other people in the room

Productive day yesterday. Let's two-peat!

(Jesus, did I really just say that? Coffee, I think, is the answer.)

• Finish cleaning kids' rooms.
  
• Do write-up from last night's Geist game, and if I get really ambitious, last week's curse the darkness game.
  
• Finish mowing the lawn.
  
• Work on Hunters Hunted 2 redlines. (Not done, but worked on 'em.)
  
• Shoot video for curse the darkness.
  
• Assemble stuff for Origins' games.
  
• Play some L.A. Noire.
  
• Make a character.
  
• Figure out stats/mechanics for mementos for Geist characters, which I forgot to do after the last game.
  
• Watch Dead Man with Michelle.
  

That was yesterday. Didn't get to watch the movie because Cael wouldn't go to bed and Michelle had to read the system for today's chargen session (Game of Thrones), but that's fine, maybe we do it tomorrow. Today:

• Make spiced peach jelly.
  
• Finish handout for curse the darkness demos for Michelle & Sarah.
  
• Go over finances for Origins, crying optional.
  
• Go to grocery store.
  
• Work more on redlines (gotta be done by Wednesday, 'cause my deadline is Friday and I ain't working over Origins!).
  
• Assemble stuff for Origins.
  
• Finish video for curse the darkness.
  

So that's where we are.

Peach jelly: I bought a bunch of peaches at the market the other day, so they're nice and ripe now. I peeled 'em (god, that's a chore), pureed 'em, and boiled 'em with pectin, cinnamon, crystallized ginger and a spice bag with some mulling spices, and then added a shitload of sugar. The jelly is currently cooling; I'm excited to see how it tastes.

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/591598.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

OK, so. ( Last night. )

Actually, looking at the character sheets now, I don't actually have to do anything for the Mementos that folks have, so I'll just rejigger Sarah's power sheet and call it a day.

Oh, also cooked last night:

Beef brisket, artichokes, plums, pigeon peas, goat cheddar.

( What would you do? )

• Finish cleaning kids' rooms.
  
• Do write-up from last night's Geist game, and if I get really ambitious, last week's curse the darkness game.
  
• Finish mowing the lawn.
  
• Work on Hunters Hunted 2 redlines. (Not done, but worked on 'em.)
  
• Shoot video for curse the darkness.
  
• Assemble stuff for Origins' games.
  
• Play some L.A. Noire.
  
• Make a character.
  
• Figure out stats/mechanics for mementos for Geist characters, which I forgot to do after the last game.
  
• Watch Dead Man with Michelle.
  

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/591142.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I'm so productive today, you'd think I had a hundred hands!

Seriously. I woke up at 7AM. I have no idea why. I didn't want to go back to sleep, so I went upstairs and moved my son's bed back into his room (he's been sleeping in Teagan's room while we painted in his, and then we got busy/lazy and hadn't moved his bed back). I came back downstairs, did dishes, cleaned the kitchen, cleared stuff off the table, fed the dogs, and then Michelle woke up and I made breakfast.

Other things I need to (or would like to) do today:

• Finish cleaning kids' rooms.
  
• Do write-up from last night's Geist game, and if I get really ambitious, last week's curse the darkness game.
  
• Finish mowing the lawn.
  
• Work on Hunters Hunted 2 redlines.
  
• Shoot video for curse the darkness.
  
• Assemble stuff for Origins' games.
  
• Play some L.A. Noire.
  
• Make a character.
  
• Figure out stats/mechanics for mementos for Geist characters, which I forgot to do after the last game.
  
• Watch Dead Man with Michelle.
  

Shit, that's a lot to do, yeah? Better get started!

Just so we're not totally devoid of content here, my puppy has a pet. There are little brown hop-toads living under my porch steps, and Si found one yesterday, sniffed it, and then bowed like he wanted to play. Now when he goes outside, he scampers over and sniffs where he last saw the toad.

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/591056.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

OK, we need some notes. ( Players, don't read. )

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/590708.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Day of the Dead was the last in Romero's "Dead" series for a long time (like, 20 years or so) until Land of the Dead came out (we'll get to the L's eventually). Zombies have taken over the world, and a few people - soldiers, scientists, a helicopter pilot and an electronics dude - are in a bunker in the Everglades, working on how to fix things.

Well, that's the plan. Really what's happening is that they're falling apart. The soldiers are getting restless and scared and they're led by a psycho (Joseph Pilato, in easily the best performance in the movie, with the possible exception of Bub the zombie). The scientists are at odds about what they should be working on (one is trying to train the zombies, which is an interesting idea but impractical when they outnumber you 400,000 to one), and the pilot has officially run out of fucks to give.

There are some good, overwrought performances here. The lead is a woman (played by soap actress Lori Cardille), and she manages to be hardassed and professional while still being obviously stressed all to hell. Terry Alexander is the pilot, and is my favorite character, but he's kind of a Magical Negro, which is maybe a bit troubling (especially considering that he's the only black dude down there). Sherman Howard plays Bub, the zombie, who remembers enough of his life to open a book and "shave," and - hey - shoot a gun. His performance is really good, very physical, and he makes Bub sympathetic and sad and funny.

The movie is very threatening and unpleasant, with regards to dialog. The soldiers pretty much openly threaten to rape Sarah, they make racist remarks about her boyfriend (a soldier, but of Hispanic descent) and the pilot, and everyone is two seconds from shooting each other. And then there are the zombies, still around, being experimented on, and just waiting for the final scene when they eat all of the soldiers in the most memorable dismemberments of the Dead series.

I like this movie, though some of the aspects make me uncomfortable. I like the character of John, Magical Negro and all, and I think he was well cast. I think that this movie could stand a reimagining in the style of Dawn of the Dead (I know it got one; I mean a good one).

And with that, we're done with "of the Dead" movies for a while.

My grade: B+
Rewatch value: Medium-low

Next up: Dead Man

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/590403.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Dawn of the Dead is a reimagining (it's not really accurate to say "remake," and I'll explain why) of the 1978 movie of the same name directed by George Romero. This version, directed by Zack Snyder, has 80% less slo-mo than his other movies, and while it has more action sequences than the original, it still feels like a zombie horror film rather than an action film. For a Snyder movie, this is a big deal.

So: Anna (Sarah Polley) gets off of a 13-hour shift as a nurse, goes home, snuggles up with her husband (naked, in the shower, so they miss the news report and don't know what's going on) and are awakened by the zombified version of the little girl next door popping into their room. The girl kills Anna's husband, who rises, chases Anna out, and she winds up driving through the wreckage of her neighborhood as cars crash and shit explodes. As she drives into Milwaukee, we cut to the opening titles, which, as is often true of Snyder films, are awesome and set to a strangely appropriate song (in this case "The Man Comes Around," Johnny Cash), and then we hook back up with Anna. She meets Kenneth (Ving Rhames) and then a small group of other folks, and they wind up at a mall.

Yes, the original had people going to a mall and holing up against the zombies, but that's basically where the similarity ends. The folks in the original were a pre-existing group of a couple, their friend, and his friend. This is a rag-tag group of survivors. Plus, the original only had four...though interestingly, we learned very little about them. Seriously, watch Dawn of the Dead (1978) and tell me about the characters. We know that Peter's of Trinidadian descent and his grandad was a voodoo priest, we knows that Roger is impulsive and grew up in a truck, and that's really it.

Whereas in this movie, the characters talk about themselves a little more. Yes, there are characters, some even major characters (Terry, the one security guard who isn't a total ass at the start; also Nicole, the girl he winds up snogging) that we know nothing about, not even in the director's cut. Kenneth reveals a little about himself, and Andre (Mekhi Phifer) has some backstory he shares, but his girlfriend Luda (Inna Korobkinka) doesn't. We only know she's Russian. That's all we get to hear about her.

The advantage to larger casts in horror movies is you can kill more people before you have to end the movie. The disadvantage is that they start to feel disposable if you don't take the time to establish them. So points off for Snyder and Gunn for not doing that, especially with the female characters (the movie does pass the Bechdel, for what it's worth).

Anyway, the characters make the decision to leave the mall and get on a boat, which is a decision that kills most of them. They eventually do get to the marina, get on Steve's (Ty Burrell) boat, and sail off into the credits...where they are apparently devoured by zombies on Dead Island.

The movie is bleaker than the original, but it doesn't carry the anti-consumerism slant, the zombies are different (one thing I noticed was how, in the beginning, you couldn't always tell a zombie from a living person since zombies can and do run), and zombism is pretty explicitly a fast-acting disease. These may seem like details only, but they change the movie pretty significantly, especially in terms of where the horror comes from.

I enjoy this movie, and I think it's actually more watchable than the original, which gets draggy in the middle.

My Grade: B+. Would be an A if they'd scripted the female characters better.
Rewatch value: High

Next up: Day of the Dead

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/590139.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I am, generally speaking, a big fan of player agency in RPGs (by which, just for clarification, I mean real RPGs that you play around a table or [sigh] standing up wearing costumes, not the kind that require screens). I like it when players decide what their characters do, and if that fucks the plotline I've cooked up, that's cool with me. The plotline is mutable, but I want folks to have fun and, more to the point, feel like their character decisions matter.

That said, I have determined that fucking with group integrity is a slightly bigger deal. My Promethean game is off to a somewhat rocky start in that regard, not because people aren't having fun (because unless I'm misreading my group, they're really digging their characters and based on in-character discussion, they're also digging into the moral questions and issues I'm putting forward), but there are some pretty serious clashes of morality and regard for human life, here.

Basically, two of the characters are perfectly willing to kill people. One is hesitant, but ultimately is willing to let "kill the fuckers" be an option. One is not thrilled by the idea of killing, but it's really more about not being forced into killing. And the other two just aren't keen on the idea of taking human life. Which is all fine, I like these kinds of conflicts. The issue is that the characters need to be able to hang out together and go traveling, and for that to happen there needs to be some established trust.

My mistake, I think, we not making the group an established throng before introducing a plot that required a bunch of people to die. I was going for a surreal kind of "what happens in the dust storm doesn't really count" thing, but we didn't quite get there. And unfortunately, NWoD is a traditional RPG where you roll to hit your opponent this time and see how much damage you do, rather than a game where we set stakes and "winning" means "you keep narrative control."

It worked out, but at one point I told a player, "get your character back to the house. You figure out why." I normally don't do that shit, but it was late, I was tired, and more to the point, I've been gaming with said player for enough years that I trusted him with that. It wasn't so much that I was trying to dictate what his characters should do, it was more "I need help keeping this story on track, and I know you're good for it, so help me wrap this up." Like I said, I think it worked, and I think the throng has a tense, but workable, dynamic. They all have milestones relating to the throng as a whole, but in the last story, only one of those milestones was realized - Feather's to "leave the throng to help a person." That says something, I think.

Next story is going to be very different in tone. I won't say lighter, because y'know, NWoD isn't a light game, but more supernatural and less involving killing people. That said, I do want to examine the conflicts that the Created really deal with - Wasteland and Disquiet - because this story happened so fast that we kinda glossed over that part.

But anyway, I think that telling a player what the character does and having the player decide the character's thought process is an interesting thought exercise for the player, but it's not one I'd want to use much. And definitely a matter of trust between GM and player.

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/589931.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So, what's new?

Well! Michelle has finished her MA. Now begins the long slow to getting herself a PhD (though you could argue that actually started when she started Case). But mostly I think she's just thrilled to be done with classwork for a short while.

The Kickstarter continues to kick ass. We've got the rest of the artwork back, and it's amazing (a new piece should be going in an update on the Kickstarter sometime soon, I hope). We've still got a few weeks, so I figure we should be able to hit $10K and do the curse the darkness companion, but honestly even if we ended today, we've done pretty damned well for ourselves.

In unrelated news, I had a job interview last week for my local school district. I really hope I get the position, and it's causing me a little bit of angst. I love my job. I love my kids. This district is driving me crazy. My caseload is too big, the bureaucracy is too stupid, and Ohio doesn't give a shit about poor people so they don't give a shit about the people who teach poor people's kids (that'd be me). I can afford to keep making what I make, for a little while. I cannot afford a pay cut, and that's what the district wants. I can't do it. I need to get somewhere that I'm not expected to make less every year, and it's bothering me, because I feel like I'm quitting on my kids. But it's an untenable situation, and I have my family to consider.

Dammit.

Anyway, something else. Umm. Oh, right, poo. See, here's the thing. I run this Clay-o-Rama game every year (most years) at Origins and/or GenCon. Clay-o-Rama is awesome; you make a monster out of Play-Doh and the monsters fight. I occasionally get a guy playing at Origins who wants to make a big piece of poo for his monster. And he's, like 40+. And there are kids playing. He should know better, but he apparently doesn't.

I'm not willing to just sign his ticket and tell him to piss off. I could, apparently, under Origins rules, since a GM can kick anyone out of a game for any reason (which I fully support). But I work with people who are emotionally stunted or behaviorally challenged, and the other thing is, I've never talked to him about it (last time because it just caught me off guard). This year, I'll make the rules clear up front - no scatological humor. And if he can't handle that, I'll excuse him (and anyone else that can't play by the rules), but I can't just jump directly to "go away."

Shit, when did I become patient?

( Anyway, Promethean. )

This entry was originally posted at http://innocent-man.dreamwidth.org/589801.html. Please comment there using OpenID.