_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 024

Synthesis & Synchronicity #24

Health: I'm now on day 5 of a "personal detox" process to deal with my body's needs. I've been doing detoxication herbal tea mixes, increased my exercise regime, and spending a bit less time at the keyboard and away from the media as a mental detox as well. Lots of vitamin water, balance bar breakfasts and meandering about Cambridge on long walks all works into this (as well as some yoga etc.)

So far its leading to a lot more trips to the bathroom (an expected side effect as my body flushes out all the water its been retaining, clears out the excess salt levels and generally flushes out the toxins as well. I've been feeling more tired at night, but I suspect thats irritated allergies (it makes no sense to be poping the allergy pills while doing this) and the extra exercise and reduced body fuel intake going on.

Still, presuming I keep it up for the next couple of weeks, it should start feeling better after that.... I hope. I can't deal with reduced energy levels forever - what good is improved health if it leaves you exhausted?

Book Note: Just a quick comment on my book list and the last book on that list, Spider Robinson's latest Callahan's novel. I've always been a fan of Spider's writing, and the book doesn't fail to have plenty of it's light humor moments, bad puns, spoonerisms and nifty weirdness. And it has its serious side of personal interactions (I can't say much about this without giving away the conclusion of the storyline). I do find a certain sameness in the concluding of two of the main problems in the storyline to events in the previous (Callahan's Key) novel.

I realize, as my wife has said, that the Callahan's Novels are all about how people communicate with each other and dealing with issues of trust. But I find the over-reliance on the Telepathy can solve our problems solution to problems over the last bunch of stories that Spider has done. Its starting to feel like a Deux ex Machina way of getting things solved. Maybe I'm wanting something too deep, or maybe I'm just too jaded from having been reading SF/Fantasy for some 3 decades or so, but it just feels repetitive and rather formula like in many ways.

Its not that I don't recommend the book, but I do have some reservations as to the major plot stuff (the con itself, of the title, is neat, but doesn't occupy nearly enough complications along the way as well, something one would expect when dealing with a con job of this sort of scale).

Gaming : Well the Wednesday Western Ave Irregulars game group has been officially disolved. A new batch of schedule problems for some of the various participants, the ongoing campaign debates as to what was going to run, who would run and style conflicts has resulted in Kiralee decided to end it and the apparent curse on continuing that particular timeslot with any group. Game Over. Time to move on.

I've bashed heads (yet again) with Cindy over my concepts of game, setting and magic system design. She is never going to be satisfied except by systems as complex, regimented and precise as say Hero, and I'm going to be eternally at odds with her as I feel that a magic system needs some uncertainty and feeling of mystery to make it fit my concepts and experiences in regards to reality, magic, and fictional magic sources. She wants to always be able to tinker with the works, and to have the mechanic cover every conceivable idea of such tinkering in a mathematical structure she can rely on absolutely, rather then except that magic is an art not a science, and is inheritantly uncertain and likely to produce side effects that are unforseen (at least when trying something entirely new).

Worse of course is the fact that I cannot run a game at our home without her insisting that she be involved... which means running smack dab into her rules lawyering nature and her inability to have a real "sense of wonder" in games. This was one of the problems that our would-be Mage GM was having with her.

I've come up with a functional, but imperfect solution to the problem in my design balance (the first few paragraphs of this were written days before this was posted). It's not elegant, but it takes the complexity into the background and out of sight from the majority of players, which is what I wanted.

Computer Stuff: Cindy's computer is finally back and repaired. Her replacement Morrowind Disk has arrived so I can get to use my copy of the game on occasion.

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

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