A month and a half since my last post! How horrible! I fear I may never take this blog seriously enough.

Gaming-wise, I can't complain about my schedule. I'm running The One Ring finally...a friend and I have traded spaces..he gets to play while I run the game. I have to say, running One Ring and planning for it is like writing a research paper over and over. I love the experience (not what you expected, eh?). Castles and Crusades is still going strong.

I've had an on-again/off-again game of Battlestar Galactica going. I don't have the heart to tell my players they're really playing Twilight 2000.

"Don't fear anything for your letters, they are burnt one by one and I hope you do the same with mine."

The above quote was attributed to the French sculptor, Camille Claudel. I can sympathize with the notion. I've burned a lot of letters, as well as notebooks, sketchbooks, blogs-posts, photos...I've never had a problem destroying my own art. It takes a great deal of willpower to destroy letters sent to me, though. I still have birthday cards and letters sent by friends years ago.

There's something special about written correspondence. The feel of the pen across the page is an important element. I go to letter writing with the same spirit I go to a canvas or to a notebook. When I'm letter-writing, I feel like I'm crafting a work.

You real a great deal of letters when you study literature. The correspondences between authors and their friends, professional acquaintances and family provide much-appreciated insight into why their works. I gained a greater appreciation of artists like HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, CS Lewis, Kurt Vonnegut, JRR Tolkien, etc., etc., when I read their personal correspondences.

I recently joined a correspondence club, with the finally getting a chance to use the nice stationery and my fountain pens. I received a nice letter from a young woman in the UK. She likes geo-caching with her family and horseback-riding. I told her about the pine barrens of New Jersey, and sent pictures from a historical site in Pennsylvania. I appreciate the opportunity to share. Great experience, and a good opportunity to share art.

She's been right there, and I never listened

I just discovered that Patti Smith did a very blues-grassy version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." You can almost imagine, in another world, a mid-40's Kurt Cobain nodding to this, with a sense of appreciation born out of a sense of humor about his own product. Its a version that has the same kind of nihilistic overtone, but not as youthful. An anthem for the underemployed post-graduate with two kids.

It has a perfect placement on the compilation album, Outside Society. You feel like you'v followed Patti through her artistic life. After listening through the whole album, you can believe that the same girl singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is the same one who, years before, sang, "Gloria." You believe her when she groans out, "Jesus does for somebody's sins, but not mine." You can hear what she's seen.

Maybe every artist, once they hit a certain point in their careers, in their lives, should do a cover of that track. Where are you as an artist? Lets hear your "...Teen Spirit."

Deconstruction

I have a habit of destroying things I've put my heart into. Its cathartic, emulating the disturbing satisfaction of a suicide. I can't count the number of pages that have been torn up, thrown out, burnt, shredded, and discarded. Maybe it makes me stronger as an artist, builds up emotional callouses. It gives me the fortitude to stand up to editing, or critiques. Or maybe its just like picking at scabs, never letting something heal. Or maybe its fear of success. Wasn't that disease that was discovered when we were at our most successful? What a uniquely American ailment. Or it could just be that I get tired of something, and the passion runs out.

I don't have that problem when I work with others, though. I feel like I feed on the excitement the other people add to a project. Maybe that's why I don't feel any self-destructive impulses when it comes to gaming. Its almost like I'm cheating as an artist.

After-action for my second Marvel Heroic RPG

Okay, I had an idea...what if Black Tom Cassidy was arrested and tried in London? I jotted down some notes, changed things around when I saw someone posted awesome stats for Purifiers, and moved on from there.

We played half the adventure tonight. Summary: I need to read the rules again. I also need some work with pacing.

Also, I really like the game.

Okay, I'm going to bed now. The cat is acting odd.

Stream of consciousness

I've been working on a new game. Its about ghosts, and people who hunt for them. I have some solid pages down about the mechanics, and character creation. I think I know what I want to look for when it comes to artwork. I know my source material. I know the genre. I've studied what ghost stories mean to American culture. I understand scary stories.

But what does a ghost represent, and why am I so obsessed about stories about them? And why is it so hard to write about them?

My wife talked to me about what ghosts mean to her. She's really practical. To her, the meaning is really simple: its a person's lack of willingness to let go. A ghost is about our baggage. What haven't you been able to release? That's probably what will manifest.

Its elementary, I suppose. If you're going to write a ghost story, think about the stuff that hasn't been resolved.

I haven't been able to get any further than the mechanics. Every time I try to write about the ghosts themselves, about what they represent and about how people interact with them, I'm stuck. I'm not ready to talk, in a game, about what a ghost means to fictional characters.

Here's a funny story...I needed a palate for my paint. I have this old crystal dish that my mom used as an ashtray. As a matter of fact, I only ever knew it as an ashtray; I don't think it ever had any other purpose when it was in my mom's possession. It took effort, but I used it as a palate. I made a dumb comment about it on Facebook, just to ease the tension, a little something to help rip the bandage from the wound, I guess.

Does that analogy make sense? It has to do with my mom, too.

So, we were talking about ghosts. I've been jotting down notes about what ghosts mean in different cultures...about the angry poltergeist, about the Victorian haunters.

I had this professor in college who told us that we'll know what's real, what's true, when it comes to us in the still, small moments in the night. They're the things that wake us up. I'd forgotten about that. He always helped us get over what ever baggage we had when it came to academia. Remember what is real.

Grief is real, sure. But so is the creative process. So is the written word.

Marvel Heroic RPG after-action report

I forgot, I never got to write up that after-action report for my Marvel Heroic RPG.

The characters were chosen some time earlier. Matt chose Cyclops, Chris chose Storm, and Alan chose Cannonball. So there we were, with Team "Team Leader."

To try out the system a little bit, we started with a Danger Room scenario: the team fighting ninja vampires on the rooftops of Neo-Tokyo. The players interacted in an interesting manner...seeing three team leaders interact was fun. XP were gained as a result of the small inter-party confrontations.

We started quickly picking up on how to manipulate the environment by dice rolls. I'd bought a big dry-erase board earlier that day, and jotted down valuable notes for everyone to see (what effects were in use, some stats for bad guys, that sort of thing). We found that keeping the board out there, and constantly writing out the effects we created for everyone to see helped.

We picked up with the mission: Cerebra picked up a new mutant coming into their powers somewhere in the midwest. The first part of the action started at a shopping mall, with a pit of darkforce growing in the floor. The group did a good job moving the civilians out of the area, disrupting the threat from the darkforce, and finding whomever was the cause. The run from the mall, with a young mutant in their arms, was troubles by a couple of black helicopters with anti-mutant folks at the guns. The choppers were defeated, and the new mutant was saved.

The players all picked up the narrative use of the dice quickly. There was only an occasional bit of prompting. If someone said they were attacking, I asked what effect they were looking for. This created a cool, action-filled set of scenes.

We had a transition scene, with the PC's meeting with the new mutant's parents. Storm went to give the "I understand you're going through a lot of changes," speech. Cannonball and Cyclops gave the, "We work at a really cool school...we even brought pamphlets," speech. It was a nice way to get the players to find their characters' voices.

No dice rolls in the transition scene. No one had taken any damage in the previous scene. It was cool, but in danger of going to far.

So, in come the Sentinels. And some Hellions. The fight was cool, with everyone pulling out the best opportunities to do cool stuff and create effects that stayed over the battlefield. Plot points were handed out, the Doom Pool was used to near exhaustion. Ultimately, the Sentinels were defeated, and the Hellions were sent running. The new young mutant agreed to go to Xavier's School, with the blessing from a very nervous, but appreciative, parents.

The dice rolling during combat was quick and loose. Thanks to Christine for having her laptop open, ready to confirm the rules we needed. The biggest wall we'd hit, I think, was how we were supposed to use our Plot Points, and how I was supposed to give them out.