_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 023

Synthesis & Synchronicity #23

This originally started as a Lammas column (Aug 2nd) but somewhere along the line I failed to keep up my writing discipline and get it written and up on the website. You have my apologies, and must now suffer thru the various bits and pieces of whats been going on.

I've done a bit more reading in the interrum, as the luggage and links shows, and stopped waiting for Kiralee and Cindy to watch some of the DVDs we've picked up in the past year or so that require more than the 1-2 hours we get to view things together (mostly because of Kiralee's schedule).

Robert Rankin continues to amuse me as a writer, in a twisted Robert-Anton-Wilson Fiction kind of way. This is the start of a three book series, referred to as the Armageddon Quartet (its an in-joke), and I picked up all 3 at once to ensure access. Next up after these will be getting his Brentford Trilogy - a set of 5 books (More in-joke on his part).

The Artemis Fowl book is an experiment, its the first of a series that is perceived by many as a competitor to the Harry Potter Books..... if Harry Potter was the son of an Irish Crime Boss and suddenly put in charge of his crime empire because his dad disappeared and his mother had gone into reality withdrawl. The first book involves a plan of his to gain the power and treasure of the Faeries of Legend, and is a rather interesting mix of characters and plot. Not bad for what is technically a children/teens book. Word is out there is a movie deal in the works for the series. After Kiralee reads them we'll decide whether to send them off to one of our Nephews as a gift, like we did with our great mounds of Dr Who novels in previous months.

Puzzlebox : Greg and I had a discussion about the problems with his Puzzlebox campaign, after his reading my previous writing about it here in my columns. Thru his expanded awareness of my problems with the game, he believes that he can adjust future campaign sessions of it so that it won't feel so reactionary and (in my character's case) fruitless in what we can do and effect things in the game. It'll be a while before we return to it, which should give him time to implement changes to make it better. I'm still not a big fan of post-disaster games but will give him some slack and a chance to improve the situation.

Dave's Greenstone campaign continues to be interesting, as we come smack dab into a conspiracy that considers us a threat to their plans. Character development continues, though the mechanics makes some of this a bit annoying (I'm playing the "Versitile Support Mage" which means I have to be able to do lots of little things that enhance other characters in stress situations as well as know/learn information in an investigative way, so my incoming experience does not match the needed areas I have to fill). Part of this is the flat "group experience" system where everyone gets exactly the same number of experience points, presuming that their characters are in attendence, and part is that I joined the campaign a few weeks after everyone else, so I started with less points to develop from. Also, my character, after the previous adventure/case which left her housebound from injuries for over a month, has decided she has to be capable of protecting her self rather then purely depending on others. Combat skills and abilities are expensive, especially when you are a High Intelligence/Low Strength Kind of character. Only one character on the team is lower in physical strength and physical abilities, and that one is desolid 90% of the time (an amorphous black cloud).

The Dept of Things That Go Bump In The Night storyline (Wed group) has finished and was a success. Our absent group member has returned from out of state. An attempt to salvage the future group plans is under way, with two alternating campaigns. One set in Quartermain, but not involving the City Police Guardians but instead being more oriented to Psionics School, and one being a 2nd edition Mage WOD campaign, with some adjustments mechanically. I'm still a bit edgy about the second game, but will give the GM my full cooperation and see what happens. The Mage game will run solo for about 4 weeks, while the Quartermain campaign is being designed and set up (Hero takes more work mechanically then Mage does in some ways, especially when fitting the idea into the existing setting). I'll be working with Jim, the GM, for the Quartermain project on the campaign setup to make it fit into setting with him. After that the current plan is to alternate Mage with Quartermain each week... but the Mage GM has already bowed out of playing in the Quartermain game for various reasons.

The Mage game still worries me, and I did tell the GM I had some reservations about it, but all I can do is wait and see. It feels like she is setting us up for a bait-n-switch starting point, even after I had told her how much I hated that kind of plot in emails (as did others in the group). So I'm crafting my character with some anxiousness in the situation, and with almost zero info about what the campaign will be about (Often a sure sign of a bait and switch). Each of the characters, with one exception (mine and one other) are of different traditions and all at starting point values (Very low power in my mind). We'll have to see how it goes, but it does make me edgy.

Kiralee and I are taking a course in Assertiveness Training at the local community adult education program in Harvard Square for the next month. This is to help expand our ability to communicate with people and deal with some issues we've had with various people in our lives. It's proving informative, and the class is small (10 people) and involves a lot of roleplaying and discussion more than formal structure. The teacher has given the course some 30 times (4 times a year) at center, and we're the first husband and wife combo that she's ever had in a class, so we're proving an experience for her as well.

Assertiveness training is interesting, as we're discovering interesting things about our own personal behaviors and that of the people we interact with. We've come to the conclusion that some of our problems in the past with some "problem" players that used to be in our gaming groups were that they were trapped in an aggressive pattern and could not get out. Aggressive behavior comes from an over-competitive nature, a "Need to Win" mentality, which of course goes counter to the cooperative nature of the sort of roleplaying games that we work with (where we avoid most player vs player kind of plotting and playing style and move towards team efforts and worrying about the survival of the individual as well as the group). The players involved tended to play "loners", outsiders without the ability to work well in a team, and an unwillingness to take share "screen time" in many situations.

Kiralee thinks that I have a tendency to go the entire spectrum (Passive/Assertive/Aggressive) when dealing with people, being more Aggressive when dealing with folks when writing and more Passive when dealing with them in person (except when GMing, when I guess I'm in the middle ground of Assertive most of the time). The trick with me is that I am often the type who holds back and piles my emotional reactions up inside and then build to a boil.... which often comes out in my writing rather than in face to face confrontation.

The Condo will be the subject of a big meeting on Monday with the other owners, and which may have some interesting twists on the Big Dig in our basement. They finally found a copy of the original building blueprints (from 1986 when the building went condo) and it appears that we've been doing things with some false assumptions in design.... such as except for a common area the entire basement appears to have been deeded at that time to the 1st Floor, not divided up evenly between the 3 units. And the Roof is listed as for "Sole Use of the 3rd Floor Unit". Which I find legally odd - can you assign ownership of a roof to one unit in a condo building? We also got the transcript from the July zoning board hearing, and discovered the "who voted for what" info was recorded wrong (although the actual vote tally was correct) on getting the work turned down.

Our wash machine is out until Tuesday, when Sears is supposed to come repair it under warranty, as it just gets stuck in the wash cycle. I wonder if we're going to have problems with folks running out of clothes before then.

I managed to miss Yoga this week and last, the first because of a dentist appointment (Cleaning) and the second because of the weather. I am so glad that we avoided yesterday's big Eastern Seaboard power outage. Life has been too hectic already.

Arisia has sent out the first prelimary mailing to us to get us all to be involved again this year as panelists. Last year I was a bit disappointed because I did nothing but sit on panels really.... almost everything I was interested in was scheduled opposite the panels I was sitting on, a very frustraing situation. So I'm notg sure if I should just skip this year (like I did the year before) and concentrate on Vericon and other things going on.

Computer Stuff: We're still in a holding pattern regarding Cindy's computer and getting the cd drive repaired. Evidently HP got a run of bad drives from their supplier, which has caused a number of people to have the same problem (the drives evidently over spin their listed speeds when they overheat, causing the disk shattering problem etc.) they are scrambling around to get new drives without the problem, and thus not shipping them to repair centers until they have enough to cover all the reported incidences. Which means we enter into week 5 on monday with cindy's machine.... the first 3 of which it spent at the Microcenter waiting for HP to recognize that it existed and put it in the que for the part. And of course this means I have to keep calling to find out if the part has finally come in so I can rush the machine to them.

Meanwhile she awaits, finally, her replacement Morrowind game (the one that broke). She ended up having to send them a $10 money order with the bits, since we 1) Didn't have an entire disk to return to be replaced and 2) They delayed giving her an RMA number until AFTER the initial 90 days form when she bought the disk, the normal 'free' return/replace period of their warranty.... they basically hemmed and hawed for a month on her about a replacement so she had to send along the check. A nasty bit of a game on their part, but not much she can do, since she really likes the game and wanted a replacement.

Morrowind is definitely one of the best CRPGs (Computer Pseudo-Roleplaying Games) out there, though still too combat oriented and with rather simple "go festch this or go kill so and so" kind of quests. Still there is a lot more to it than most, and the expansions add quite a bit of interesting challenges to deal with. The magic system could use some work, and it still suffers from a class design mentality (D&D leftovers in design concept).

I sort of stole part of today to get caught up on the various writing projects I have sitting over my head. I ran off to the Starbucks for a couple of hours (running down one battery for my notebook pc) and am finishing with my lunch at the Asgard Resteraunt on Mass Ave. (as my cash supply for the week has run out, and they take credit cards). Lately housework and other responsibilities have been eating into far too much of my 'free time'. It could be worse, I could be a corporate drone....

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.....

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