Category: Personal

Hey, I hear I’m going to be at GenCon. So, they say, are some of you.

I am not going to post my full schedule because nothing horrifies me more than people knowing where I’m going to be. Shudder. However, I will be at the Indie RPG Awards on Wednesday night around 9, and before that I will swing by Nicky Blaines since there’s a rumor that some people I know will be there, if they don’t mind me crashing the party. Hopefully the fine people at Nicky Blaines will have forgotten me from last year.

I will also be at the D&D Thirtieth Anniversary Party. I think this is Thursday night.

If anyone local needs me to pick anything up while I’m there, let me know — in particular, harder to find indie stuff. The No Press Anthology, the Iron Game Chef Fantasy Compilation, Nine Worlds, and Dogs in the Vineyard will be out. Mmm mmm good.

Shaolin Soccer is playing this weekend at the Brattle — anyone interested in a Saturday showing, say 7:30? (Friday at 9:30 would also work for me.)

They’ve also got Last Life in the Universe coming up, which won Best Overall Film (Jury Prize), Best Asian Film (Jury Prize), and the AQCC Award at FantAsia. Gotta make sure I get out to see that.

So I figured I might as well go to an Amber convention because I like new things and I have friends who said “You should come!” And if I’m going to go do something new, I’m of course going to write about it. Thusly.

The Black Road has something like 36 people attending, which makes it the smallest con I’ve ever been to. The small size means it’s relatively easy to get all the GMs and all their players talking before the game. I had two PCs in hand weeks before the convention, which boosted my anticipation considerably. It’s tempting to think this could work for bigger cons, but that way lies madness. At least for the convention organizers.

First game was a cool swashbuckly affair run by Ginger and Michael. I got to play a Rebman water mage with attitude. I find that in a con game, if you blow your first roll, you might as well go with it — it’s a corollary of the Rigney Rule (“Your character is defined by his or her first action and the consequences thereof.”). When Nerissa asked the currents where land was and they lied to her by 180 degrees, it was pretty clear she was going to be the snobbish sometimes competent one of the bunch. More on the game later, maybe.

Oh, but I will note that it used the Everway rules, which were mostly transparent to we the players but which also worked out well. Next I’m playing in a cooking-themed game set in Amber. Tomorrow I’m playing My Life With Master and kill puppies for satan, both Amber-themed, of course. But still. Who knew that in order to play indie RPGs, you just need to go to an Amber con?

I seem to have six Gmail invites. There are no good usernames left, but if you still want one, drop me an email. Grovelling is optional.

“Two equal horizontal bands of red (top) and black with a centered yellow emblem consisting of a five-pointed star within half a cogwheel crossed by a machete (in the style of a hammer and sickle).”

Angola.

Seventeen years ago, I spent a month in the People’s Republic of China on a youth tour. There were 40 Western teens — mostly from the United States — and 20 Chinese teens on the tour. We travelled together for a month, from Beijing down through Shandong Province; we climbed Tai Shan, drifted along the Huang He by boat, stayed in Wuhan for a few days, and finally wound up in Shanghai. It was an amazing experience.

I met a lot of people on that trip. Stefani later introduced me to Pearl, her freshman year roommate. Pearl in turn introduced me to Susan, who got me back into the SF con scene. I met Leon through Susan, and Leon introduced me to TinyMUD, which is how I got my first job in the tech industry. It was a rather important month in my life.

I also met a few people whose names I’m still uncomfortable using in public, because… you never know. The Chinese kids we travelled with were all smart highly educated children of Communist Party members from Beijing. At the beginning of the trip, they were highly doctrinaire around us. By the end? Everyone had loosened up. There was more trust. The more radical among them were willing to admit to being uncertain about the rule of their parents.

We exchanged addresses at the end of the tour. Some of us kept up our letter writing — circumscribed, always, and careful, but knowing each other well enough to read between the lines.

A little more than fifteen years ago, the tone of some of the letters changed. Got more excited. Something was up.

Fifteen years ago, the world saw this.

We stopped getting letters after that. I don’t know why; I like to think it’s simply that writing letters to Westerners were unwise, but I know it’s possible that some of my friends died in the protests. Unlikely, though; not many students did. But… you never know.

Either way, Tiananmen Square was very personal for me. I’d spent an afternoon there, looking at the monuments and being amazed at the scale of the place. I had, at the time, a little wooden fan with a picture of the Square on it. I knew people who were probably there when the tanks rolled in.

Never forget.

Hey, I have my game schedule for The Black Road.

Slot 1: Le Cygne: The Lost Swan of Amber
Slot 2: If You Can’t Take the Heat
Slot 3: Nine Losers in Akron (Amber/Kill Puppies for Satan)
Slot 4: My Life With Corwin (Amber/My Life With Master)
Slot 5: empty

Saturday appears to be my day for Amber-flavored indie games. This should be a whole lot of fun.

Zombie Smackdown. In stores next week. I wrote the Japan chapter. This makes it perfect for everyone who ever wanted to roleplay zombies and wrestlers in conjunction.

I’m booked for GenCon Indianapolis 2004, in the Omni Severin. I’ll see some of you there, I’m sure.

It turns out that the Subservient Chicken was created by the Barbarian Group, a Boston-area Web design group. I note this mostly as an excuse to link to another site they did for my brother’s design collective, Release1.