Low Heat

 Starting to think about Last Houses again with L.  Needs to be rethought from the ground up, to get away from feature creep and complicated systems that don't get the player anywhere near the real spirit of the game.  It's a relief to start over.  We needed the time to put some distance between ourselves and the systems we had constructed so elaborately.

Not sure this is the best design process.  Not sure a game will actually result.  But it's the only way to get it better.... so there.

 Finished book five of In Search of Lost Time.  One book remains, Time Regained, which is half as big as the last five.  Then I can get back to reading the great Asian masterpieces.

Except I really want to start over again.  After almost five thousand pages of studying these characters, I want to go back to the beginning and read it through again, without the internal pressure of looking forward to plot revelations and with the perspective gained from his later work.

The sixth book was unfinished, and it already shows, in the first dozen pages; it was not completely edited by Proust.  At the same time, though the polish is missing, the scaffolding bare at points, the structure is the most ambitious, the culmination of his work.  The title, "Time Regained", is such a statement of power for an author that has thus far affirmed over and over that everything withers, whether love or beauty or grief or honor or friendship.

Anyway, the prospect of finishing makes me a bit melancholy.  What is better; knowing that there are great books that you have missed out on, or the opposite, that the best in life is behind you?  See?  Ridiculously morbid.

 Suddenly I have the hankering to watch "City of Lost Children".

Anyway: what kind of system would you use for a light quest game?  Ie: a game like Brave Story, parts of the Lord of the Rings, Wolf and Spice, or Shannara.  The point of the game is that you are going somewhere to do something, and it has these qualities:

• Individual party characters may come or go or stay put; you may share a goal or you may just be going the same way (initially)
• "combat" may happen, but it is not the focus, and would probably leave people injured rather than triumphant
• Focus is actually the characters, their growth and changing (and definition, actually), and enjoying the setting
• Play is multi-session

I can think of a few that would "work", to various degrees of fit.  Some of ribbon drive's mechanics are appropriate, but not really the core mechanic.  You could use bliss stage in a modified form (no dream missions, some sort of modified authority).  Both of these would at least provide reasonable support for the correct feel of the game, based on social interaction more than task annihilation.  Burning Wheel would also work (since it supports questioning beliefs, learning, dangerous combat, change over time, etc), but it doesn't do as much to support the right narrative structure (though MouseGuard could fill the gaps, if it were generalized).   I mean, this sort of game can be run in gurps or NWOD or DnD, but a generic system would provide scaffolding for all the wrong things.

Anyway, I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.

 Had the seed of a relationship system in mind, but at the moment it requires that you understand the concept of a number line (positive, negative, absolute value).  Feedback appreciated.
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Modeling relationships in games is hard.  Combat is much easier to experiment with.  For me.  Time to suck it up and write a story-games post for help.

One pager fantasy heartbreaker is done, text-wise, with an initial set of four character types.  As soon as I get a test or two done, and a pdf, I'll put up a post on CEGames for it with free copies for people that want to do some betaing.  Or just playing.  I'm thinking of doing another set of four classes (rogue,summoner,samurai,lancer?) to augment the first four (wizard,healer,guardian,warrior).  It's really easy to write a fantasy game and offer it to people, but it's not exactly ground-breaking material.  It's an over-represented genre (so I guess it's a safe test of the little system).

I'm really digging the format, though, so I'm planning another little project already... I just need to settle on a genre.  Been watching a lot of giant robot shows lately... but there's another place that many steps have trod before.  Hmm.

2/3 of the way through another little one page game.  It's really fun to work on a game that splits into 16 tiny pages.  You have to balance adequate rules discussion against word choice, rules expansion, font size, readability, etc.  It's a neat little puzzle.  The only problem I'm having is figuring out a way to lay it out, for free, on a mac.  Hmm.

finished season one of Spice and Wolf, or Wolf and Spice, whatever.  It was good stuff, though I'm a bit disappointed by the harem anime overtones.  Except It actually makes more sense in the series than it usually does, so I'll give it credit for dealing with the situation in an intelligent way. 
( Spoilers and Discussion of harem anime, so plenty to avoid here )

6. Don't backpack alone if there are any flags like "you're feeling a little sick" or "it's probably too late in the season to do this easily". 

1. Bring a real jacket, the kind that would make you overheat if you were trying to use it backpacking, because you'll need it in camp.
2. When it's really cold, the only kind of food you'll want to eat is the kind that is pretty much preassembled.  Also, you'll forget to drink water.
3. Bring migraine medication.  You don't want to spend half your trip with the worst migraine of the last three years.
4. Get a backpack that can fit a real jacket in it.
5. Look at the stars more.  Outside of the city.

On the other hand, I learned a few lessons from my previous trips that served me well.  I stayed dry, utterly dry (relatively new tent and sleeping bag, plus good weather, and no accidentally stepping in creeks or lakes).  My actual sleeping arrangements were pretty ok; I was warm (when completely sealed in my bag).  That could have been pretty cool if not for the really agonizing brain pain.  I don't know how cold it was out, but the ponds I passed by going in were clear at 2pm and were covered in ice at 11am the next day, from edge to edge.  In fact, I was baffled when I turned over my groundcloth and saw what I thought was a thick line of mold under it.  It turned out it was ice, frozen condensation from the moisture where about an inch of my feet hung off the end of the thermal pad, from time to time.

Also: the farther people go in, the more friendly they are.  Above four thousand feet, people are friendly and ask about how the night went.  Below three thousand feet, they can't be bothered to meet your eye.  I think it's a factor of how tired you are; being tired makes you sensitive to your own humanity or something like that.  Or maybe the people who do hiking more seriously understand themselves as "hikers", part of a community, and not just tourists, avoiding the crowds.  Either way, you can bet I was freaking friendly on the way back down.  I gave directions to probably four or five groups in the process; after seven years of hiking the same few miles of trail, I know all the turns around Talapus, Olallie, Pratt, and Island lake.  Which was satisfying.

 Going backpacking tomorrow for a quick overnight.  Kind of sad that its the first time in two years, and its such a short trip, but it will be good to get out.

I'm going to forgo cooking this time.  Packing in pots and pans and dish soap and propane for my little meals was always a little silly.  Now I just have to figure out something cold and tasty.  Maybe some chocolate for caffeine and pep, in lieu of coffee.  I'll replace the weight of cooking gear with more warm layers.

My usual spot is Pratt lake, so I'll probably head there.  I'm really excited.  Should be a good time to read and contemplate infinity.

The narrator's relationship with his mistress (four books worth of relationship, I think), is now over.  And in the end, you never really know her.  Sweet and spiteful, docile and independent, faithful and licentious, she is all of these things alternately and heterogeneously.

And that's everyone.  The narrator recognizes this about himself as well, even as he tries to decipher her character after she is gone for good.  She will never be one thing, one set of principles... there will always be an exception and an exception to the exception, ad infinitum.

Still a book and a half to go, but I wonder if the rest is nothing more (or less) than epilogue to the love of his life, one that seemed insufferably boring and entrapping when he lived it, but in retrospect was the life of idyllic peace he'd always longed for.  You never get what you want for long, since desire is based on absence (for Proust).

 I have a new phone.  It's the same as my old phone, except

a - isn't covered in tiny cracks
b - has a modem that doesn't reset hundreds of times a day
c - has a 90 day warranty
d - doesn't have a chewed up screen protector (have to find a new one now).

My old phone, it was out of warranty, but they replaced it anyway, which is good, because it wasn't really working.  Tiny cheer for Apple.

 Hmm.

I was talking to Andy tonight about a discussion that came up on the forge.  You can read it, but here's the key piece: Polaris is a game that encourages players to go for the throat.  Well, to use Ben's exact words: "Polaris is not a consensus game. My recommendation is: if there's an action you want to take, and you're worried that someone else at the table will be unhappy with it: do it. That's tragedy fodder."

In other words (my words, which are actually more of a corollary than a summation), the only way to cooperate with the other players is to give them what they least desire.  No, not that; the only way to cooperate with other players is to give them what their characters least desire.  Because you don't win Polaris; you die or become a traitor.

Which makes the game I'm working on feel like a Polaris hack, or Polaris light, at the moment (feel like - not actually be).  The same options are presented; you die or turn into a monster (which is a traitor to all mortal life, so kind of analogous, in context).  The key differences that I'm looking at critically as a result of understanding this key feature of Polaris (players actively seek to harm other players' characters, as is their role) are as follows:

a - you're on a quest to finish something, which just might redeem you.  There is the option of having hope.
b - There's quite a bit more consensus calling.

Which makes it not as bleak, and perhaps inferior.  I tend to prefer games that aren't so cutthroat, but it may be important in a gm-less game.  So much to say that I come to games with the assumption that players work together, but without a gm, a designated opposition, perhaps its necessary to encourage more conflict, and appropriate.

That's one of my chief concerns; if players are playing the opposition for other players, how do you encourage them to go for the throat if their characters are working together and they are also, you know, friends in real life?

One solution I'm thinking of is incentivizing successful attacks on players.  It's probably easy to play the opposition in such a way that they are easy to beat, which means that players get their way and skip along merrily, which doesn't put the right level of stress in the game.  Has anyone seen this work in a gm-less game (or fail miserably)?

corollary: these aren't the only key differences between my game (Monster Quest or With the Time that Remains - both lousy names for different reasons); it's also not as elegant or well-written, and doesn't use key phrases, which is probably a bad idea.  Rev 3: improve conflict system.  Not today.  Also: Polaris has a decent name.

The Winter King of Seattle resides at the bottom of Green Lake in his palace crafted of blue and green glass, ever shining.  On certain high festival nights this palace rises from the lake, and his court musicians play "Stepping Out" by Joe Jackson on loud speakers over the lake surface, while his Nayads and Pixies dance on the walls of the palace.  He is truly a spectacle to behold on such nights, rising from his throne of damp marble to take the wireless microphone from his vizier, twirling and dancing and shaking his great mane of hair, impeccable in his white tuxedo and wingtip shoes.   He is so enchanting, in fact, that the late night walkers and joggers and muggers on the shores of the lake cannot help but walk towards his glittering palace, inevitably drowning.

Then the Winter King of Seattle snaps his fingers.  The music stops, and he hands the vizier the mike in exchange for a towel and a red bull.  The pixies take to their boats with hooks and harpoons to grab the wallets and cell phones from the drowned mortals.  The city descends.  And that's how the Winter King pays his phenomenal child support bills. 

The fourth form that our style teaches is a two person form.  Early in the form you fall flat into a pushup, kick someone in the chest from that position, sweep your leg back up under you to raise you horse stance, then sweep the legs.  It's fantastic (and in the second part, which I'm not learning yet, I think you actually jump over the leg sweep into a roll.  Sweet!).

I just wish I wasn't still recovering from my trip to Ireland while learning it.  Being absent for just four practices (during which I mostly sat in a car and drove around the country) seriously weakened me.  I'm about back to where I was before I left now.

The coolest thing (besides the awesome fourth form) is that my knuckles are getting strong enough that I can start punching the bag of rocks/sand instead of just the bag of beans.  Now I just need to build a wooden dummy in my yard so I can toughen up my arms.

...when you're making a game text.

-Setting scenes.  It's a thing that becomes natural after so many darn games that use them.  But you can't assume that it's common knowledge.
-The concept of a "player character" and "non-player character".
-Rolling dice and counting successes.

Not every game has them, but a lot of them do, so describe them in a game text is like describing how to use a semicolon.  You may do it all the time; some people don't, though, so you have to do the song and dance. 

PS: ( Here's my stab at writing a section on how to set scenes. Rough draft. )

I'm volunteering at Pax this year, and I'm on the spareboard, so I do different things.  One of these things was guarding an empty hallway for a couple of hours.  So I got to play another game of Smoke Dream, my fourth.  (Smoke Dream is Jackson Tegu's game of amplified story-solitaire).

This time I went in with a purpose; in the past I wandered through this strange game of solitaire, which (while interesting), leads to a shallow sort of play.  I went in looking for the brass lady (Queen of Hearts), a woman I've scrupulously avoided in past trips because of her unpleasant disposition, but who keeps popping up in strange places in entries for other items.

But I had little luck.  She was initially trapped in a prism room, and before I could free her she was stolen by the hollow Lady (Queen of Spades).  When I managed to free her, by trading several small items to the Hollow Lady, I then freed her from the prism by using the other half of a kiss, which I turned into a major key.  But this made her an item; so I let her go.  When next I encountered her, she did as she was is wont to do: she demanded my items, and I refused, so she wrapped her legs around my neck and whipped me with a switch.  She was finally my companion.  Unfortunately, minutes later we met the wolf-blooded girl.  She devoured the brass lady, and that was the end of it.  Off she went to the boneyard; my heart was found soon afterwards, and my guard duty was over.

Anyway.  Smoke Dream is interesting because there are many hidden little paths through the game, so it increases in value as you learn it.  I wonder though, once you've traveled all the paths, would the game still be fun?  I don't know.  You should play it too.

Also: S/lay w/me is great fun, really good fun, lots of fun, but I'm too prudish to actually ask to play it with most of my friends (thanks, Ben!).  I need to figure out how to buy a copy, and then go play it more.  Lots more.