Audience of Strangers

Zero Summer identifies itself (quite honestly) as a wordy Western RPG. It's a free browser-based game, that uses (almost) the Fallen London engine. It's fairly grindy at times, which is usually really not my thing. I cope with it for the writing; I actually think that the amount of text helps me slow down and not click through it all so quickly.

Here's the thing: there are individual stories (as opposed to the repeatable mundane actions) which cannot be repeated. You play them once, you read them once, and then they are gone forever, unless you care to start over again with a new character. So when I run across a step in the story that reads in part (yes, in part; I did say it was wordy):

What does it say? It says: under clear skies and the fresh fingernail moon and the bright brilliant stars when the world was young there was the masterless Dog. And still he howls. His voice freezes the blood. His tongue is warm and wet. His pelt flea-bitten but strong and golden. His ears hung with carved wooden rings. His eyes too-human. His paw outreaches. A mark is left.

Suddenly Jim is on you, wrestling the book away and slamming it back onto the shelf where you found it. Real panic in his eyes. A high unexpected color.

"What did you see?" he says. Demands. "What did you see?"

Under a fingernail moon, there was a hound. Under the clear sky he reached out. Under his paw there came a mark. It itches and burns. It weighs on your heart.

...when I come across that I stop, and reread, because I know there are no save points, no rewinds, no YouTube captures, no wikis, no-one I can ask for an explanation. (Okay. Technically I could go poking around the Failbetter forums and see if anyone had theories, but it's not like sitting around a gaming table and troubling a Storyteller for clarification, you know?)

It's oddly lovely, and no less so for being so transient.

========

ETA: Aaaaaaand I just got a message related to that specific storylet. I'll, uhm, be shivering gleefully, visiting the Scrublands, and dealing with the Jackal-Caller now. :D

So. There's this thing Fallout: New Vegas lets you do, which is talk to people. Almost all people, in fact, and if you're good at it, you can win a great number of conflicts that way. (I think I did that with everyone of note in my playthough, except Caesar and the Legate, because, uhm, no. It's my game and my story and my relaxation, and I get to decide that some people are horrible enough that shooting them is okay.) People will let you go, people will decide to cover for you or actually support you.

Colloquially, this is called talking the monster to death (thank you, TV Tropes!), even if you usually don't actually kill them, and I tend to think of it as talking them 'round, as Daniel Webster is purported to have done to the Devil's jury.

Anyway.

John and I were discussing F:NV this morning, since the weather brought on thoughts of snow globes, and from there we got to the cigarette butts (these are A Clue) you can find early on in the game, and I was mentioning that I'd missed them the first time. John was surprised, and was explaining their use at one particular point, and then a sudden realization came upon me.

"...son of a bitch, Benny talked me to death."
*pause* *John started laughing*
"No wonder I let the little prick live.[1]"
*laughing harder*

And then there was a lot of, well, sputtering.

I mean, I went there with a plan of what to do. There was no advantage to changing it, and there was, I think, some personal satisfaction to letting it play out as it would have. And then the character said things, things mostly that weren't even intended to persuade me, and the next thing you know I'm thinking "okay, right, I personally object but I can see the rationale, here," and the next thing I'm dishing out resources to let him get away and busily annoying certain people it is expensive (in terms of game resources) and painful to annoy by doing so.

I know that part of it is that I generally actively dislike being a bad guy in video games, but... damn. A story that can change your mind, even a bit, is not a hugely common thing. Affect you, upset you, show you something new, sure[2], but not so much make you ditch a plan and decide to do something harder. Admittedly, most stories don't unfold in a context where you are directly involved in making decisions, but still.
---
[1] I am not in the habit of using such language, but really, he shot me in the head and buried me in a shallow grave before the game even started, I feel some acrimony is not unwarranted.
[2] Okay, not sure, but a lot of stories do and can.

There was a Kickstarter for miniatures for Hell on Earth, which is a Deadlands thing.

I will, uhm, have a few things to paint. And a bit of Classic Hell on Earth[1] to read through.

It's been a long and kind of draining day, and I'm not quite finding myself in a state to discuss Hell on Earth[2], which is sad, because there are a lot of things about it that I would like to articulate. But I am glad that I will have some more Deadlands to read, and I am trying to get my thoughts on Hellstromme in order.
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[1] Bubbly Fizz. Mmmmm.
[2] Except to say dammit, they cheated.

Went to bed later than I ought've last night. Woke up half an hour ago after a long and complicated series of dreams that mostly involved needing to playtest adventures for The Secret World for jasmine-koran.livejournal.com and getting incredibly frustrated because I couldn't tell the difference between regular content, her content, and quest requirements.[1]

I'm tired.
---
[1] It was like Story Nexus, but all the Qualities and Storylets were showing up in one spot on my screen.

And a puzzle. And coffee cups.



Alright. See, there's a game called ADOM--Ancient Domains of Mystery. I'd link to my earlier discussions of it, except it's not something I mentioned much on LJ. It's a dungeon crawl, with... well, pretty much everything. Secret passages. Writhing masses of primal chaos. Altars to the gods. Holy water. Gremlin fluffballs. Angry trees. Cats. Traps. Blankets. The Black Tome of oh god I did not just get that did I? Shining silvery two-handed swords--well, sword. Smithing. Herbs. Pools you can drink from with uncanny effects. Weird mutations from the background corruption slowly destroying the land of Ancardia. Wishes being granted. And puppies that should really, really not need to be rescued.

And sheep. Spoiler-y protip: DO NOT wish for sheep.

And there's $1,013 $971 $946 $861 left for it to make the stretch goal of publishing it to Steam.

Could do worse than check it out, is all I'm saying. :)

32°C as of 3 p.m., calculated to come across as 41 with the humidity. (That's 105 down south, I understand.) I'm going to grit my teeth, get through the trip home, and then not move outside the air-conditioning until a civilized temperature is re-established.

Going to give the e-reader a factory reset. The Kobo help desk suggested this might also solve the battery problem[1], which could be due to a firmware issue, but I confess to being somewhat skeptical. Will be very happy if it works, though.

Also! Pretty things, for values of pretty things that cover post-apocalyptic video games (no, not Fallout).

The city will not actually be removing a wall of our living room!

(There's still going to be scaffolding and brick removal and stuff around the front porch next week, though.)

It feels like Monday. Keep reminding myself that this is not the case, and there is a long weekend coming. I keep getting jittery over details. If I don't stop waking up at three in the morning, I'm going to start going to bed around eight until I feel better.

Also: picture! And link to the story, if you click it.



ETA: John has improved my day!

Bubbly Fizz. Mmmmm.[1]

Spoilers follow--no, honestly, serious spoilers--but it doesn't matter unless you game. ( I'm not kidding. )

John talks about the concept of a game contract; when you run a game, you agree to its basic conceits. If it's a heroic fantasy game, then you do not create a character who reacts to seeing someone about to fall off a cliff by stopping, giggling, and saying "Gee, I wonder how high he'll bounce." Your character doesn't need to be happy about the fact that they're going to go save the guy, but they are by-god gonna go save the guy, because you do.

The Storyteller agrees to these conceits as well. And one of the near-universal ones is that you will have a chance to survive. And I'm not sure if simply telling players straight-up that yes, one of them is going to die in this story is the best way to handle it. I'm not even entirely sure it's better than not telling them.

Thoughts?
---
[1] I suspect there are a very few people who will get that. To them, I apologize. To the rest of you, humour me. No, it does not have anything to do with Pepsi, no matter what Google tells you.

I swear I play this (the video, not the page, obv) to cheer me up on my lunch break.

Brian Fargo meeting with an executive for the hypothetical Big Ass Games, during his efforts to get a sequel to Wasteland made, at 3:08.

BAG Ex: Okay, let's talk about a few minor tweaks.

Fargo: Well, I don't want to stray too far from the original.

BAG Ex: Oh no no, these are just tiny modernizations, if you will. Take for instance, ah--we would like it to be a first person shooter.[1]

Fargo: Excuse me?

BAG Ex: And our numbers people, they tell me romantic vampires are very big right now, and we feel like they would seamlessly fit into the Wasteland world.

Fargo: Maybe we should do birds as well

BAG Ex: Oooh. Oh, that's good. I'm glad we're on the same sheet of music. What do you think the boots look like? Are they red? 'Cause red is really big. Are you seeing red?

Fargo: I'm definitely seeing red.

But yeah! It looks like Wasteland 2 is a go. I am sort of ridiculously happy about this. Fallout was where and why I started playing computer games, and the idea that there's going to be a sequel to the inspirational prequel is making me grin.

I hope they manage to make the October 2013 deadline. I also sort of hope they'll release it on the 23rd, but either way. :)
---
[1] This might be slightly more funny to me personally than to most. Long story.

Well. After starting on January 15, 10:28 a.m.[1], I have finished Fallout: New Vegas. 263 hours of gameplay, although my winning character only had 212 and change on her--the difference is in reloads, going back and redoing things, and I think a couple of time I may have paused the game and gone for dinner and of course the total time keeps ticking.

Also, I will note: I did it on Hardcore Mode. Including all the downloadable content add-ons. And I did not cheat.

I am kinda proud of that.

Got endings I am happy with for six of my companions, and ones I am okay with for two.

Observing the effects of a Speech of 100: I think Moriarty was some kind of bastard descendant of Daniel Webster. Caesar and the Legate and House were not talked 'round. And the Fiends. Everyone else I can think of at the moment--and I mean everyone else, including Ulysses[2] which I never imagined was going to be possible--I managed pleasant and productive conversations with.

212 hours. Wow.
---
[1] No, I'm not that much of a geek. The game tracks when you first get through the introduction, and since I've only played with one character it's easy to tell.
[2] ( Technically possibly a spoiler. )

Ulysses is a special kind of burnt-to-the-ideal fanatic. He says he doesn't hate you. I will grant that it doesn't always seem very important to him that he hates you.

(I know, I *absolutely* need to catch up on everything. Will try tomorrow; today, this remains a place to jot a quick note before I forget.)

Thinking, lately, about RPGs again. Picked up an Orpheus supplement, and... good grief. Here. Have examples of some of a dozen antagonists for a story.

Czerner was born in East Germany and worked as a hacker and spy for the Communists until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. He went freelance shortly thereafter and has worked with NextWorld since immediately following its founding.

White is a con man and a self-described adrenaline junkie who loves extreme sports. That passion lead him to three near-death experiences and his preparation for employment at NextWorld.

Shenk has a Masters in electrical engineering and telecommunications. For years he was a well-paid member of the Silicon Valley elite, but when the "Digital Revolution" tanked, he had to do something else. His brief training with Terrel & Squib and subsequent defection to NextWorld gave him an interesting alternative.

Frost is a slick, people person and a quick study. He masters mental tasks quickly and easily.

Okay. That last one's a little thin, but as character sketches go, these are generally pretty uniform. Enough to let you get an idea of who you will be playing, right? (Because you will be running these guys as possessing spirits that are operating in opposition to the PCs. Possessing spirits, I will note, that cannot be seen.)

Oh, hey, here's another one of the dozen...

Timborn grew up with three mean brothers, and she dominated all three of them. She is a ball-busting bitch and proud of it. She knows she's beautiful, and she uses her assets to manipulate men like marionettes. The only man she hasn't been able to wrap around her finger is Marcus N'Kejeda, who is gay and immune to her wiles.

Is it just me, or...

I mean, they make a *point* of how normally you might be able to tell her victim's being possessed, because the victim is "a short, slightly plump Hispanic woman" and Timborn is "essentially, a svelte Nordic goddess". But Timborn is such a brilliant actress that she can imitate her victim to near-perfection, so it's not even a case of unconscious learnt mannerisms mattering.

(ETA: that not-mattering? No, that's not my read on the stats. That's their explicit statement.)

And don't even get me started on the class snobbery. It's not quite as bad as Dogs of War, where one scenario dealt entirely with "trailer park trash" who didn't give a damn about what's going on as long as the benefit checks keep coming, "trailer park tramps" who will point you in the direction of "something" affecting the children for fifty bucks, and children. Apparently being poor eradicates your parental instincts, who knew? (Oh. And there was also the crazed guy with the gun who'd been cooking up drugs in his meth lab. Unless he was extra-nasty, at which point he was an OMG!!deserter!! who'd been avoiding the MPs for ten years.)

Dammit, I liked Orpheus. I still do. I'm just not sure how much of the metaplot information is going to make me want to give up and go pick up Deadlands or something.

Okay, a first note on the movies: I understand that there are many remakes, I understand they particularly seem to crop up in summer, but there is still a bit of dissonance in finding out at the same time that they are remaking Straw Dogs and Fright Night.

(For the record? Totally called Fright Night. And I've never seen the original. S'there.)

Anyway, went to see Priest.

Overall, it was one hell of a combination of Judge Dredd with the Night Train[1] adventure from Deadlands, but the dialogue could have used a *little* work. Just a little. Eeensy bit.

Like, enough work to have the professional vampire hunter who is rather prone to stating the obvious (they all are--this movie is *not* subtle) say something like "There wouldn't be a hive guardian if the hive was abandoned" instead of "But why would there be a hive guardian if the hive was abandoned?"

But it's an okay action movie, and the Wasted West sequences are just lovely.
---
[1] The Night Train is a meatgrinder of an adventure for Deadlands, a cheery Old West setting which started going to hell when the Battle of Gettysburg was called on account of zombies. It has a rather unsettling setup, goes through PCs like butter (details are spoily), and leads to summaries like

One of [Our Heroes] died, and the other three came very, very close. Well, okay, TWO of them died, but one of them hasn't noticed yet.

and while I was looking for an informative link I found out that there is a sequel. Fear Levels and bliss, here I come.

Echo Bazaar continues to amuse. Don't think there's anything spoilery in the text, but...

( Casually tossed nymphs. Of course. )

And I have me a Modish Bonnet, so I can stay there as long as I like.

I spent really longer than anyone should bother trying to get a comment to look like

Stuck in place with all my gears jamming and I think they'rre gooing to sttart to smokke any ssecccond nowww--

and then I found out that CSS formatting doesn't work on comments. Just posts.

(My pain, you can feel it, right?)

As some of you may have heard me mention, I'm in an LJ RPG called Excolo. Applications are open again, if anyone is interested.

Right. So. Definitely on an EBZ kick: therefore, icons.



( Honey... )

Your head buzzes with black and heady secrets. It's an intoxicating feeling, although not a comfortable one. You leave, realising as you do that the smirk playing around your lips is not entirely your own.

As you go, a squad of Special Constables with white gloves and heavy canvas masks comes up to disperse the crowd. They bring up a squat brass machine on a wheeled cart and begin to spray the offending wall with cleansing acid.

Alright, it took me a while to finally give in... but I am *so* glad I finally started playing Echo Bazaar.

So. Stuff lately.

I've been making progress on the knitting. I'm going to see my sister for lunch today. I'm back at work, although I'm coding pages with Notepad because they haven't gotten the new Dreamweaver in yet.

I'm feeling a bit disjointed. It's strange.

I painted a very little bit last week. Nothing finished yet, though.

I've been (re)reading Hunter: the Vigil lately and I'm in that state where you can feel your mind filtering for useful things. "People overlook that? This highway sign says what? Cities can track gunshots how? You have to pay for getting hurt in the States?[1]" Nothing together, yet, exactly, just a constant sifting.

Also, catching up on blogs. This made me laugh (it's here for you non-Dreamwidth people).

Not having a definite end-date for this job is kind of annoying, but given that it's "until we can't afford you or the job is done" and I am coding these pages in Notepad did I mention, I think I'm good for a bit. And I will get notice.

I want to go home and sleep. And wake up without my eyes itching. Although I have finally gotten my new glasses, which helps.
---
[1] Note to self: somewhere, in some Hunter game, there must be an antagonist who is simply an insurance claims adjuster doing their job and trying to figure out why, after years of quietly paying premiums and being unremarkable, a character is suddenly ending up with burns, gashes, gunshot wounds, broken bones...

Bored.

Library not yet open. Internet access available. ...gah, I don't know. Everyone I'd normally talk to to kill time is AFAICT working or still asleep.

I figure the library will open in twenty, and then the lobby should clear out and I will feel considerably less bad about watching a movie in here while I knit. (Not doing that yet; am sitting on bench, laptop would slip off my knees if not held in place, which makes knitting sub-optimal.) Meantime, my mind's sort of rambling all over the place.

I kind of wish I'd brought Hunter, but carrying a 300-and-change page book on top of the laptop seemed a bit much. May see about grabbing a PDF of it.

Eighteen minutes. Gah. Maybe I'll try writing something. silent_lorelei's review of Legion made it sound pretty much exactly as terrible as I expected--

--ooooh, if I don't hear something by afternoon, I can maybe go grab Alice in Wonderland at the World Exchange--

--but a couple of the ideas were kind of interesting. I did like the ice-cream man in the movie trailer, and the question of why the little old lady demon shrugged off one attack but not the other has me thinking, of all things, about Scott McCloud. You know how in a car accident, you're more likely to say "He hit me!" than you are to say "His car hit my car!"? Something to do with that, with the extension of perception of self to cover objects at hand.

Mhm. I'm rambling. Also kinda wishing that the copy of Slasher I was looking at hadn't been sold. I'm getting that weird itch to run a game again, and Slasher and Hunter are both looking interesting. Mind, I've got core NWoD (or possibly Savage Worlds), not like I need anything else...

Orpheus, dammit. Someday I will run an Orpheus game, and it will cover the metaplot. All of it.

Sadly, the thunderstorm we were warned to watch for did not properly materialize. What can you do?

Piper's gotten the serious crazies, and I've managed to lose my sewing scissors. The week at work had a heavy side-order of brain-dead, and I'm polishing the resumé (not because I need to get out of there, just on the general update/possible side-work theory).

Been thinking about--gah, I'm not even entirely sure of the term. Fiction that is conveyed with set pieces, rather than just through the written word. John says epistolary, and a lot of them are, but that's not all of it. I mean, the first section of The Dionaea House is epistolary, but the later stuff--Eric and Loreen's private blogs, Danielle's LJ--aren't letters collected to tell a story or a diary republished in a book. They are the things you'd transcribe.

On the scale of "creating an item that your character would create", online journals are easy; hell, they're probably easier than handwritten letters. (You get a lot of this in video, too; I'm sure there's something to be said here about Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, and Blair Witch Project.)

I mean, I can think of several examples. I've got a computer game that comes in its own evidence bag and arranges for you to get e-mails from other characters in the game; BBC had something similar (which is how I first tripped over the idea of TINAG; I've calligraphied letters and bought sealing wax and made seals for LARP props; I recently ran across Personal Effects: Dark Art (and I want that book so badly it's not even funny). Moving a bit further afield from straight narrative, I've seen the field kit of a werewolf hunter and pages from Cthulhu Mythos texts.

And I mean... there has to be a name for this, right? I'm looking at the alternate reality gaming idea, and thinking "alternate reality storytelling?" but that just sounds like another name for the alternate universe genre. And then there's the whole question of, if you have to work to get the next part of a story, how you define the difference between a story and a game...

Rambles that have been kicking around in my head a while, I guess, that I wanted to get down somewhere.

The morning squeaking and fluttering has become a near-daily occurrence. Mention has been made of wire mesh for the vent, and bat houses for the interloper. Because, you know, then we'd have a bat around the house, and less mosquitos, and also the poor thing would be homeless and killingly cute, so something should be done.

========

So John was downstairs making burgers, and calls up to me "Hey Frances, you know Black Annis, right?"[1]

"Of course."

"So I'm looking at these burgers, and I'm thinking--Black Angus! The cow demon!"

I love him dearly, but I think he's been going a little heavy on the D&D lately. Although some of it is cool, and it's nice to see him having a game again.

========

So. Orpheus. Bloody hell, Orpheus. I've been weebling around the idea of running the game for over a year, now.

I don't think there are enough reliable local gamers who'd be interested for me to run it. Anyone have any advice on running a somewhat actiony horror RPG over the internet?
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[1] That this was more in the nature of a getting-the-conversation-on-topic question and less of an actually-suspecting-I-don't question is one of the reasons I love him. Also, he was making burgers. And did I mention he made coffee this morning?

A quick note on nWoD sourcebooks: liking Innocents fairly well.

========

Okay, what follows turned into a much longer commentary than I expected. The short version: so far, I think you could pay me to own this book.

========

Think the writer (or at least some of the writers) of Dogs of War may need to go get their class issues, defensiveness, and rah-rahing out of the way before writing again. Also, am finding many of the scenarios and info boxes poorly written. Not in terms of line-editing so much as in terms of not being fleshed out at all.

I mean, I'm reading this book, and I'm trying to keep an open mind. But... in the World of Darkness, recruiters are ensuring that only people who meet high psychological and moral standards are being selected? Good Christ, this isn't happening in the real world, and it's supposed to be better in the WoD?

Also:

* Having a magical object that lets you erase one disaster per scene is not a scenario, dammit. It's a neat magical object, and the details of it do catch my imagination, but it's not a scenario. Saying "You get this while on a mission to find X" does not make it a scenario, either.

* On what planet do you get compassionate leave because your brother died, go home for the funeral (staying in your family's home while there), notice that your fifteen-year-old sister Mary isn't around or at the funeral and your mother's upset, and end up having to have your cousin tell you that Mary ran away? Did you not ask your mother what was wrong or where your sister is?

There's not even anything to suggest your mother brushing the question off. The scenario goes right from "Your mother's upset" to "a success on a roll will have your cousin tell you Mary's run away". Interestingly, I note that the scenario also completely fails to discuss why an upset mother would fail to mention to her son that his fifteen-year-old sister is missing in the World of Darkness (although it does have an aside explaining that missing persons reports aren't looked into because people generally have reasons to want to leave, which had me wanting to slap the writer with a copy of Precinct 13) or what planet the character is from that has them finding this acceptable.

* On the topic of bad characterization: oh, look, the characters have to find a strange object that landed near a trailer park. World of darkness, rough life, I'd expect a fair variety of people to be living in trailer parks (either as a stopgap or because they can't afford better).

Nope. There's trailer park trash, who doesn't give a damn about what's going on as long as the benefit checks keep coming; trailer park tramps, who will point you in the direction of "something" affecting the children for fifty bucks; and the crazed guy with the gun who's been cooking up drugs in his meth lab. Unless he's a deserter who's been avoiding the MPs for ten years.

Oh, and there are kids. God knows where they came from. Either they sprang from the loins of trash and tramps who are all so throughly indifferent to the concept of caring for their children that they need a trivial bribe to bring up anything odd affecting them, or else the parents who might give a shit and either mention something or try to hide it from the people investigating are not worth mentioning. At all. Perhaps it's a Little Orphan Annie-like trailer park, and the trailer trash and tramps are collectively Miss Hannigan. I suppose that makes the PCs Daddy Warbucks.

(You can take a minute to contemplate the exact proportion of atrocious characterization to class (and other) prejudice, here. I'll wait.)

* Moving on to writing and clarity: Saying that all a character needs to be hired is having completed two tours of duty, and then going on to say that having been posted in a location the hiring company is interested in results in an extra two dice to your roll does not make sense. What roll? You don't need to roll. Who edited this thing? (Yes, okay, Scribendi again, but seriously.)

* And finally, noting that contrary to popular belief Special Forces members don't have an initiation that involves shooting their dog or murdering their family is just over-the-top. Whose popular belief? It's not even funny. I don't mean "It's too serious to joke about", I mean I read it and thought "Oh for god's sake, quit whining."

It may yet improve. I will finish reading the damn thing. But so far? Really not impressed.

We're expecting somewhere between thirty and fifty centimeters of snow tomorrow.

Game is most definitely *not* on. Not in that.

Will work out details of rescheduling and let people know ASAP.

Have been watching The Adventures of Brisco County Junior. Highly engaging pulpy western with a dash of mad science. We're two-thirds of the way through the series, and the villainous John Bly[1] has just had his first final encounter with Brisco.[2]

( Spoiler. )

Wait. Whut?

I mean, it's still a great series. It's a workable explanation for a couple of things. But it just came out of absolutely nowhere.

(And yes, I did make a kind of not-very-huge leap regarding villains in a steampunk Western. Bly's a little too polished, but looking at Billy Drago, he's not totally inappropriate for the role of Stone. Mind you, I am sadly not holding my breath for the movie.)
---
[1] Seriously, this guy is a *great* villain. He keeps giving off this weird Sunlight Gardener vibe; utterly deranged cool despotic preacher with a calling kind of thing.
[2] Professor Coles assures us there will be another. Have no idea if they got to that before the series ended.