Quick recap plus a core sample

[jazzfish]

Mm. Three weeks, and that one not terribly interesting anyway. I've been a bit busy.

I went to the beach the weekend after Valentine's, and hung out with my parents, my aunt Susan, and uilos. It was good to have a chance to not do much, but it reinforced my idea that vacation and family don't really mix. Good to know for future reference.

The weekend after uilos and I headed down to Blacksburg for an actual vacation. We played games, ate dinner at Zeppoli's, enjoyed the mountains, and in general had a really good time. I wouldn't want to live in B'burg again, but I do miss some of the people, and the gaming with good friends. And Zeppoli's.

I've started playing in not one but two RPGs. The Compleat Strategist is hosting a Burning Empires game, which is three parts neat space opera about body-snatching aliens invading a planet (which we build during character creation) to one part adversarial strategy game. The GM is actively playing /against/ the players. I'm not sure what I think of it. I'm in the interesting situation where what my character wants is in line with what the GM wants. So, until I know that these body-snatching aliens are actually trying to take over the planet, I'm kind of stuck with destabilizing it and severing its ties with one empire in preparation to having it taken over by another. That part's kind of frustrating. Other than that, I'm having fun. I don't think I've ever gotten a chance to play a subtle political manipulator before. It's a trip.

The system has a fairly complex and gamey mechanic for dealing with firefights and "duels of wits." Essentially, you plan out what you're going to do for three rounds, and then figure out how that affects the combat scene or the argument (and how it's affected by the other party's choices) and roll dice. I've (thankfully) not gotten into a real fight, but the duel of wits mechanic works well. It's slow, though, and people who aren't involved may well feel kind of left out. (To the left, it makes it easier for those without mad fast-talking skills in real life to fake them without resorting to "oh, I just roll it.") So: I like it, I think, but I don't think I'd want to use it myself. I tend towards the rules-lighter games in any event.

The other game I'm involved in just started up last night. It's scraun23's 2001 game. We're cavemen. (Well, I'm a caveman, the rest are cavewomen. Close enough.) We've got all the normal cavepesron skills like fire-starting and gathering and spear-use. After last session we also all have Nanotech Manipulation. This promises to be interesting.

And I don't know how interesting this will actually be to anyone, but it seems like a neat idea. I've taken a core sample of my bookshelves and am posting it here. What this means is that I've taen the tenth book on each (fiction) shelf and written a bit about it. The result is a pretty random selection of what I've got, and will (I hope) be at the very least entertaining.

1. Robert Graves, The White Goddess. Cracktastic examination of the theory that the Celts are descendents of the ancient Greeks. No, really. There's a reason I file this in Fiction.
   
2. Lloyd Alexander, The Illyrian Adventure. Vesper Holly is the apotheosis of the generic Alexandrine heroine. I love these books, as much for the poor benighted narrator as for Vesper herself.
   
3. John Bellairs, The Best of John Bellairs. The three Lewis Barnavelt books in one volume. The first one (The House with a Clock in the Walls) is illustrated by Edward Gorey, and is also a really good read. The other two are alright.
   
4. Steven Brust, To Reign in Hell. SteelDragon Press edition, signed by Brust and illustrator Kathy Marschall ("Kathana e'Marish'Chala"). I think this is the single most expensive book I own.
   
5. Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall. Beautiful, heartbreaking, and incomparably complex. I adore this book. I wish Carter would write more, dammit.
   
6. Samuel R. Delany, Neveryòna. I read this for F&SF with Zaldivar. I can't recall a thing about it, other than that it was a) good and b) difficult.
   
7. Fydor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. A gift from my late grandmother, one of four or five things I own that I can trace back to her. I should read this.
   
8. George Alec Effinger, Irrational Numbers. Short stories by the author of the Budayeen books. They're alright; not great, worth reading once. Darker than I'd expected, in a vicious way.
   
9. Frederick Forsyth, Avenger. Forsyth has written some of my favorite spy novels (Day of the Jackal, The Deceiver). I picked this one up cheap for when I feel the need to read another spy novel, but the jacket copy never really drew me in.
   
10. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War. I bet this would make an interesting counterpart to Scalzi's Old Man's War. I should reread it.
    
11. Franz Kafka, The Trial. Mm, tasty tasty existentialism, with a hefty dose of the absurd. Good stuff.
    
12. Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea. In which Le Guin goes all Tolkien (Christopher) on Earthsea. I loved this book. Your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for backstory that doesn't pretend to be anything but.
    
13. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase. By the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (that's one book title). On my to-read list, towards the middle.
    
14. Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester. A wonderful Christmas story, with such amazing cadences for reading aloud! "In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets . . ."
    
15. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Pop's copy, along with the rest. I'll read them when number seven comes out. I guess I'm sort of obligated to /buy/ seven in hardback now, though.
    
16. Robert Silverberg, Kingdoms of the Wall. Why do I still have this? It was only okay, and I doubt I'll ever be seized with the desire to reread it. One never knows, I guess.
    
17. Amy Thomson, Storyteller. This looks really cool, and is on my list immediately following my next bout of Gene Wolfe, which is next.
    
18. Vernor Vinge, The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. I rescued this from the returns cart at Walden's one day. I'm glad I did. Some nifty stuff in there.
    
19. Gene Wolfe, Sword and Citadel. New Sun part two. I'm not sure what there is to say about these, other than that you should read them.
    
20. Roger Zelazny, Jack of Shadows. The book that taught me that stories end when they need to, not when I want them to. Best closing line in literature.

Comments

[jadelennox]

Raphael Carter has completely disappeared, though zie appears to still exist, as far as pameladean seems to show. Sucks. And I adore Bellairs. I prefer This Immortal to Jack of Shadows, though.

[jazzfish]

*icon lurve*

I envy Pamela Dean. Well, for lots of things I envy her, but in this specific case for the chance to hear from Raphael.

. . . oh, you're right-- I'd forgotten the incredibly classy ending of This Immortal. Jack had more of an impact on me at the time, though, with the shocking idea that yeah, that was all there was to the story, it didn't matter what happened next despite the cliff-hanger-ness. (heh.)

[vt-andros.livejournal.com]

It was great having you down here, Tucker. If you can come down, the next Game Day's on the 17th.

[jazzfish]

Thanks. It was good to be there. I won't be down on the 17th but I'm keeping an eye on the calendar and may wander down some other time. Tcon is still a possibility as well.

[absolutliz.livejournal.com]

God, I miss Zeppoli's too...especially when Al used to cook there, and he would make the cajun chicken alfredo extra spicy.

[jazzfish]

There are about four things I miss from B'burg: the Lyric, the gaming, the landscape, and Zeppolis. Mmm, cajun alfredo.

[mneme]

There's a lot of push to have player-level competition in the Indie RPG scene -- Polaris progresses toward the eventual endpoint of the story via oppositional moments; Capes is all about sucking other players into conflicts that they care about more than you do and opposing them (not necessarily successfully) there; My Life With Master and With Great Power have the GM, playing the bad guys, genuinely opposing the PCs, with the built in story curve making sure that -eventually- the players (and thereby the PCs) will have the upper hand.

That said, I, personally, am more interested in more collaborative mechanics, even for opposition -- like the in-playtest First Quest's idea (building on The Shadows of Yesterday's Keys) of having players set up ways in which they and the players that engage them get rewarded for same, whether it's via providing resistance or something else.

I haven't played Burning Wheel (or its sequel/followup game, Burning Empires).

[jazzfish]

In my Copious Free Time I plan on taking a closer look at the indie scene. Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of theory I'm a pretty serious narrativist (heck, my first real GM experience was with _Amber_, for pete's sake), and it seems like that's the place to go for that kind of game.

BW/BE are interesting but they're more number-heavy than I like. I wouldn't want to run them myself. They're okay to play, I guess.

[mneme]

It's worth looking at the games (also, while drowned out a bit by Lisa's game reports, my postings to our labcats blog are pretty indie (actually, so are drcpunk's)) -- -many- of them are more crunchy than I prefer, but at least the crunch has an actual purpose, and there are a lot of good ideas hiding there.

There are a variety of really good indie blogs on lj -- many of which by very cool/sensible people, like the_tall_man and jhkimrpg.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

Belonging to a book club has seriously curtailed my own book-reading agenda. I love the social aspect, but I would really like to have more time to dig into my own backlog. Not sure what to do. My crossword obsession also isn't helping.

[jazzfish]

Yeah. I keep meaning to get into the book club and thinking "eh, maybe next book." If y'all had gone ahead with _Hard-Boiled Wonderland_ or _Lot 49_ I'd totally be there. Except for how I think I'm out of town during the next meeting, so, nevermind.

[rbandrews]

Have you ever read Forever Peace and Forever Free? They are sequels, sorta. I found them at a gun show (weirdly enough), but haven't read them yet.

Loved the Roomba thing too. : )

[jazzfish]

I haven't, actually. I didn't even realise there /was/ a Forever Free. I should read those as well.

You, on the other hand, should really seriously read Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Review by Ken Hite here; pull quote from review: "More interesting is the Heinlein-like brusque exposure-adjustment-expansion structure ("man encounters strange thing; man deals with strange thing; man encounters stranger thing; repeat until novel ends") . . . . Part of this works because unlike the eerily mature and articulate young narrators of many Heinlein novels, our protagonist is 75 years old." Good stuff, and quick, too.

[rbandrews]

Okay, you've sold me. I was looking at it anyway.

[selki.livejournal.com]

1) The Graves sounds fun. I enjoyed another book by him, Homer's Daughter (http://www.librarything.com/work/89095) (not actually about Homer or his daughter, but there is a funny bit where the heroine parodies The Illiad). Good golly, I just saw that Graves has a book about Belisarius (I liked a lot of the Drake-Flint Belisarius series, though I'd have edited differently). Cool!
And now I have to read Robert Graves and the White Goddess (http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Graves-White-Goddess-1940-1985/dp/0297815342/ref=sr_1_3/102-3052244-7153761?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173451232&sr=8-3) (his nephew's biography, volume 3): "There are also amusing vignettes such as Graves' introducing J.R.R. Tolkien to Ava Gardner when neither one had ever heard of the other."

13) I liked H-BWATEOTW, and some of his short stories, but not others. Been thinking of reading WSC or Dance Dance Dance.

[jazzfish]

_White Goddess_ contains nifty ideas and is decently written, but there are moments where I kept saying "No, no, /no/." These moments occurred roughly every fourth page. A good read if you can treat it as fiction, or maybe as the work of a crackpot.

I had a book of Murakami's short stories at one point. I recall being underwhelmed, but not why. Hard-Boiled Wonderland, though, is fantastic.

[selki.livejournal.com]

By the way... interesting jump from cavemen to nanotech manipulation (?!). What game system (GURPS, Savage World, D&D, ...)? Or is 2001 its own game system?

7. Brothers Karamazov: some good thought-provoking passages, but I just don't seem to care for Dostoevsky characters.

10, 13. I've been thinking I should read Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase and then Scalzi's The Android's Dream. Or vice versa.

[jazzfish]

It's GURPS. Not my favorite of systems for any number of reasons, but I'm learning that as long as I don't have to run it I don't care all that much about the system.