Category: Gaming

[More character noodling. This is for Rob’s Starchild game.]

“Is that Summer or Strummer?”

“Eh, you know, whatever…”

Kai Summer is immensely young, and the heavy overcoat he wears — down to his ankles, collar turned up to his ears — does nothing to hide this. It accentuates his slender frame, skinny like the loosely knotted tie he sometimes wears. His ragged boots swallow his feet whole. You could drop him into a Chicago winter and he’d vanish like he was just another bad poet with too much pride to work retail and not enough time to live.

I’ve never seen him without the overcoat off stage.

On stage, though, he’s someone else. He doesn’t get any bigger, but he uses his guitar to carve electric lines through the air in minor keys that owe more to madness than to music. If you squint just a little you can see a shimmering field of music around him like an aura of sound. I’ve noticed that people playing with him don’t get too close. I can’t blame them; I’d worry about getting sliced in two by a stray power chord.

It is trivial to say that he is the best guitarist of his generation because at the ripe old age of 17, he is the first guitarist of his generation. Perhaps in the end, if Mother doesn’t have her way, he will be known merely as the man who found the possibilities. Perhaps someone else will be the man who developed them.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

He is playing tonight at the Broken Metronome. He told me the other week that he hopes to jam with Mary Pagan someday. It’s the first personal confidence I’ve ever heard from him. Mary? Are you out there? Can you hear me? This critic thinks you should make Kai’s dream come true.

From Lester Shots’ “Beating the Minutes” column in the ChicaGO alternative wheneverwecan.

Here’s the cliche:

This week’s Wednesday Weird isn’t about just any old hedge Wizard, but the classic wize old wizard that is a staple of the fantasy genre. Although Merlin is a heck of a lot older than Gandalf, I’m not sure if he started wearing the pointy hat before Tolkein’s wizard. However, since D&D and most fantasy fiction has (for better or worse) been heavily derived from Tolkein’s work ever since, we’ve seen a lot of wizards in the Gandalf/Merlin mold. They’ve been dispensing sage advice and assisting heroes for ages. Sometimes they have the hat. Sometimes they don’t.

My wizard has the hat. Here’s why.

The PCs establish the traditional relationship with the wizard — advice, counsel, “fool of a Took!” He identifies magic items for ‘em. All that fun stuff.

Somewhere along the line, someone asks the PCs why they’re spending so much time hanging out with the guy everyone else knows as a simple farmer. “Look, he’s a nice guy, Toby, but… he’s just a farmer. Or anyway, he was before he moved into that old tower at the edge of the forest. We’ve been wondering what he’s up to now, because he’s not too bright and we’re kind of worried about him.”

It’s the hat. Toby found it; it’s a very powerful magic item which bestows both the ability to use magic and the skills to use it wisely. Anyone could benefit from it. The party wizard could benefit from it quite a bit. Just, Toby’s the guy who found it.

Jack Dandy, Gentleman About Town!

Sadly, I don’t know very much about him. Yes, it’s true: he’s just a set of powers and a vague appearance looking for a background. Perhaps I should go all Ripper and make him the Prince of Wales in a disguise. No? Well…

Right; he’s the Honorable Austin Alexander, second son of the Right Honorable Lord Islington. He does wear a mask, because his elder brother — who he adores — thinks that he’ll bring shame on the family name, blah blah blah. His father is senile and could care less. He mostly cares about having superpowered larks, and feels the mask adds to his air of mystery.

His armor is a glowing force field in a thrilling shade of hunter green. His quantum bolts are, um, quantum bolts. I was very entranced by the thought of flying whilst wearing a tailcoat, but the more I examine it the less thrilled I feel.

I am having deep trouble working up backgrounds lately. My wuxia Charnel Gods character, who doesn’t even have a name yet, is in even worse shape.

In the DoSS universe, Mercury owns a clock just like this. So does Doctor David Brent.