here are some things
Sep. 21st, 2013 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishBecause I feel better when I'm talking and writing about my life.
Media. Currently halfway (4/10) through season 5 of The Wire. So far this season can be summed up as "Marlo kills everyone while Jimmy descends into farce." I have Thoughts on this series but they'll keep until we finish it off. It is, as expected, still Very Very Good.
Rereading Wolfe's Long Sun. I keep rolling my eyes at some of the excesses and improbable characterisations, and then reminding myself that, as someone else said, Long Sun is 'Patera Silk fanfic written by Horn and Nettle.' I think I will be less annoyed by the Big Reveal at the end of the series (the inhumi) than I was on first reading, because I think I can see bits of where he's building up to it.
Gaming. Finished my Apocalypse World campaign last week. The ending came a bit more abruptly than I would have liked; another 3-4 sessions would have been good. Overall a success, though. I seem to have reined in my tendency to Keep Adding More Stuff.
One thing I love about Apocalypse World: the GM never rolls the dice. The players roll at times, when it's useful to have a bit of uncertainty or suspense, but the GM just reacts to the players' rolls. This is perfect for me. Randomness is for my players; I want control to shape the story they're living through.
As far as Stuff... for years I've said "I just make it all up as I go." I've been thinking about that in light of this campaign, and it's not entirely true. I started out with two separate ideas, but they were story ideas, not just setting elements. ('An alien invasion fractures the world's psyche' leads to a resolution involving the aliens; 'personified fragments of the collective unconscious battling in a god-game' leads to, well, all kinds of things, but paired with the alien invasion leads to 'the fragments fighting the aliens.') Everything I just made up (the specifics of the fragments, the character of the various regions, the weird things that turned up) was in service of one of those two elements. It worked well.
In my best games (this, the Amber game I ran for Vond's departure, the abortive Changeling game) I have a direction to channel all the stuff I'm making up and throwing in. Contrariwise, when I've just been flailing around (Technoir, or the first half of the Over the Edge game in McLean) the game suffers: the players flail around too, everything feels thin and disjointed, etc etc. Useful to have something to build towards. Will bear that in mind for my next game.
I am pretty sure this applies to writing as well. The stories I'm happiest with, I've written most of while knowing how they end. I think that's why I keep wanting to sit down and rough out a plot for the blood-mage thing, instead of just writing and seeing where it takes me. I'll try that when I sit down with it next.
Next weekend we head for Montreal and Farthing Party. I am more surprised than I ought to be to discover that more than half of my VP teachers will be there. (Yay!)
By then I'm hoping to have Memory ready for beta-readers, if not on submission. That way I can at least feel like I've been doing something with my time.
Media. Currently halfway (4/10) through season 5 of The Wire. So far this season can be summed up as "Marlo kills everyone while Jimmy descends into farce." I have Thoughts on this series but they'll keep until we finish it off. It is, as expected, still Very Very Good.
Rereading Wolfe's Long Sun. I keep rolling my eyes at some of the excesses and improbable characterisations, and then reminding myself that, as someone else said, Long Sun is 'Patera Silk fanfic written by Horn and Nettle.' I think I will be less annoyed by the Big Reveal at the end of the series (the inhumi) than I was on first reading, because I think I can see bits of where he's building up to it.
Gaming. Finished my Apocalypse World campaign last week. The ending came a bit more abruptly than I would have liked; another 3-4 sessions would have been good. Overall a success, though. I seem to have reined in my tendency to Keep Adding More Stuff.
One thing I love about Apocalypse World: the GM never rolls the dice. The players roll at times, when it's useful to have a bit of uncertainty or suspense, but the GM just reacts to the players' rolls. This is perfect for me. Randomness is for my players; I want control to shape the story they're living through.
As far as Stuff... for years I've said "I just make it all up as I go." I've been thinking about that in light of this campaign, and it's not entirely true. I started out with two separate ideas, but they were story ideas, not just setting elements. ('An alien invasion fractures the world's psyche' leads to a resolution involving the aliens; 'personified fragments of the collective unconscious battling in a god-game' leads to, well, all kinds of things, but paired with the alien invasion leads to 'the fragments fighting the aliens.') Everything I just made up (the specifics of the fragments, the character of the various regions, the weird things that turned up) was in service of one of those two elements. It worked well.
In my best games (this, the Amber game I ran for Vond's departure, the abortive Changeling game) I have a direction to channel all the stuff I'm making up and throwing in. Contrariwise, when I've just been flailing around (Technoir, or the first half of the Over the Edge game in McLean) the game suffers: the players flail around too, everything feels thin and disjointed, etc etc. Useful to have something to build towards. Will bear that in mind for my next game.
I am pretty sure this applies to writing as well. The stories I'm happiest with, I've written most of while knowing how they end. I think that's why I keep wanting to sit down and rough out a plot for the blood-mage thing, instead of just writing and seeing where it takes me. I'll try that when I sit down with it next.
Next weekend we head for Montreal and Farthing Party. I am more surprised than I ought to be to discover that more than half of my VP teachers will be there. (Yay!)
By then I'm hoping to have Memory ready for beta-readers, if not on submission. That way I can at least feel like I've been doing something with my time.