Long time between updates

Obviously, the world didn't end in 2012.  Big surprise there, huh?

The new V:tM LARP has been eating up a lot of my time.  Its lead me to a very interesting realization; having a LARP once every two week does not give me more free time to play around with in between sessions.  In point of fact, having to deal with events that take place at game along with the downtime actions submitted and figuring out where plots fall and/or intercept with player actions means that I have less time to play around with.  Its an interesting conundrum, and one that has apparently lead people to believe that neither of the Storytellers is doing a whole lot between sessions.  This was something I endeavored to correct before our last game session, along with letting people know that if they have problems with something that they need to come and talk to us, otherwise we can't do anything to fix it.  Hopefully the message sticks.

As for the game itself, its progressing well.  Its taken a lot of twists and turns, some of them unexpected but the story continues on.  However, I doubt that it will reach the point my fellow Storyteller believes for the projected "end of chronicle", which was a year and a half from the start date.  Honestly, I believe that when that time projections comes to an end, the story and players are still going to be going strong and want to continue on.  This is something I'm completely fine with, but I have no idea how the other Storyteller will react it.  I haven't shared this insight with him yet, mainly because I believe that he'll be resistant to the idea if it doesn't come from the players.  What we presented them with when we started was a unique situation and I think the novelty of that is still fresh enough to keep a lot of the repetition and boredom experienced by the players at bay.  Things have just now reached the point where they've established an actual Domain, which is a big deal in Vampire the Masquerade.  We're still building a lot of forward momentum and we haven't even reached the apex of the proverbial hill yet; in my opinion we haven't even sighted it yet.

That brings me to another event though, one which is less pleasing.  A few years back, during another Chronicle, there was a friend of mine who was a member of the Storytelling staff.  At the time he was going through some rough patches, and it was effecting his efforts negatively, which lead to other members of Staff asking him to step down.  I honestly believe that he never really got over it, and its been eating at him since.  In each subsequent game where he's been a player (that I've witnessed) he's found one member of Staff to fixate on, and has been antagonistic and confrontational towards that person.  While some of the accusations/arguments raised have proved valid, the majority of them aren't and I'm tired of putting out fires, as the saying goes.  With just two Storytellers on staff for this game, its been particularly wearying and I need to talk to him about it.  Whether or not my theory proves true, it still needs to come to a stop; we've never claimed that we're infallible but we expect the same amount of respect as any other adult when discussions come up.  Its one of the signs of a "Problem Player" discussed in the books and its a pretty serious situation.

On other fronts, our Pathfinder game got moved to Sundays with the new campaign starting and so far its been interesting.  The current character I'm playing is much different from my previous one but, do to story ties, certain shared characteristics show through from time to time.  Since I chose "Chaotic Good" as an alignment, this isn't really a problem but it should be interesting to see how things proceed.  It could go either way really, hero or anti-hero at this point.  Either way, I found the perfect prestige class on the Pathfinder database; Daredevil.  Not only does it have fighting styles (which is awesome since I'm playing a Monk variant) but it also has parkour as one of the abilities gained, which I think is cool.  I've started leading up to this transition already with the addition of various handholds and decorations on the group "headquarters" for the specific purpose of being able to scale the building from locations.

We decided to pick up a PS3 (Playstation 3) for Christmas and I've been having a lot of fun with that too.  We've got both Batman games (Arkham Asylum and City), Warhammer 40k Space Marine, the Assassin's Creed games up to 3, Skyrim.  Basically, a lot of neat and interesting games that have kept me interested and intrigued as I worked my way through them.  An interesting article in Game Informer talked about how a lot of good storytelling has been going in videogames lately, and while I don't completely agree I will say that certain series have definitely had the benefit of good writers.  In particular most of the Assassin's Creed games have had very engaging plots and they've endeavored to get you emotionally invested in the characters to the point where when one of the main ones died I was definitely emotionally moved.  Its become less like being a detached third party now and more like roleplaying in that you seem to get so invested that you feel a lot of things during the course of a game, from sadness to elation.

Finally, last but not least, I got some new miniatures and supplies, including two very cool basing supply kits.  I have a couple of figured ready to go, and some scenic display bases as well.  My one big project is still a major conversion to make a mounted Skaven Warlord.  I have all the necessary parts (and some I didn't even plan to have but which will make cool additions) but the one thing I lack is the usual epoxy putty.  Generally, with miniatures, I use a brand called "Green Stuff" (because its two parts are colored yellow and blue so that you'll know its properly mixed when it turns green) but no play around here sells it.  Games Workshop has some of their own, but its two tiny strips for a hugely inflated price which I refuse to play.  We found an epoxy putty at Menard's in the plumbing supply isle, since plumbers have been using such putties for a long time now to fix pipes.  My only concern is that Green Stuff takes about 24 hours to cure and has a working time of probably half an hour to an hour depending, whereas this stuff supposedly cures in 20 minutes and has a working time of 2 to 3 minutes.  While this might not seem like a problem, keep in mind that I have to be able to get this stuff where I need it to go and sculpt it into the shapes I need to complete the figure and they have to be recognizable as the components I've sculpted otherwise its a wasted effort.  And since this stuff supposedly hardness to the strength of steel, its unlikely that I'll simply be able to disassemble the final product and start over.  Anyhow, here's hoping!

Painting Ahoy!

Its been a while since I've been to an actual gaming store.  The irony is that when we relocated, a Comic Book/Game store was right down the road, and owned by friends of ours no less.  It was one of the things that had me so excited about our new location.  Sadly, events played out that lead to that store closing and they tried to give it another go at a new (and equally close) location but that went belly up also.  So basically, I've been reduced to whatever gaming resources I can find at Barnes & Noble and downloading pdfs online.

Last Wednesday, we found a Games Workshop location about ten minutes away from where we live.  After some interesting escapades trying to pin down the exact location - because apparently building addresses on major roads no longer adhere to logic - we got a chance to look around and shop.  I picked up two new miniatures while talking to the owner of the store, who was quite nice and genuinely seemed to enjoy the conversation.  Needless to say, I saw a lot of things there I would have liked to be able to take home and hopefully some of them will be in amongst Christmas gifts.

This all leads me to my main point of topic though; painting.  I'm trying to get back into it, since its been quite a while since I last painted a miniature.  The Games Workshop location is scheduled to have a painting contest this coming Saturday, September 29 and I'm toying with entering it.  The projects I chose are - hopefully - within my level of skill to complete to the imagery I have in mind.  I plan on taking some photos of them, as well as snapping a few shots of the other models entered into the contest.  Here's hoping I'm not overreaching here.

Let the Games commence!

You wait your whole life for a single moment and then suddenly it's tomorrow.

 That's an appropriate quote for this evening.  Allow me to explain:

It starts on Sunday, which is the day I make my usual call to my parents just to catch up.  After a few minutes, the topic of conversation turned to whether or not we were still having our "big Monday game" as its come to be known.  This was somewhat of a surprise, since initially my mother was against the idea of role playing games completely.  Eventually, that difference was resolved and now I think she's genuinely impressed by the fact that a game can draw upwards of 30 interested players.  To be fair, it impresses me too.

As we were talking, I began to illuminate how running a LARP is a rather interesting "job".  People who've never done one before usually assume that its no different than running a tabletop role playing game, but that's not the case.  Running a LARP is a combination of the following:

- Being a Storyteller (or Game Master depending on the system).
- Being a book keeper since player characters need to be tracked for a variety of reasons.
- Being a stage manager, since you're responsible for most of the essential "background" stuff like non-player characters and setting.
- Being a mediator, since sometimes disagreements happen.
- Being a "chaperone" since game is such a creative medium that sometimes you need someone there to set boundaries.
- And last, but certainly not least, having creativity and patience.  More on these below.

We took a while away from the weekly chronicles due to a schism within the troupe itself.  Initially, I was somewhat depressed by this but in hindsight its given me a chance to recharge both my creativity and my patience when it comes to dealing with people in a gaming environment.  To give you an idea, at the start of the previous game, the first one after the schism, I really had no idea for plots and non-player characters.  I was as tapped out of creativity as I've ever been.  Also, the events surrounding the schism and the fall out afterwards left me with little patience for dealing with people, meaning that I was less than forgiving/lenient when it came to things related to game.

A friend (and the person I'll be running the game with) approached me in March of this year with an idea for a game.  At that point, I told him I'd be happy to offer feedback and ideas but I was still feeling the pressure of a waning game so I was doubtful that I'd be able to help run it or even want to.  Once that previous game went under, I gave more of my time to the idea of the new chronicle and we started making a lot of headway.  One of the best decisions we made was to set a starting date several months into the future so that we had plenty of time to develop the setting, plots and non-player characters.  It gave us the opportunity to really explore a lot of territory and it gave me, in particular, time to recharge.  I started having little creative sparks occasionally, which changed into full blown ideas and concepts.  Once more, I was experiencing the joy of helping create a game.

Fast forward to tonight, Tuesday July 31st.  Our biggest obstacle was a place to hold the game but we're heading down to ECC (Elgin Community College) tonight to pitch the chronicle to the gaming club there.  While this chronicle has been in its planning phase, word has got out and there's already a lot of interest and enthusiasm from prospective players.  Enough that, presuming everything goes well with the "sale pitch" we're looking at down a Q and A sessions and character creation tonight (for those people who attend).  Since its somewhat spur of the moment, I expect that we won't get the attendance we've been expecting, but word of mouth will spread quickly.

Now I return to my starting quote:

You wait your whole life for a single moment and then suddenly it's tomorrow.

Game beckons once more.

Gaming and the World of Darkness

I started gaming when I was 13 years old, and to give you some frame of reference, I just celebrated my 34th birthday recently.  At first it was pretty standard stuff; Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Marvel Superheroes.  In 1994, when I was 16 years old, I was introduced to a game called Vampire the Masquerade.  The idea of being able to portray, through a role playing game, a mythological monster such as a vampire or a werewolf was a novel and intriguing one to me.  Until that time, such things had been consigned to the list of enemies my characters might fight and best.  What made it even more appealing (to myself and many others) was that the setting of the games, the backdrop if you will, was the modern world.  These characters would stalk larger than life not through some fantastical and mythological world but on the streets of cities we all knew.  What we saw outside our windows or on television during the news was the World of Darkness; granted it was a darker, more gothic version but all the elements were there.

So tonight, I downloaded a supplemental book in preparation for helping to run another chronicle.  Since my teenage years, my gaming has undergone a number of changes.  None have been as integral as my reemergence into the Mind's Eye Theater (or MET for short), which is the Live Action version of the World of Darkness.  For those unfamiliar with this concept, a variety of games have made the transition from your standard forum of players around a table with character sheets, dice and pencils (known as tabletop) to Live Action Role Playing (or LARP for short).  Most people have seen some of the videos posted around the internet of various versions of live action games and all I can tell you is this; no matter how goofy they might seem watching them on your monitor, most are a lot more engaging and fulfilling than you might realize.  Like their table top counterparts, they promote imagination and socialization; only now its to a different degree.  Settings are no longer the landscape of imagination only, but are often treated like sets in a play.  People are encouraged to dress and act like their characters, much as an actor portraying a character in a film or play.  While the dialogue is all impromptu, its usually very reminiscent of dialogue you'll find in any script or screen play.  Taking away the aspect of rolling dice for everything and relegating most action to narrative description and off-stage events changes the focus though; you learn to react in a purely social environment and this can be an amazing experience.

I realize I've gone off on a bit of a tangent, but some explanation was needed.  To get back to my thoughts, as I was reading this book I made what I believe is a rather inspirational insight; these games, and in particular those published for the World of Darkness, encourage healthy catharsis and the acceptance of the duality of human nature.  One has only to look through our history to find bastions of humanity and goodness as well as agents of darkness and pain.  What unifies all of these figures is that they made a choice at one point of another.  For humanitarian figures it was the desire to suppress and distance themselves from all the pain, anger and violence within and carry a message of love, acceptance and understanding to the world.  The others, whom we (rightly) name as monsters often chose their darker paths out of a desire to preserve some goodness or light.  In both cases, the defining characteristic is that each individual realized the capacity for both within themselves.  How many dictators and tyrants started out only seeking to preserve civilization, order and social tenets, but wound up going astray?  By that same token, how many paragons of light began by only wishing to separate themselves from that within that they deemed dark, evil or wrong?

Our love for humanitarians (of any name, be it saint or teacher or what have you) and our dislike of those we deem "bad" or "evil" would seem to suggest that our history would be very different.  Yet we can read accounts of both readily and easily.  Dictators and killers have biographies on shelves not far from saints and guardians.  Its all there for us to read.  There are likely a variety of reasons, and many of them could be discussed at length.  Really though, doesn't it all boil down to the same thing?  The realization and acceptance that we have the capacity to be both within us.  We make a conscious choice, each day, but that doesn't erase the existence of our duality.  If it did, we wouldn't be plagued by negative thoughts like frustration over traffic, anxiety about money or anger at the noisy kids outside.  That we choose to embrace out better natures does not absolve us of our darker legacy.

Games in the World of Darkness provide something few others can; a chance to experience a catharsis of those darker aspects in a safe, controlled environment.  I'm sure a lot of people could argue that no such experience exists and that any indulgence of those things is "bad".  For myself, I choose to see it as something that's as natural as breathing or sleeping.  I realize the duality of my existence, and the catharsis of those darker emotions does not somehow invalidate my choice to be a decent person.  If anything, it helps to accentuate and underscore that choice by showing me what a world in which that darkness is either embraced by all or ignored until it comes crashing through the door would be like.  It allows me to vent frustrations, anger, even jealousy in an environment where they can do no harm to anyone, not even me.  We were all told while we were growing up that bottling up emotions is never a good thing, and for the darker emotions this is doubly true.  However, how many things in life offer you a chance to rid yourself of this kind of baggage safely?  I honestly can't think of many.