Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Tara's Birthday, Freeforms

The big news is that today is Tara's third birthday. She's been happily ripping open her presents, and the floor is a complete state. Of course, you can't give to one dog and not the other, so Zak's been getting presents too. Claire's been taking photos of it all, so those should appear on her blog soon...

***

Freeforms are otherwise dominating my thoughts. The guy who was supposed to be organising Continuum's signups has vanished off the face of the Earth. So, I was asked to step in at the eleventh hour. If anyone's missed the many official announcements, they're up at http://grahamrobinson.com/freeforms/. Some of the games are already close to over-subscribed, so if you want to play, get in now! The games I'm casting (my own "Murder at the Greydog Inn" and Sandy Petersen's "Evil High Priest") shouldn't be too difficult to get a space in - they're the biggest games at the con - but I'm open to offers of bribery from anyone wanting to make sure of a spot. *grin*

Sign ups for the Edinburgh run of "Murder at the Greydog Inn" are less stunning. To be worth running, I need a few more players. If you're free on Saturday, 19th July, how about coming along? I'm getting the impression that some people are being put off by the Gloranthan setting for this one. Don't worry! The game will take advantage of Glorantha's quirky humour and deep mythology, whilst requiring you to know nothing beyond what's written on your character sheet. Definitely aiming for "introduction to the setting" level here.

***

Tara's just finished her latest present, and now has wrapping paper stuck to her fur. I'd better go rescue her...

Posted by graham @ 08:00 pm

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Reynard Comes Visiting

This afternoon, Tara suddenly launched herself off the couch and ran, feet sliding on the laminate, to the back door. I went to find out what had her so excited and saw this :

Foxes aren't an unusual sight round here, but a cub at half four in the afternoon is a first for me. He seemed to be on his own, and was just sniffing around. Until he spotted Tara, at which point he made a dash through the hedge.

An hour later, Claire got home, and was a bit jealous that she'd missed the fox. Then crows started squawking in the garden, and there was the fox cub, sat eating sunflower seeds I'd scattered for the birds. Claire's photos were rather better...

Posted by graham @ 09:12 pm

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Return to the Battle of Tara's Knee

Tara started limping again at the end of last week. She didn't show any improvement over the weekend, and massages and loosening exercises weren't helping. So, today we went to the vets. I asked to see the same woman who was handling Tara's physiotherapy earlier in the year. She knows Tara's history, Tara likes her, and she's a damn good vet.

The result is rather mixed news. The old injury has healed well, and whatever Tara's done, it hasn't done any lasting damage. The vet suspects a knock or fall which has caused a little swelling in the joint. So Tara's back on anti-inflammatories for a few days. All good news so far. The bad news is she is now showing signs of arthritis. We're trying a pill for that. If it works, she'll be taking them pretty much forever. If it doesn't work, we'll need to find one that does. Tara likes the new pills (they smell and look meaty), which, given she needs to take four a day, is a good thing. They're going to cost about £400 a year, so insurance is also a good thing...

Zak and Cisco are both healthy and happy, although Zak's a bit annoyed that I'm paying attention to the computer not him. He keeps dunting my hands while I'm typing this. So I'll stop here.

Posted by graham @ 07:22 pm

Murder at the Greydog Inn

In case anyone hasn't already seen the ad...

Murder at the Greydog Inn

Saturday 19th July 2008, 2-5pm, Edinburgh.

The Greydog Inn is heaving. Couples flirt, warriors boast, merchants barter, Lunars and Orlanthi glower at each other over their mead. Just another typical night. But death walks the darkness, and foul murder is uncovered. The clan honour has been tarnished, and the guilty must be found before the killer strikes again...

"Murder at the Greydog Inn" is a 16 player, 3 hour freeform. Written by Graham Robinson, based on characters and setting from "Tales of the Reaching Moon #18 & #20".

Although there's a murder mystery at the heart of the game, there'll be plenty of other plot lines to keep you busy. Most characters will be as involved with solving the mystery as the player wants to be. In addition, a couple of the roles are "character" parts - there to provide pathos/drama/comedy/chaos, rather than being heavily involved in plotting/scheming/investigating.

Costuming hints : the Greydogs/Goodswords and the Lunar bodyguard are barbarian types - think Celts, Saxons, Vikings, etc. with warrior types favouring war paint/tattoos, especially in blue. The Lunars are a civilised empire - Rome/Persia, with moon symbols. Finally the Sun Domers are a highly militaristic, strictly controlled society, for which Sparta is the obvious historical analogy, and with a sun/gold fixation.

The game is set in Glorantha, but I'm assuming that players know nothing about the setting, other than what I tell them on their character sheet.

Fancy playing? There's a casting questionnaire at http://grahamrobinson.com/greydog_edin.html

Any questions? Drop me an e-mail or leave a comment!

Posted by graham @ 12:19 pm

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Humour in RPGs

I was intrigued by this article on the GamePlayWright blog. To an extent, I agree - there's nothing wrecks an rpg session faster than the guy who has to be funny all the time. But I think this rather misses the point on a couple of marks.

1. Humour isn't the problem. Role-playing, like any fiction, requires suspension of disbelief. And that's even more true for fantasy/sci-fi/related genres - i.e. most of the genres on which we base rpgs. Being reminded of the real-world breaks that suspension, and humour can do that. (The worst offender here is the catch-phrase, especially the Monty Python quote.) But so do people talking about their life, bitching about their work, organising next weekend's party, and a thousand and one other distractions. The problem isn't that a comment is *funny* it is that a comment is *irrelevant to the game*. The inverse is also true - humour that is part of the game improves the game. Monday's session was full of jokes, some of it riffs on the group's catchphrases, some of it character driven, some of it just a passing witty comment. People were laughing, but not having to drop out of the game mindset to do so.

2. Suspension of disbelief isn't that fragile. Monday's game had a million small distractions. My laptop nearly died because I'd forgotten to turn it's powersupply on at the wall. Giant dogs poked at me, or tried to steal the remains of dinner off the kitchen surfaces. The kettle was put on and orders for tea were taken. And, yes, people got distracted and mentioned the real world. So what? We watch TV punctuated by adverts every fifteen minutes. I've been reading the same book for about a fortnight now - I spend an entire day living in the real world, yet each evening I return to Moorcock's world within a sentence or two. Why would a game be any different?

I think the real issue is that people have to focus on the game world in order to suspend their disbelief. And if people are going to focus, they have to want to. The guy who's always cracking jokes and distracting from the game isn't doing it because he wants attention, or to be funny. He's doing it because he's not into the game itself. That's a problem that can be addressed, but not by concentrating on the symptoms.

Posted by graham @ 09:36 pm

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Fife Dog Show

We spent the day surrounded by greyhounds, at the Greyhound Rescue Fife show. Other dogs too, but mainly greys. Quite a successful day - Tara took second place in "Best Non-Greyhound", and Zak and Tara together got third in "Best Family". Tara was delighted as ever to get rosettes - she's so vain. Zak got over-excited to see so many other greys and woofed and bounced and wagged. Was a good day.

I made some tiffin for the home baking stall at the show. Seemed to be popular - certainly vanished quickly, and one person even asked me for the recipe! It's pretty easy to make - 100g butter, 2 tbsps sugar, 1 tbsp syrup, 100g milk chocolate - melt together in saucepan. Add 75g chopped glace cherries, 75g currants, 75g crushed digestive bisuits. Smooth out in lined baking tray, leave to cool. Optionally spread milk chocolate on top. Enjoy!

Posted by graham @ 09:16 pm

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Monday Game Notes

I've put up my notes from the Monday night game, primarily to make it easier for me to keep track of what's going on. Should be of some interest to the players, and maybe someone else wants to be nosey.

Posted by graham @ 09:00 pm

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Murder at the Greydog Inn

This evening, I'll be working on my second murder mystery of the week. The first was for my Monday night game, this one is a freeform I'm running at Continuum in August. I've just written the advertising blurb for their website :

MURDER AT THE GREYDOG INN

The Greydog Inn is heaving. Couples flirt, warriors boast, merchants barter, Lunars and Orlanthi glower at each other over their mead. Just another typical night. But death walks the darkness, and foul murder is uncovered. The clan honour has been tarnished, and the guilty must be found before the killer strikes again...

"Murder at the Greydog Inn" is a 16 player, 3 hour freeform. Written by Graham Robinson, based on characters and setting from "Tales of the Reaching Moon #18".

***

Writing mysteries for a freeform is so much harder than for a tabletop. Monday night's game went pretty well, but all I needed was a crime scene and three plausible suspects. After that, the players' reactions and choices guided the story to a satisfying conclusion. You can't really improvise with a freeform. Everything needs to be decided in advance, including who did the murder, and why. Worse, the mystery needs to be hard enough that no one will solve it within ten minutes, but easy enough that someone WILL solve it within three hours. There's some nudging that you can do - if nothing else, Glorantha allows for divine guidance - but on the whole, freeforms work by setting the players loose and hoping for the best. Still, I think the central mystery is solid, and I'm more concentrating on other plot lines for those who don't want to spend their whole afternoon hunting for a killer.

Current plan is to finish the bulk of the writing in the next two weeks, then hold a test run late June/early July. Anyone know what weekends are free around then? Probably will run on an afternoon, so as not to clash with parties in the evening.

Right, enough of that. Off to walk the dogs in the rain now.

Posted by graham @ 12:12 pm

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