Best of Styx, track 9, preferably rendered by Cartman

Last year, really just to humor my father, I climbed onto a sailboat for the first time. It was a refurbished Scorpion. And, when I say "refurbished", I mean that my dad had done some mediocre fiberglass work on the hull and patched the sails with large swaths of some old cut-up windbreaker. It's the sailing equivalent of patchy hobo-pants.

I sailed around a little bay in Lake Champlain for maybe two or three hours total over the course of a week. I had no idea what I was doing. I narrowly avoided banging my cranium with the boom over and over again. Eventually, I capsized the thing. Since I had no idea how to get the thing upright again, Lisa had to grab a rowboat to come out and rescue me.

Normally, that would have been it. I've never really been into boats. They bore me. Usually.

But the sailboat was different. There's something totally different about it. Something that I can't really describe. It's a giddy feeling. I love it.

This year, for vacation, my dad had bought a second sailboat. Instead of driving them both across the lake to camp, we put them in the lake about 2 or 3 miles away and sailed them there. I still really didn't know what I was doing, but I'd spent some time reading up on a book or two, so I knew quite a bit more than I had the previous year.

Well, the weather got kinda crappy and a snap storm caused a bit of damage to the Scorpion. With a lot of work and a bit of luck we were able to get the thing back together and got it back into the water with plenty of sailing time left in our vacation. I'd guess I logged maybe a dozen hours on the thing, all told. Not much, but it can still be pretty chilly on Lake Champlain that time of year.

But now back home in the Carolinas, I'm totally hooked. I just can't stand the idea that I've got better weather and no boat. So I bought myself one. And one for Lisa. I've already logged about five hours sailing my new "Phantom" and I can't wait to get it out there again this weekend.

Way down in the hole

I just got done watching the final episode of The Wire. That totally rocked. In the final montage I was sad for Dookie, chuckling at Daniels and Rhonda in court together, and out-of-my-chair applauding Bubbles sitting down to dinner with his sister.

Now that's some good TV.

I can't help myself!

Last week Lisa and I got together with Andy and Shane at It's a Grind. Amongst many other things, we briefly discussed our Sombra Console game. It'd been a while since we'd played, and each of us was eager to get back into it when time allowed.

I asked Andy and Shane if they were happy with the system. They both agreed that they thought it was doing the job. No need to re-work the thing.

Naturally, this week I've started writing up a new system for it. From scratch. Mostly.

I guess I really just can't help it. I start thinking about the things in the system that are bugging me and my pen starts scribbling. I mean, sure the system I cobbled together from bits and pieces of the ol' Shadowrun 2nd Ed game works just fine. But it could be better. Much better.

So, when do I stop hacking and leave well enough alone? I mean, players don't want to have to re-learn a system every month just because the GM is a habitual system hacker. That would suck. I suppose I'll get comfortable with a system again for long-term play someday. It'll probably be when the benefits of changning up the system fail to outweigh the aggravation. Hopefully sooner.

Or maybe, one day, I'll just get tired of writing and re-writing systems and get back to what I used to really love. Creating gobs and gobs of rich setting to immerse the players in. That would be pretty cool.

City of Villians

Yup. That's where I've dissapeared to.

Lisa and I picked up the City of Heroes / City of Villians game last month and we've been playing it constantly since. It's pretty groovy. It's a nice, casual MMORPG, and that's exactly what I was looking for. I can log in, play an hour or two, and log out feeling like I've accomplished something. I like that.

I'm still working on game projects here and there. We played RBH just last weekend and made some really good changes to the rules. But other than that I haven't felt particularly creative recently. The down-time at work that I usually fill with game design scribbles has been consumed by a short list of paperback books. Usually crappy ones that folks leave onboard for me.

I figure I'll probably get my design mojo back in a couple weeks or so. Give or take.

Thunderstorms in CLT

Today was supposed to be a short day. Up at 03:30 and done by 12:30. In the hotel room and getting ready for a tasty steak lunch by 13:00. Today's steak lunch brought to you by Capt. Bill and his Wife of Awesome Income.

The little string of things going wrong started yesterday. Our First Officer (copilot to the uninitiated) twists his ankle stepping off of the aircraft. It's those damned Dash 8 doors. They've got that extra long no-step area. So, that evening he hits the doctor's office and gets grounded. Well, that means we need a new First Officer. But it's already late, so Schedueling decides to pull a reserve guy, put him on a continuous duty overnight, and have him work with us today.

Where Schedueling went wrong is when they decided to let the reserve guy work more than just that first flight back to CLT. Big mistake.

See, there's two important things you've gotta know to understand why it was a mistake. The first thing is that pilots are only alowed to be on duty for a certain number of hours at a shot. I think the FAA's limit is 16 hours and the pilot's contract further limits them to 15 hours. The second thing is that a 'continuous duty overnight' is pretty much just like it sounds. The reserve First Officer had so little time to sleep last night that he couldn't be considered to be on 'rest'. So he's been on duty continuously since 21:40 last night.

We flew from our overnight to CLT. That's when the reserve would have been done for the day if Schedueling weren't greedy. But greedy they are, so they decided to have him work a trip to Wilmington NC and back with us. That would have had him finishing his duty at about 11am. That's 13 hours and 40 minutes. Only an hour and twenty minutes shy of his limit.

Guess what? We're just starting to board to leave Wilmington to head back to CLT when Capt. Bill tells me that we're delayed due to weather in CLT. It's a big enough delay that he wants to send the passengers back into the terminal. We won't know anything more untill 11:00 or so. If we dont' take off by (I think he said) 11:04 then the First Officer isn't allowed to fly an aircraft with passengers on it.

Ha!

That'll mean we'll have to cancel the flight and 'ferry' the plane back to CLT. We are booked at 50 out of 50. We're supposed to be full. That's 50 folks who'll need to be rescheduled on other flights. Are there 50 free seats leaving Wilminton NC for anywere today? I bet not.

Good job. Ya greedy punks.

I graduated from the Forge

In a few recent threads here and there at Story Games, folks have mentioned that the Forge would be a great place to do the work they're talking about doing. It started me thinking about my relationship to the Forge and why I don't really go there very much any more.

I think it's because all the hard lessions are done. I learned how to shed my baggage there. Not just the baggage I brought with me, but also the baggage I accumulated while I was there and the baggage that I occationlly pick up here and there. I learned how to think critically about games. Not just the text, but also how I play. I learned how to be polite on the internet at the Forge. Ok, so I don't allways apply that lession, but I still learned it at the Forge.

I could go back to the Forge to learn more. There are constantly new folks coming in with new ideas. I could totally pick up lots from chatting with them. Or I could go back and take up space as someone willing to dish out the limited wisdom of my own experience. There are a couple folks doing an excellent job at that very task right now.

But I'm not much of a teacher-type. What I need right now is a studio of creative folks who are there to design and have allready gone through all the basic lessions. I need a post-graduate space.

Jumper

Lisa and I used our free movie passes to check out the new movie Jumper today at Southpoint.

I enjoyed it. It had an intentional comic book feel to it. I cannot reccomend it, because it also felt like it was just the first three issues and no one seems to know if there will be anymore.

The plot wasn't particularly deep or anything, but it failed to wrap up pretty much every single loose end. Except, of course, the lead character's shitty relationship with his dad. That got wrapped up with the bad guys showed up and offed the old man. Now he can't resolve that issue. Which kinda sucks.

I left the theater with the feeling that I had just watched a particularly expensive television pilot. There was plenty of set up for more story line, but precious little finished off.

Oh well. I wasn't expecting much more than ninety minutes of action and special effects. I did get that.