characters were going to remember their evil lives (’cause that’s always more fun, right?) and so I took the opportunity to prod certain things for my character. Like, say, putting her in a position where she wasn’t terrified of Anastasia, though I admit I hadn’t expected to take direct action to bump her off during the game. (Still, it’s the one action Sess isn’t sure she regrets from her time being evil. I mean, there comes a time when you just have to put a bullet between your aunt’s eyes, and for once she had the guts to do it — though not entirely with success, alas.)

It’s sloppy character development to just magically gift a person with something they were lacking before, but to give it to them and then take it away again, so they have to earn it back the right way — now, that can be fun. (I had a spine, really I did; now where did I put it . . . .?)

Though I didn’t except to end up under a curse. That’s going to complicate things a bitsy. (Like they do.)

And I had a chance to put together a fun costume for once in this game. Normally it’s just jeans and a fleece; Sess is such a boring character to dress.

So yay, fun. Yay, evil. (Or not.) I suspect it will be very interesting to see what flavors of trauma the other characters have ended up with — those who didn’t just blow their brains out on the spot. (I’m looking at you, d_c_m.)

also, linkage

Two things that need sharin’ —

Eragon sporked. Book, not movie. In case you’re like me and want to know enough about the book to talk about its shortcomings without actually having to, y’know, read the book. I know that site is not aimed at saying good things about it, but still, it’s a sad state of affairs when the most positive thing I can find to say at the end is, “hey, Saphira’s a nice name.”

Everyone in “Hands of Fate: The Next Generation Legacy” needs to read this. Including the comments. Or at least the one about the badger.

For once I’m starting early!

A photo of my dressform will do as a costuming icon until I think of something I like more.

For once, I’m getting started on a costume in good time. The Regency game isn’t until April 1st, and I’ve already got the vest and pants already (mostly) sewn, leaving me with the coat.

The coat, and a million and twelve buttons. I should have thought of that before I said I wanted to play a nineteenth-century naval officer.

<subconscious whines, “But it sounded fun! Er, not the buttons part.”>

Assorted thoughts: I really don’t have the body silhouette to pass for a man, what with my hips being bigger than my shoulders. (Caused more by lack of shoulders than pelvic endowment.) Which leads to trouble when the only measurement they give on a men’s pattern is the chest; I basically had to cut different sizes for the top and the bottom, and only figured that out halfway into the cutting. I am, however, getting more confident at modifying patterns. Someday this may lead to me sewing without a pattern, but that day is not today, nor tomorrow. True to form, I’ve made several mistakes so far that required ripping out one or more seams, but I must be getting used to it; I’ve hardly sworn at all so far. Then again, the project is still young, and holds a million and twelve buttons in store for me.

Also? The Horatio Hornblower series is pretty good, though I still think I like Aubrey and Maturin more. Ioan Gruffudd makes me appreciate Hornblower more in the movies than in the books. But I do get a little tired of somebody constatly taking a dislike to him for no good reason, when We the Audience can clearly see that he is noble, clever, loyal, and kind. It is not, however, a flaw that gets all that much in the way of my enjoyment.

A Life in Music

December is my month for nostalgia, for making at least one retrospective post about
something. I keep feeling like it should be about writing, since my first novels came out
this year, but my heart isn’t really in it; I’ve been talking about writing a fair bit all
year, so I don’t feel like I’ve got something I really need to say and haven’t.

So instead, this post is about gaming, and specifically about two interrelated bits of
nostalgia. Last night I finished making the last soundtrack for Ree, and wanted to post the
full track listing for anybody who’s interested — mostly for those who have copies and might
want to know what the songs are; if you don’t know the character or the game, a random list of
songs probably won’t mean much. Page down for the actual nostalgia, and an explanation of why
it ran to five CDs in the end.

Track listing . . . .

stunt gaming

Elizabeth Bear has talked on her journal about stunt writing: “Which is to say, playing a narrative trick that does more than serve as a narrative trick, something that really justifies its existence.” (She specifies later that, to count as a stunt, it has to be difficult, too.) And it occurred to me last night that what I’ve been doing for the last nine months probably qualifies as the game equivalent, stunt GMing.

For those only now tuning in, we’re talking about a weekly, tabletop Changeling game that is structured like (and named for) the movie Memento. After an initial few sessions in 2006, we began flashing back to the characters’ previous lives in 1916, 1828, and so on, all the way back to the mid-fourteenth century. So while researching previous centuries (a new, or should I say old, one every month), I was also having to handle all the tricks of narrative and game backward: exposition in reverse, foreshadowing that was actually back-shadowing, use of backstory that was actually fore-story, character development that went in direct opposition to in-story chronological order. While the players were figuring out how to play nine different versions of the same people, I was coming up with nine guys to help them out, all members of the same family and with some similarities, but trying to make them individuals, too. And juggling the ever-changing question of how much they remembered of the past, balancing that against what it would be useful for them to know, and setting everything up so that they would arrive back in 2006 with the last pieces having only just fallen into place, half an hour and 650 years ago.

Oy.

Having just returned to 2006 during last night’s session, I officially render my personal verdict, which is that the narrative trick of this game’s structure did, indeed, justify its existence. Probably one of the best comments I got was Oddsboy’s, who, upon me saying they were back in 2006, said, “Wow, I’m so not prepared for this.” Which his character shouldn’t be, having just remembered 650 years of his own past. Forgetting momentarily who the hell you are right now is an appropriate reaction. I think the mental and emotional effect of moving through it all backwards worked out, in a situation where they-the-characters knew what they were doing when they started but forgot over the centuries, so they-the-players had no idea what they were doing initially but found out as they went back, and in between knowing nothing and knowing everything both a lot of time and none at all elapsed. I’m pleased it worked, but I’m more pleased that I think I made the right choice, running it that way, instead of going through things in chronological order. It’s nice to know I wasn’t just being an artsy wank; I did, in fact, have good reasons for siccing on myself (and my players) nine months of heavy-duty mental work.

(That’s my verdict. Said players can form their own.)

But I’ve got to say, I’m glad to be back in the present. From here on out (i.e. another month and a half or so), no more stunt GMing. I’m running a normal game, that will go in a linear fashion from where we are now to where we’re going to end, rather than dancing around in loopy little time circles. Causes first, consequences second, all very straightforward, and man, does that sound nice.

I

And I <3 <3 <3 stunting.

I commented the other night that combat in Exalted isn’t all that quick (when I can blow a relatively cheap charm to get six actions in a round, or the bad guy can attack five times as often as I do, things get slowed down real good) . . . but despite that, I find it far more interesting than combat in most other games. Why? Because the system actively rewards you for being exciting. Say “I run up and stab him” in a normal game, and you roll your normal dice. Say that in Exalted, and you roll your normal dice. Say “I run up his enormous daiklave, feinting with my blade to all sides, then leap into the air, turn three backflips, and stab him in the back” in a normal game, and you have to make a crap-ton of difficult athletics rolls, then roll your normal dice (if you’re lucky; if not, then you’re at a penalty.) Say that in Exalted, and you get bonus dice and some of your magic juice back to boot, just for being awesome.

What’s not to love?

Obviously this approach wouldn’t work for all genres, and probably wouldn’t quite work in an Exalted game that wasn’t deliberately starting in the last chapter of an epic story. But I like the way it rewards you for describing what you’re doing, and doesn’t penalize you for trying the exciting and difficult thing over the safe and boring one. Seems to me that could be incorporated, on a less insanely over-the-top level, into more games.

It also makes me ponder something I’ve pondered before, namely, how one could go about trying to write Final Fantasy/wuxia/anime/etc-type-stuff as prose fiction. One difficulty is that the appeal of such sources is heavily visual, with both the flow of movement and the aesthetic arrangement of bodies; conveying those kinetic and spatial qualities in prose is hard. Another difficulty is simply that we’re not used to such things in our prose, and so a level of over-the-top-ness that you can swallow off a screen is much harder to digest off a page. I gradually toned down the martial arts in Doppelganger over the course of submitting it around, taking out some of the stupider wire-fu that had been in there; I wanted Mirage to be badass, but not so much so that she defied the laws of physics utterly. It might fit into another story, though, and so I ponder how it could be done.