Blue Moon Aurora

Michelle and the kids’ first party ended up being slaughtered as Anton’s elf demanded to keep moving into the dungeon despite injuries across the party and being cut off from the entrance by skeletons.  Eventually, even Anton realized they were in trouble and a desperate battle to fight their way out led to everyone’s demise.  So that was the end of the first party as they bled to death on the dungeon floor – this is the stuff that makes D&D, well, D&D. 

So everyone drew up new characters with the goal being to take up where the last party had left off.  Michelle created Zinnia a halfling fighter/rogue, Alina created Xanaphia Lilen a cleric of Mystra, and Anton drew up Quarigon Saltyweed the elven fighter/mage.  As can be seen, Alina and Anton stuck with the same races and classes as their last character though they did change names and Alina changed faiths to Mystra the Goddess of Magic.  Anton has also decided that Quarigon wants to restore the ancient elven kingdom of Earlann under his rule – that’s a campaign goal!  Alina couldn’t come up with any goals and Zinnia just wants to get lots of money so she can help support her large clan of halflings.  Clearly, it’s going to be Quarigon who drives this campaign. 

We started the adventure at the Smiling Satyr, an inn outside of Loudwater, where they were hired by Lily Morgan to figure out what happened to the last group and clear out the dungeon.  Quarigon decides to hold a banquet for the new party and Lily Morgan and spends his gold freely to make friends and put himself in charge.  After some banter the party is off to return to the dungeon!!! 

I’ll be honest; this is a pretty classic D&D scenario where a new party takes up where the dead old party died.  It’s hackneyed and a little freaky, usually, I avoid it but Anton was determined to succeed and beat this dungeon.  The problem is parsing out metagame knowledge.  They already know the layout of much of the dungeon, how many skeletons were left, and stuff like this – this is all metagame knowledge because they as players know this but their characters do not.  This is like the fact that you may know the formula for gunpowder or how to sail a boat but your character doesn’t and to bring in your metagame knowledge runs against the idea of roleplaying a different character.  Of course, usually your characters know a lot of stuff you don’t like how to cast spells so it all balances out, but the rule is that metagame knowledge is to be kept out of the game.  We explained this to the kids and they made a good faith effort – but sometimes it’s also good to toss in a wrench or two. 

Interestingly, last time Anton’s elf Elrune was in charge of mapping but he was very clearly that there was no ‘map’ as all the information was in Elrune’s head.  Needless to say when the party all died, Anton saw the error in his ways.  This time however, Alina is mapping and Xanaphia definitely has a physical map she is working on. 

So the party come in and starts fighting the skeletons and find they are facing three more than there should be and Anton says I made a mistake.  Never, ever, tell the DM he made a mistake.  A DM is effectively God, and I mean Old Testament God – so one should be very careful, you know avert your eyes, pay for their share of the pizza, and never, ever say they made a mistake unless you want to end up a pillar of salt or something.  However, I hadn’t made a mistake and actually anticipated his response, so I described the three skeletons in more details as two decomposing elves and a human and gave details on their clothing and weapons.  Then realization and horror hits the kids’ faces as they realize they are fighting their previous characters that had been animated by the evil of the tomb.  Of course, after defeating them they acted in traditional D&D form and looted the bodies of gear before burying them outside the dungeon.  The rule is D&D is pretty straightforward – you kill things and take their stuff. 

This time Anton was determined to not fight unless fully healed so Quarigon decides that the party will fight a battle and then retreat to the surface for food and rest.  They basically do an hour of work a day cleaning out this dungeon.  Inch by inch, day by day, the party sacks the dungeon.  A dungeon that was intended to take maybe 3 days to clear out has now taken nearly a month when you combine the time the two parties spend here.  Needless to say Lily Morgan’s field isn’t getting planted.  Quarigon also has a large iron mallet this time for knocking through doors and walls so the party may be moving slow but they are smashing their way through the dungeon.

Xanaphia is a dedicated cleric and starts grumbling about Quarigon’s lack of faith to Mystra, which is shown by the fact that she keeps rolling very low for healing spells on him.  He grumbles as well until after the third time he is knocked unconscious and needs healing, at this point he starts being a lot more positive towards Mystra.  Amazingly, he starts getting more hit points from healing as Xanaphia starts rolling better for healing him. 

As classic moment is when Zinnia starts panicking after failing to open a lock, citing what her master said ‘to always stay calm and be quiet’.  Zinnia starts repeating that mantra in a louder and more panicked voice till Xanaphia and Quarigon yell at her to be quiet and calm down.  Then Quarigon says his master always told him ‘to take your time to find the proper way to do things’.  Xanaphia then quips that her master told her ‘to never give up’.  Then they all start quarreling what to do about the door as apparently their master’s advice conflicted over whether to smash it down or find some way to pick to lock.   Zinnia hits upon a new strategy – she says what she wants to do (smash the door) and then sits down and doesn’t move until everyone agrees with her.  Amazingly it works, though not till after Quarigon has exhausted every option he can think of.

Eventually, they have cleared the dungeon and slain the entombed ghouls and seized the treasure!  Zinnia begins cataloguing the treasure with giddy excitement, but Quarigon just knows there is more to the dungeon and decides he will spend several days going over the whole thing again.  He keeps asking to check for secret doors and I keep rolling behind my screen and telling him he doesn’t find anything.  In truth there aren’t any secret doors but he assumes that if I roll then there has to be something.  See that’s metagame knowledge slipping in and Quarigon is determined to find another fight and more treasure – even if there isn’t any.   

Xanaphia decides to stay with him as Zinnia heads to town to sell the treasure for gold to make it easier to divide up.  Well Quarigon finds giant rat holes and digs it out looking for an encounter with something…so I decide they find caves.  They climb down and begin searching and then Quarigon separates from Xanaphia as they go two separate directions.  I was very disappointed – every six year old knows you don’t divide the party!

Soon they find giant rats…lots of giant rats.  Xanaphia fights off her group of rats but Quarigon is eaten alive by his rats and falls dead.  Xanaphia decides to flee and leaves Quarigon’s body to the rats as they are devouring him in front of her eyes.  She runs to town to tell Zinnia that Quarigon is dead and let’s slip, “and now we have more treasure for us!”  The whole incident traumatized Anton who couldn’t believe he had died and that Alina would gloat over his death.  The irony is that before the adventure Anton was asking if he could kill the rest of the party and take the treasure for himself.  What comes around goes around, especially, in D&D. 

Michelle though decided to play nice and Zinnia announces that she will look into raising him from the dead with his share of the treasure. 

The next adventure was short and just dealt with the resurrection of Quarigon.  Of course, things didn’t go as expected and Anton failed his resurrection check and the High Priestess of Chauntea had to go with Plan B: reincarnation.  On the table the odds of ending up with a playable race, like elf, instead of an unplayable race, like badgers, isn’t great but Anton got lucky and ended up human.  I mention he can come back as either male or female and I suspect he wanted to see if I would really let him get away with it he said female.  So we ended up with Quarigon reborn as Lillia Samvori the human mage.  She decided that for their next adventure the party would travel to a big city to sell off some of the treasure they couldn’t unload in Loudwater so it’s off to Waterdeep.

On May 7th Iron Man 2 opens and it may be the biggest movie of 2010 so where better to begin my annual box office guesstimates!   

The first Iron Man did remarkably well with a $98 million opening weekend (-48.1% drop in second weekend) and a very impressive $318 million domestic run with an additional $266 million foreign take for a grand total of $585 million.   Of course it wasn’t the biggest superhero movie of 2008 – that was The Dark Knight.  But now it is 2010 and Iron Man is no longer a lesser known superhero and the question is not if Iron Man 2 will do well, but how well will it do?

So here is the challenge - you need to guesstimate the following:

1.    Opening weekend domestic take. 

2.    The percentage drop to the second weekend. 

3.    Domestic run total. 

4.    Foreign take.

For some reason this is one of the most posted pictures from Iron Man 2 - I guess it appeals to some target demographic or something.

As always I’m going to give you some numbers to compare and consider:  

Spider-Man (2002) & its Sequels 

Spider-Man was a big, big movie eight years ago. 

It started with a $114 million opening weekend (only a -37.8% drop in second weekend, which is very impressive). It had a $403 million domestic run, and an impressive $418 million foreign take. 

If Iron Man 2 can do as well as the first Spider-Man movie then it will have done very well.  However, there is a caveat…Spider-Man 2 (2004) didn’t make as much domestically as Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3 (2007) didn’t make as much domestically as Spider-Man 2.  The potency of the franchise has diminished not strengthened.  This is not the case with Iron Man, as I think Iron Man 2 will better demonstrate the limits of the franchise more than the first movie, but with the Spider-Man franchise the first one was the strongest.  

Spider-Man 2 had an $88 million opening weekend (-48.7% drop in second weekend), a $373 million domestic run, and a $410 million foreign take. 

Spider-Man 3 had $151 million opening weekend (a big -61.5% drop in second weekend), a $336 million domestic run, and an impressive $554 million foreign take. 

So Iron Man 2 has a villain who has a white parrot and wears black...that's something.

Batman Begins (2005) & The Dark Knight (2008)

Batman Begins was a respectable success.  It had an opening weekend of $48 million (-43.4% drop in second weekend), a domestic run of $205 million, and a foreign take of $167 million.  It was a reboot of a dead movie franchise and it did its job and set up its sequel for greater success, though how much greater no one could have guessed. 

The Dark Knight was a phenomenon driven in large part by the death of Heath Ledger as well as the solid foundation laid by Batman Begins and the widespread popularity of the Batman franchise.  It brought in a monstrous $158 million in its opening weekend (-52.5% drop in second weekend, but this was a movie that had legs and kept racking in the money for weeks).  For comparison its opening weekend is about half of what Iron Man made during its entire domestic run.  It continued bringing in the money and had a huge $533 million domestic run and a very respectable $468 million foreign take.  It ended up with just over $1 billion.  

My opinion is that Batman Begins underperformed and that The Dark Knight overperformed at the box office.  Batman Begins was going against the last few very negative Batman movies and The Dark Knight was driven in large part by the sensationalism of the death of Heath Ledger.  That is the nature of movies – stuff happens. 

Can Iron Man 2 compete with The Dark Knight? I don’t know.  There is a lot of hype with Iron Man 2 as it has a pretty impressive cast and Robert Downey Jr. has proven to be box office gold the last few years, but the success of The Dark Knight was sort of like a lot of planets coming into alignment. 

Don't worry Iron Man 2 promises to have lots of things blowing up. 

Transformers (2007) & Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Transformers had an opening weekend of $70 million (-47.5% drop in second weekend), a domestic run of $319 million, and a foreign take of $390 million.  These numbers are pretty similar to Iron Man and it’s a movie about robots so it makes a good comparison. 

Transformers’ sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had an opening weekend of $108 million (-61.2% drop in second weekend), a domestic run of $402 million, and a foreign take of $434 million. 

I think Revenge of the Fallen makes a good target for Iron Man 2 and that would put it in the range of the Spider-Man movies, but there is a lot of hype and excitement for Iron Man 2 so anything can happen. 

So here is the challenge - you need to guesstimate the following:

1.    Opening weekend domestic take. 

2.    The percentage drop to the second weekend.  The typical for most movies is a 50% drop. 

3.    Domestic run total. For most of the movies I cited their opening weekend was 22% to 44% percent of their entire domestic run with the average about 30%.

4.    Foreign take. As you see with most of these movies the foreign take is about the same as the domestic take. 

See Iron Man 2 isn't about robots blowing each other apart - it's a romance!

Now of course we aren’t going to know the last two for a few months from now, but I’ll put up updates and I might even give a prize to whoever is closest on these four categories. 

There is something about D&D - it is wickedly fun.  We did our first family D&D adventure.  It was 2nd Edition and set in the Forgotten Realms, which is how everyone should begin.  For the uninitiated, Dungeons & Dragons is pretty simply: you run a character through challenges in a fantasy world.  You fight monsters, you avoid traps, and use your imagination to succeed…or die horribly.  The basic point of D&D is to “kill things and take their stuff” – horrible, huh?

There were three members of the party.  Michelle was playing Lorena, a timid fighter.  Anton was playing Elrune, a confident and insightful elven fighter/mage. Alina was playing Arwena, a cleric of Chauntea (goddess of agriculture, plants, and animals).  For the most part the kids had created their characters themselves and before we started Michelle and I provided them a basic explanation with how things work in the game. Then we got into the adventure.  

 Character sheets, dice, miniatures, and a GM's screen - must be time to roleplay!

The set up was simple.  Lorena, Elrune, and Arwena had been hired by Lily Morgan, a farmer, to investigate the entrance to ruins discovered by her son when he was plowing a field.  The group asked Lily some questions and then it was off to the dungeon for daring adventure.  Here are some classic moments:

Arwena grilling Lily Morgan about whether she had any dreams about the ruins her son discovered.  Alina was obsessed about whether anyone had dreams about the dungeons.  

Elrune figuring out just from the description of a room that a depression on the ground was actually an ancient pit trap.  Anton was obsessed with finding secret doors and was in perfect form for a D&D adventure.  

Lorena being oblivious while the half-elf and elf discovered secret doors and the like.  Michelle just couldn’t make a perception check for the life of her.  

Elrune shattering his staff when trying to use it to pry open a door.  Anton was stunned and went into a mock tirade.

Arwena doing prayers to Chauntea before turning undead or casting a spell or clasping her hands in prayer to her goddess before making important dice rolls.  Alina was so nervous about saying the prayers ‘right’ but she gave a good effort – I think Chauntea is proud of her newest cleric. The one time she didn’t give her prayer was the one time she failed to turn the undead – very auspicious.  Also, when she was tasked with holding back some skeletons that she had turned so that the other 2 members of the group could go past, Alina sat at the table holding her hand in the air to mimic the action of her character. It was very cute.

Nothing is better than giant spiders, giant rats, and skeletons for combat at 1st level!  

Elrune obsessing over the ‘decoy’ sarcophagus.  Anton became certain he knew something and he was dogged in chasing down the red herring I tossed in the adventure.

Everyone was in classic D&D form: desperately looking for treasure and no one wanted to be in front – though Lorena kept timidly agreeing to lead the group in, being the token fighter and having all of 12 hit points (as compared to 8 and 7 hit points of the other 2; ah, first level!).  

The big battle at the end of the first session on Saturday was the three party members against five skeletons.  Lorena had advised the party to leave the dungeon and rest a day to recover spells and heal, but Elrune would not stop what he had begun.  So when Arwena failed to turn back the skeletons with her holy power it was the battle of a lifetime.  Arwena was knocked unconscious and then Elrune was too, leaving Lorena to narrowly defeat the last skeleton.  Two were down.  One was standing.  Escape from the dungeon was impossible as another group of skeletons stood between the party and the exit.  What was Lorena to do? Well you just have to wait till next week to find out.  

The kids had a blast and Michelle even admitted that it was the most fun she had gaming in a group for awhile.  The fact that Elrune was 117 years old, Arwena was the tallest, and Lorena was the youngest amused the kids.  For once they were the biggest and oldest in the room.

I was originally not going to comment on this story about the mother who sent her adopted child back to Russia, but there is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there about Russian adoption.  I usually don’t talk about adoption, because I live it everyday, but here you go.  

First, let’s be honest.  The mother failed.  There is no doubt about it and the little boy has become more broken but unless you are prepared to adopt the kid you shouldn’t be criticizing the mother.  Until you have dealt with an institutionalized child you have no idea what she went through.   

This 7 year old boy probably had FAS and RAD.  If you don’t know what those are consider yourself very, very lucky.  This poor boy was messed up by his alcoholic parents and then dumped in an orphanage.  He was definitely physically abused and possibly sexually abused.  This boy’s worst enemy is himself.  Institutionalized kids are master manipulators.  They turn parents against one another.  They drive away the people whose love they need.  They are destructive and hurtful, because they can’t handle being loved.  If you think all you need is faith, love, and a little therapy to deal with one of these kids you are going to be in a world of hurt.  The kid will drain your faith and love in short order and conventional parenting will utterly fail with these kids.  

Let me give you an example.  Your kid does something wrong.  With a normal family you send the kid to his room for a “time out” and he feels bad because he’s separated from the family.  If you do this with an institutionalized child you have reaffirmed to him you don’t love him which is a vindication for his bad behavior.  What do you do? You do a “time in” with the kid where he has to stay within arms length of you for the duration of his punishment.  This is hard, fatiguing, and heartbreaking because the kid doesn’t make it easy.  I’ve done this – it sucks.  This is one example of dozens of situations were the conventional parenting technique can worsen the situation and the proper course is hellishly difficult.  Welcome to dealing with an institutionalized child.  

The mother in our story is correct about one thing.  The Russian authorities do lie about the kids in their care.  They want them adopted.  The adoption agencies do sugarcoat adoption as does everyone.  They want kids to be adopted.  Adoptive parents also don’t enter the process with eyes wide open, because they want a kid and they naively believe that with their love they will triumph.  The system is messed up, but it’s even worse for the over 700,000 kids in Russian state care whose prospects are grim…very grim.  

I have gone through this.  We adopted two kids from Russia.  They were siblings aged 3 and 5 at the time of the adoption.  We were far more prepared than most adoptive parents.  We were younger than most, which helps.  We had a super strong marriage, which is a necessity.  We had read dozens of books and even attended a conference for adoptive parents.  We were the only couple at the conference that came BEFORE we adopted.  We hadn’t gone through infertility treatments as we had always wanted to adopt so we were ready to go.  We picked an awesome agency.  We had doctors to review the information and videos sent by the orphanage to make sure we didn’t have a major problem we couldn’t handle.  We knew we didn’t want serious mental deficiencies, FAS, and we hoped to hell we didn’t get RAD, but that one is a wildcard.  We also decided to adopt older children who were siblings; most adoptive parents want to adopt infants.  We knew all too well from our research that just getting an infant didn’t guarantee less problems - and we didn’t want to deal with diapers.

We were prepared.  We had a good agency and we dealt with a good orphanage.  We even are in contact with our kids’ biological family and they are good people.  Our kids have very minor problems compared to what some adopted kids have.  In other words we were lucky.  Still I will say this – the first three months were hellish and the first two years very difficult.   You can’t prepare for it.  Michelle had a tough time with the kids and had the equivalent of post-partum depression, yes; you can have this with adoptions.   I was in my last semester of law school.  My mom, who is made of iron, came to help and that got us through, but she who raised four difficult boys in difficult times would be the first admit we were facing a real challenge. 

I was the stay-at-home dad and I went on auto-pilot to graduate from law school.  I had to deal with therapeutic holding, feces smeared on walls and hidden in rooms, physical attacks, biting, tantrums you couldn’t imagine where the screaming could be heard across the block, and kids who if not watched would destroy things important to us because that would hurt us, like my laptop they poured milk in, they would lie to one parent to turn that parent against the other, and they would have burned down the house if they could have gotten away with it.  Imagine sleeping across the hall from the kids’ rooms and being ever vigilant for when they try to sneak out of their rooms to cause mayhem.  So what do you do? You either crack and fall apart or you adapt and survive.  You never succeed – you just survive and win minor battles.  You put bells and alarms on the house, you lock every cabinet with padlocks, and you just try to protect them from themselves while giving them boundaries and unconditional love.  All the while you use the parenting techniques developed by the experts and hope that the experts have some idea what they are talking about.   All the while the kids goad you and taunt you and do their best to make you hate them – that’s what they want because it’s what they know.  They want to be abandoned, they don’t want to be loved, and they will push your buttons.  You have to remember institutionalized kids are survivors and they are cunning manipulators.   

These kids are their own worst enemies.  It is so tragic and painful, but being in the middle of it is even more tragic and painful.  

So are you getting a better idea of the situation this mother might have faced with this boy she adopted?  I’ll be honest, our kids are mild compared to the kids some families we know have had to deal with.  We were afraid we had RAD for a long time but we didn’t, or more accurately it was very mild and we dealt with it, and we are so very thankful for this.  RAD is bad, very, very bad.  Can you imagine being afraid of your child – truly afraid, because they really want to hurt you and they are willing to go to any lengths to do so? If you say no – then you don’t understand what is possible in this world when you are dealing with such broken kids.  

So let’s quit casting stones at the mother, because she had the best intentions but she wasn’t prepared for what she faced.   Is that her fault? Yes, but the system encourages ignorance.   

Now here’s the deal.  There have been tens of thousands of adoptions of Russian kids and 99.9% of them have turned out well, though we define ‘well’ differently than most other parents.   If we can get our kids through high school without them getting arrested or pregnant and can make them productive members of society then we have kicked ass.  When we can do better than that we are parenting gods.  Adoptive parents are resourceful and stubborn – it is the only way you can do it.  I feel for the mother in this story, because she failed.  Honestly, she was a young single mom – she wasn’t prepared for what she took upon herself.  That is her fault, but she has to deal with that.   

You know who else I feel sorry for – all the kids in Russia who need homes and the families that want to adopt them but who might not be able to due to the political situation created by this mother’s actions.  Adoption is hard – not adopting is worse.  Most of those kids who aren’t adopted will either die or fall into horrible situations after they age out of State care – situations like drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, alcoholism, and early death.  That’s why we adopted from Russia the situation is very bleak there.  That’s why we adopted older kids and siblings who are far less likely to be adopted.   

I can also say that I feel sorry for this mother, because five years out – we have two spectacular kids.  They are bright, positive, and lots of fun to be around.  They are some of the best behaved kids we know and they are flourishing.  We still have problems.  We always will.   But we got through those really hellish early years.  It wasn’t love, but hardcore parenting and determination.   However, it takes a toll and only now do we really feel we have turned the corner and are dealing with mostly normal parenting issues.  Parenting has, and remains, the hardest and most thankless job I have ever had.  I’m good at it, but it’s like managing two unruly employees who belong to the world’s most powerful union.  That is the world of the adoptive parent.

2010 will mark the beginning of a new era – roleplaying campaigns with the kids!  

I did run A Faery’s Tale adventure with Michelle and the kids over a year ago that went fine enough; however, it was simply too much work – mainly in herding the kids.  They loved it and have been clamoring for another session but Michelle and I have been dreading the prospect.  Fortunately, things have improved.  The kids are more together than ever and with our weekends mostly cleared things are more relaxed.  We have been doing a family game or movie every weekend and can shift this to a roleplaying campaign.  Anton will soon be 11 and Alina turns 9 this year and these are good ages to start the hobby.  

So this week will have a series of blogs as I prepare for our first family campaign that begins this Sunday.  Today's blog deals with picking an RPG and deciding upon a scope for the campaign.

There were really only five RPGs I seriously considered: A Faery’s Tale, D6 Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Mouse Guard, and Robotech RPG.  

A Faery’s Tale has the players assume the role of fairies set in a world like the one where all fairy tales are set.  This is a very kid-friendly RPG.  I approached my consideration of what RPG to use on the assumption that A Faery's Tale was the default and standard.  

D6 Star Wars is one of my favorite RPGs to ease new players into roleplaying.  Michelle and I are experts with this RPG and the kids are fans of the Star Wars universe.  However, Michelle is worried about the violence levels in a typical Star Wars adventure and that Anton might just try to join the Dark Side right off the bat regardless of the story.  I don't know about those concerns, but the kids would definitely approach a Star Wars RPG with expectations and expectations are always dangerous.

When it comes to violence Dungeons & Dragons is king so Michelle would definitely nix this option, but there is something magical about D&D and its goofy genocidal violence.  D&D is all about good versus evil, killing things and taking their stuff, and gaining wealth and power.  There is no more American game than D&D.  However, I didn't mention I was considering D&D to Michelle as I knew she would nix it so we're going to put this to the side and revisit it after our first campaign ends. 

Mouse Guard won last year’s Origins Awards for Best RPG and I bought it and found it refreshing.  You basically play mice that have a medieval-style society beset by other savage animals.  There are no humans in the world just animals and the mice have to face off against weasels, snakes, and also fight treachery within their own kind.  It is based on a graphic novel series and is similar to the whole genre of intelligent speaking animal fiction.  The system is good, but it’s not one I have used before so I would need to reread the rules in detail.  That more than anything has compelled me to table this RPG till further down the road.  This will probably be our next campaign if the first one goes well.  

Robotech is an RPG I don’t have, but I know the rules as it uses a system from other RPGs I own.  It is based on the anime series Robotech, which the kids have seen and love.  It is about pilots of giant transformable robots who fight off alien invasions.  Violence aplenty, but the kids know the series, plus I could use a military hierarchy of the Robotech Defense Force.  Michelle would command their unit and would have Anton and Alina as her soldiers.  The big problem is the system – which is complicated and would probably confuse the kids.  I’m probably buying the RPG next month but it may be awhile till the kids can handle this RPG.  

Fairies!  Why did it have to be fairies!

So at the end of the day - I end where I began with A Faery's Tale.  That brings up the question of scope.  Well I think four-adventures is a good plan and with A Faery's Tale the style is to incorporate a fairy tale into the adventure with twists.  I did Little Red Riding Hood for our first adventure but this time I am going to move a little way out of fairy tales and use King Arthur.  So a four adventure campaign that weaves fairies into a King Arthur story that makes the fairies the heroes.  That's the idea and tomorrow I'll discuss how I develop this idea further and move closer to Sunday's first adventure. 

One of the most oppressed minorities in our nation won a stunning victory yesterday with the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which can be found here.  Though if I were you I would just skip to page 88 and Justice Stevens’ dissent as the losers are always more informative and interesting when it comes to reading decisions.  However, for those who don't want to read boring legalese I can sum it all up – corporations have full First Amendment rights and attempts to limit their freedom of speech are unconstitutional! 

This has been a long hard fight for the oppressed corporations who were only first recognized as persons in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886) and they have been fighting for more rights ever since.  Human beings are considered natural persons, which are like persons except they can’t be incorporated and have to actually work for their money.  This may surprise you but corporations still can’t get married or even vote, but Citizens United signals that change is in the winds and the current activist majority of the Supreme Court will extend corporations’ rights as soon as the right case gets to them.  This is only fair; as corporations are just like human beings, well, except for the fact they have lots more money, which as Justice Scalia and company would agree – makes them better!

In fact, considering that our activist majority basically equates money with speech there is a strong argument that corporations may already be entitled to the right to vote, which certainly isn’t a more important right than speech, you know the First Amendment.   Voting just takes a few minutes at best and most natural persons don’t even bother to do it, but creating and distributing a fallacious political attack add takes hours, maybe days, and certainly is of greater value than the right to vote.  It certainly costs a lot more and it’s all about the money.  So I imagine it’s only a matter of time before SCOTUS gives corporations the right to vote, but how much of a vote should they get?  Well, since SCOTUS thinks money is the same as speech then let’s use that as our standard.  The US median income for a family is about $50,000, and each family has at least one vote, so a company like Wal-Mart should get about 8 million votes and McDonald’s just 450,000 votes.  That’s only fair. 

IBM has been an oppressed person for decades but SCOTUS has given him the same right to say whatever dumb shit he wants just like any natural person.  So keep an eye out for IBM to be posting racist bullshit in blog comments, starting flame wars on forums, and using that hard won freedom of speech just like the rest of us. 

Life has been hard for corporations.  I had a friend who dated a corporation in high school and there was a lot of pressure on them to breakup.  You see corporations can merge with one another, but they can’t marry natural persons.  It’s unfair.  However, they broke up over kids; he wanted them but she didn’t want to settle down when there were still profits to be made.  He’s currently dating a union, but I don’t think he loves her as much as he did the union.  Let’s face it – corporations are just sexier.  Still considering that freedom of speech is perhaps the most sacred of rights in this nation, easily more enshrined than let’s say marriage, it’s easy to see that SCOTUS will obviously extend this right as well to corporations, who really are the same as natural persons, except they have a lot more money.  So I’m confident my friend and his union girlfriend will get married and have little PACs in no time. 

I am so proud of Justices Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas to say what we all know in our hearts: corporations are just as important as living breathing people, because corporations make piles of money.  Corporations give so much to this country; in Walter Reed there are dozens of corporations missing limbs from combat in Iraq and now they have equal First Amendment rights as the other soldiers.  It really warms the heart.  On September 11th the number of corporations that died I think helped bring the country together to agree that corporations should be treated as fully equal citizens.  The sacrifices of corporations, especially since a lot of them have lost a lot of money the last few years, I really think moved SCOTUS to raise corporations up with those other historically oppressed minorities like women and African-Americans.  If Obama can become President, then so can Microsoft - that’s the American dream and I’m glad SCOTUS is making it happen.

The Democratic Party needs to take some lessons from James Cameron’s Avatar if they want to make sure that what happened in Massachusetts stays in Massachusetts.  Avatar has pulled in $1.6 billion with more on the way, won the Golden Globe’s Best Picture award, and is considered a cinematography phenomenon.  Sequels are in the works and James Cameron is once again “King of the World”.  It's 3-D CGI change we can believe in. 

The Democratic Party on the other hand, has lost a special election in Massachusetts over the late Ted Kennedy’s seat and with that its filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, healthcare reform is in the balance (possibly dead), and public opinion towards the Democratic Party is plummeting.  The irony is that at the 2008 election it was Senator Barak Obama and the Democratic Party that were “King of the World” and what a difference two years makes.   

Now the Republicans are claiming that Americans are fed up with the Democrat’s liberal agenda centered on a watered-down healthcare reform bill that is neither liberal nor probably that significant of a reform.  It represented change we can accomplish – which isn’t a catchy slogan.  It’s not liberalism that is bringing down the Democratic Party, but something more insidious – a lack of a message.  The only good news for the democrats is that the Republican Party doesn’t have a message either besides the typical oppositional rhetoric.  However, “the party of no” will always beat the “the party of whatever” and that is why the democrats are going down. 

Avatar had a liberal bent.  No let me rephrase that – Avatar was an angry call for revolution.  The military is evil, capitalism is heartless, scientists are well-meaning but politically ineffectual, and it would all be better if we loved mother earth and ran through the jungles naked.  I’m fairly progressive, some might call me liberal, but Avatar was way out there – it made the Green Party look mainstream.  However, it’s popular and everyone is watching the movie, the only haters are those of us who are picky about our science fiction movies and that transcends politics.  If climate change legislation happens this year it won’t be because of the Democratic Party.  No, it will be because of Avatar and its glow-in-the-dark-computer-like trees.   

Avatar does touch on healthcare - if it wasn't for our horrible healthcare system then Jake Sully wouldn't have had to go to Pandora to earn new legs and the blue-skinned aliens would never have been saved by the white guy.

The Democratic Party has no message and this is why they are struggling.  The message has to come from President Obama and he just hasn’t delivered it to either the American people or the Democratic Party.  It doesn’t matter what the message is as long as it is sparkly and simple enough to resonate.  For Avatar the message was nature good and Republican values bad.  That’s not a bad message.  Healthcare, welfare, and all that stuff deals with people.  When you deal with people you have value judgments.  A homeless person is something unclean and contemptible, but the stray cat or dog evokes pity.  Nature is free of value judgments, we are more generous to other species than we are to our own.  That however is a political reality, but it can be overcome and you can tackle real issues like healthcare IF you have a message, a strong narrative, something to communicate a vision to people.  If you don’t have that then the opposition controls the narrative and all you are doing is trying to hold on to power, which you will definitely lose. 

The only thing that matters in politics is that you stand for something.  Okay it helps if you are good looking and eloquent, but if you don’t stand for something then people can’t pin their hopes to you.  The Democratic Party needs to stop talking about all the problems created by President Bush and tell us what their vision for the United States really is.  Honestly, anything will do as long as there is true commitment to the vision.  If Americans can accept blue-skinned aliens with USB ports in their ass then they will accept anything as long as it represents the Democratic Party standing up for something besides winning more elections. 

So yesterday the Jehovah Witnesses swung through the neighborhood again, and as usual, I politely listened to their pitch and took the magazines they offered.  However, for the first time the two women I was dealing with were rather, well, snarky.  Usually the Jehovah Witnesses are pretty nice and amiable, but these last two annoyed me.  

I mentioned I was Buddhist and that we shared many of the same concerns about declining morality and the like and wished them well.  Usually this gets me off the hook and they move on, but this couple decided to rip into Buddhism and really tried to pitch the whole ‘you need God’ thing as the End Times were coming up quick.  Apparently this group must be using the Mayan Calendar or have been taking the recent rash of apocalyptic movies too much to heart.  

Or it might have been the older white woman who said she had lived in our neighborhood for 40 years and that lately it had gotten a lot worse –in suburban speak this is translated as “minorities are moving into the neighborhood”.  We had the same thing in Gainesville when the old timers freaked out as a middle class black family moved into the neighborhood.  O the terror!  Interestingly, when minorities move into an all white neighborhood it actually raises property values, this is a complicated process and is fed indirectly by racism but it is well documented.  Still we get some snarky racist comment from most of our white neighbors almost every time we talk to them.  Interestingly, at school events I mostly deal with the minorities as they are the younger generation with kids in the neighborhood.  Nice people.  Just like everyone else they are just trying to make a living and give their kids opportunities.  

Anyway back to the Jehovah Witnesses.  They begin by going into the fact that the Buddha was just a man and not a god.  As if I didn’t know that, but I guess the analogy was that as Buddha was just human and as Jesus was the half-God adopted son of Joseph then clearly Jesus had to be superior.  It felt like I was trapped in one of those ‘Whose Better Captain Kirk or Captain Picard?’ discussions (obviously, Picard) – of course religion was the first fandom.  I’ll give you that Jesus was pretty cool.  He could walk on water, conjure up food, heal people, bring people back from the dead, even brought himself back from the dead, gave some great sermons, and kicked some moneylender ass.  But come on.  The Buddha would lay the smack down on the Virgin-Spawn…or probably not as they were both pacifists.  Most likely they would just sigh and complain to each other about their idiot followers, starting with Ananda and Peter and then moving right down to their most wacky sects today.  There would be some laughs, some tears, but definitely no smack down.  Personally, I’m a fan of both of them, I’m just not too keen on some of their followers, but I’m pretty confident they would agree with me on that point.  

Anyway, back to the Jehovah Witnesses, they then go into this malarkey about how we need the Creator, i.e. God to take us up to Heaven when the End Times come.  What the hell? Literally, I guess.  So they did ask me a question – who created everything if not God?  Apparently, this is one of the retorts they must be taught to deal with us wacky Buddhists; we’re like atheists but with cooler stories.  So I responded with ‘why do you need to have a beginning?’  They kind of ignored my point and I didn’t really want to push it, but it is the question – why do we need a beginning or really an end?  

Humans are very linear creatures we have this need for beginnings and ends, but as Yoda would say “All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was”. The Jehovah Witnesses seem to believe the End is coming and they are trying to get everyone to the lifeboats.  In a way, it’s a noble concept.  It’s far better than the right wing nutjobs in this country who are stockpiling weapons and getting ready for the revolution, because a black guy was elected President.  I’ll come out and say it – 75% of the opposition to President Obama is fueled by racism.  It’s all the same thing.  They all believe End Times are coming; maybe the end of the world, maybe the end of America, but the end is coming.  Both groups are the same – instead of focusing on the here and now they just want things to end so they can have a new beginning.  I’ll be blunt – they are all morons!

Beginnings and ends are states of mind.  If you have a problem with society then try to change it, make today your new beginning, but if you are waiting for God to come take you up to Heaven to escape all the problems in the world then in the words of Malcolm Reynolds, “that's a long wait for a train don't come.”  

I’ve never been a believer in God, probably since middle school, maybe earlier; it just didn’t make any sense why some omnipotent being would give a rat’s ass about a group of humans just because they worshipped him.  Maybe there is a God, I don’t know, it’s possible, but it’s not possible that his standard for promotion is simply belief.  Humans will believe anything.  No, I think the truth is that if there is a God he only helps those who help themselves, because that’s the person with vision.  

Take this joke told by a Russian space scientist to an American space scientist:

What is the difference between a realist and a dreamer?

The realist thinks that someday a UFO will come down and hover over the UN building, and that the aliens will come out of the UFO and offer to share their technology and solve all our world's problems.

The dreamer thinks maybe we can get our act together and do it ourselves.

We are starting the second draft of our novel!  While we are still waiting for some of our readers to give us feedback we got enough from two readers to chart our path for a major rewrite of the novel.  Basically, we are giving the characters more to do, adding a little more complexity to the story arc, reducing the points of view, and generally adding to the novel.  To be honest, we were pretty conservative in how we wrote the first draft, which was too tight of a story.  Our goal is to have it finished before Christmas, which is quite doable once we get back into the writing.  I'm not going to go into any specific details about the novel at this time, but I am nearly 100% certain we are going to get it published. Actually, I am 100% confident, because if we can't find a publisher we'll self-publish.  I think this absolute faith in your book is critical to one's success as an author.  You have to believe in yourbook.  We are already ahead of 99% of the people out there who have tried to write a book, because we finished our first draft.

So some things we have learned thus far.  We work well as a team.  Yes, we have argued and disagreed about a few things, but it helps that we both have very similar likes and dislikes when it comes to character and story development.  Working together also gives us a pretty fast work pace, it took us 40 days to write the first draft and it was pretty well written. Neither of could have finished a novel alone, but together it was fun and relatively painless.  It is also important to trust your instincts.  That's key.  I think the biggest problem with the first draft was that we were overly cautious with some things we both wanted in the story.  The second draft is looking far less constrained with many things and we think it will make a far better story.  It goes back to that absolute faith in what you are writing.  Finally, the one advice you always hear, and it's good advice - use all your best stuff.  We did hold back a little on the first draft stupidly thinking about sequels, but you need to pour all you got into the book you are working on now.  I imagine it's the same with movies and television shows, at least it should be. 

Anyway, I will keep posting updates and will blog when we finish the second draft, which is probably going to be our final version though no doubt we will need to do some editting and corrections to it.

Michelle sent me an interesting little news clip about World of Warcraft and its scope, both as a company and as a mechanism for roleplaying.  It?s fascinating and shows the sheer immensity offered by MMORPGs and it raises the question: how can tabletop GMs compete with this?  Sure companies like WotC and Paizo can fight over the crumbs that constitute the tabletop RPG market, but World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs are the principle competitors for every GM out there who wants to run a campaign.  How can we hope to compete with 40,000 NPCs and over 7500 quests? 

Obviously we can?t beat MMORPGs in quantity; you don?t have 4000 people to help you design your adventures and campaigns.  We might or might not be able to beat them in quality, honestly, this isn?t a given and in a lot of cases our adventures and encounters aren?t as good as MMORPGs. Most of us can provide a visual aid in the form of cheap miniatures or a hand drawn map, but that is really rather pathetic compared to the competition.  This is a lopsided fight so we have to be innovative and here are five tips for us tabletop GMs to even the odds with MMORPGs:

#5. Provide food.  Video games might have virtual meals that restore hit points, but you can provide genuine sustenance to your players to keep them alive in the real world.  

#4. Get off the tracks.  Video games are tracked, even the most expansive ones, but a tabletop campaign is only limited by the imagination of the GM.  

#3. Read the audience.  Video games can be well scripted, brilliantly so, but the tabletop GM can counter this by reading his group and adjusting the game on the fly.  

#2. Fudge.  Video games are all about the numbers, but with tabletop the GM can ignore the damn numbers to change an outcome to improve the game.  

#1. Keep it unique.  Unlike MMORPGs your campaign is unique, well unless you run published adventures, but the uniqueness is what really separates tabletop from MMORPGs.  

This is the challenge of our generation of tabletop GMs ? how do we compete against MMORPGs?  Sure I?m being a little humorous about it, but this is a real issue.  I?ve lost players to MMORPGs and so has every GM.  So to fight this rising tide of digital competition to our campaigns and groups ? what other suggestions do you have?

As one would guess from the lack of activity – I’ve been busy. Partly the kids being back in school and partly a very aggressive roleplaying blitz. I’ve restarted my famous West Pacific Supers play-by-post campaign and have seven players living it up as celebrity superheroes. I’m also starting in October a weekly chat-based Pathfinder campaign on Wednesday nights from 8 to 10 pm, if interested post so here. I already have two players and a few tentative players so should have enough to make it work. Autumn is always a time of new beginnings, mainly due to how the US school year is organized, but it has rejuvenated me to launch these campaigns, which should go well into 2010. 2010…wow, time is flying.  

The website will be getting a few more adventure outlines from a competition wrapping up on the forums Monday and there are some new maps, with more on the way in coming weeks. From book to roleplaying the website is sort of in a standby mode, but the wiki is booming, mainly due to Michelle, though we may close some sections off to wiki members. Still debating that issue.  

Yes, lots in politics and movies to ramble about, but haven't had much time to focus on a specific issue.  Maybe next week, we'll see.  

Also still haven't run Faery's Tale adventure with kids, sort of dreading it a little, but will force myself to do it this weekend if we have time. 

I haven't played D&D in years, but I just got the Pathfinder RPG rules and it has put me in the mood to start up a new campaign.  However, before starting a campaign you need a campaign setting - which is the imaginary world where the campaign will take place.  Now Pathfinder has its Golarion setting and there are other published settings like the Forgotten Realms, but I have always been a fan of creating my own campaign settings.  I could use one of my old settings like Nor-Kaeda, but I think it is time to create an entirely new setting that incorporates some of the lessons I have learned over the years in designing settings.  Hopefully, I'll be blogging about this more as I progress, but before anyone tries designing a campaign setting they need to ask themselves the following questions:  

1. What is the flavor and style of your campaign? If you are trying for something akin to Arabian Nights then you need to avoid borrowing too heavily from Lord of the Rings.  Many published settings are 'kitchen sink' settings as they cover a lot of different flavors and styles, but for your own setting it is best to keep in mind what you want and try to hit that as closely as possible.  Related to this is the sophistication of the setting's societies from technology to gender/racial relations to forms of government.  For example, Conan the Barbarian has a very different feel than Harry Potter and a lot of it flows from the differences in the two respective societies.  
2. What is the scope of the campaign? Will your PCs be traversing the globe or will they be operating in a small geographic locations?  The common advice for beginning GMs is to begin local and slowly go global as the campaign progresses.  I think this is good advice, though my approach is pretty much the reverse, but that's because I have done this lots of times before. Scope also equal work.  The bigger the scope the more work you will have when you design the setting so be mindful of your time limits and don't bite off more than you can chew. 
3. What are the conflicts and challenges in the world? You need conflicts and you need challenges for the PCs to overcome.  An utopian world doesn't work - it's boring and dreary, but on the other hand a bleak world of constant terror and hopelessness is just as bad in the other direction.  You need a balance, but err on the side of more bad guys as you always want plenty of challening opposition for your PCs.  The heroism of your PCs is determined by the challenges they face, always keep that in mind.  Also note that conflict comes in many forms besides combat/war, religious tensions, economic disputes, scarcity of resources, racial emnity, and political struggles are all great conflicts - in many ways moral is always more engaging than martial.  
4. What are the stories and goals available to the PCs? Let me be blunt - can your PCs change the world? If the answer is yes then the next question is how much can they change the world? However, to answer this you need to know what place the PCs can hold in the world.  Can PCs be nobles? Must they be heroes or can they be villains? Are they supposed to serve the king or are they supposed to become the king? A setting only works if it can produce adventures, lots of adventures, so by this stage of the thought process you should be able to come up with a dozen adventures easily.  If you can't do that then there is a problem with the setting. 
5. What are your sources? Listen, there is little original work in the world, everything is a remake or inspired by something else.  Use the sources that are out there from published settings to books to history.  If you wan an exotic culture in your setting then pop open an anthropology book, because there is nothing weirder than reality.  Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and look to the real world for inspiration.  

That is enough for now, but I'll probably blog some more as I move through this process. 

The process of writing a novel has slowed down my play-by-post campaigns and updates to the website the last two months, but I did finally replace the old campaign wiki with a more usable version from wikispaces.  This should be infinitely more usable for the members of the community to record information for their campaigns and characters.  Beyond this I've only did some fiddling here and there on the website, but nothing too significant. 

So what's the plan for the rest of the year?

In September we will have another Adventure Synopsis competition on the forums and we'll also be rebooting the Directed Discussions, but extending them to three week discussions.  I'm also going to start really pushing to expand the membership of the forums to build up a little more mass for more roleplaying opportunities.

In October there will be the second annual Blue Moon Awards and also Aurora Con. 

In November I will probably be trying to move some campaigns to conclusion before the December/January hiatus.  I intend to wrap up most duets and West Pacific Supers, but will keep Rifts going into 2010.  We'll also have another Adventure Synopsis competition, the last for the year. 

As usual things will die down around December/January, but I'm already thinking about my campaigns for 2010.  Here is the list I am currently kicking around and as some of them will require a few months to set up I am tossing them out for feedback now:

Apotheosis

I have learned a lot with my divine duets.  I actually think this is a very cool idea, but I need to tweak the rules and the setting.  However, I do intend on running a revised version of the campaign in 2010. The PCs will be more powerful and things will be a lot clearer about the setting and the rules.  I might keep this in duet format as that has worked very well. 

Mouse Guard

This will be a one-shot campaign to run for a few months. The PCs will play mice with sword defending the Mouse Territories.  It's a fun RPG and actually a good fit for play-by-post.  If there isn't enough interest at Blue MoonAurora I will probably run it off-site. 

Nesyr Crusades

My big campaign next year will be the Nesyr Crusades, which will use the Pathfinder RPG rules. It will be my first real fantasy campaign by play-by-post and reallymy first real fantasy campaign in years. I can guarantee the awesome and there will probably be chat sessions forthis campaign to keep things moving. This will be my cornerstone campaign for 2010, well, if I have playersfor it.

Rifts

I intend to keep my current Rifts campaign running into 2010.  Have lots of ideas and it's a fun group of PCs, well, as long as they survive the Demon of Canal Town.   

Super League

I am working on the idea of running a campaign where players run the team presidentsand manage superhero teams.  They willrecruit their superheroes make their picks at the Super Draft and navigate a host of challenges during the Season on their way to dominating, or not, their Conference.  I have most of the mechanics already worked out and this will be my West Pacific Supers campaign for 2010.  It should be a lot of fun and anice twist on the setting. 

To Boldly Go...

I intend to keep running this ICON Star Trek campaign on Crazy Monkey's Asylum for acomplete run of six adventures (nearly finished with the first one), which willprobably take most of 2010 to complete. 

Thoughts and feedback are welcome, but that is the plan for fall and my 2010campaigns. 

There are two common pieces of advice for success with writing: write what you know and just write. Michelle and I have finished our first draft of a 99,000 word novel and we did it in about a month and a half. We split the writing and worked together on the story and that helped motivate us to keep pushing through. We plan on revising and improving it for the rest of August and then send it off to a few friends and family for feedback. Who knows what will come of it, but it was a lot of fun and we?ll give it a year or so to try to get it published before we publish it ourselves or something. We?ve already started mapping out a sequel as we enjoyed writing the first novel so much. I?m not going to give specific information about the novel, but will blog here as things progress.  

On another front, this Monday my first in a monthly series of columns will be popping up on RPGNet. The columns will be about duet roleplaying, one player and one GM, and I?ve even got a discussion forum over on RPGNet to support the columns when they go live. I have the first three columns written so am covered for August, September, and October. I?m planning on in September working on the next three columns. The first three deal with the basics of duet campaigns, how to balance things for only having a single PC, and how to create duet side adventures for a group campaign. Good stuff, but if you have any suggestions for future articles you say so in the comments.  

I?ve also ended my D6 Star Wars PBP campaign on the WotC forums to focus on my campaigns on Blue Moon Aurora and Crazy Monkey?s Asylum and after the craziness of August will kick those campaigns into gear in September. Added to this will be the family Faery?s Tale campaign which will start in earnest this Sunday, once again look to this blog for updates on that experiment in roleplaying. I may also be returning to fantasy in September maybe with a Pathfinder RPG PBP on the Blue Moon Aurora forums.  

Life is good and I?ve been feeling really productive and focused of late, and I intend to write, write, write for the rest of the year to end 2009 on a high note. 

Sunday night during dinner I drew up the kids and Michelle’s characters for our Faery’s Tale campaign by asking them questions. In the next few days they have to come up with a name and draw a picture of their fairy, but here is the mechanical information thus far: 

Alina is playing a pixie with the gifts of acrobat, agile, flying, musical, and pixie dust. Her attributes are Body 2, Mind 2, and Spirit 5.  

Anton is playing a brownie with the gifts of clever, hardy, household magic, invisibility, and seer. His attributes are Body 2, Mind 3, and Spirit 4. 

Michelle is playing a sprite with the gifts of alert, animal companion (dragonfly), champion, and whirlwind strike. Her attributes are Body 5, Mind 3, and Spirit 1.  

So the plan is for the kids and Michelle to come up with names and a picture and I will start off the campaign this Sunday with the first adventure. Thus I need to come up with a setting and probably draw up a map, both of which I’ll post here to show the process of running a campaign.  If I'm so inclined I may scan in the pictures everyone draws to put up in a blog.