Mortaine’s Blog

In the last 3 days, I’ve gotten Linux working on my main desktop PC (Intel-based), and have transferred my files over from the Linux/Macintosh machine, so I have everything in one place.

Last night, I ran my D&D game, which was a total blast. The campaign is set in the Arabian Adventures world, with genies and magic carpets and so forth. Well, we have a really small game group, so when one person can’t play, I often end up having to cancel the game.

Well, last night, Roger couldn’t play,. We’re nearing the end of a major story point, and the game itself looks like it’s going to end as well because of various players’ inability to make it to the games. Well, we haven’t played in a long time, so we played last night without Roger. I brought in a “drop in” adventure, called Dungeonland, which was a ton of fun. Dungeonland is the world from Alice in Wonderland, only adapted to D&D. There’s a conversion for 3rd edition available, which I downloaded and printed out. I also printed out the poems from Alice in Wonderland, and some graphics from a very talented artist named Marshall Vandruff. The module takes a more dangerous tone to “Wonderland,” with many of the denizens of that world being outright evil and malicious. I haven’t played the computer game Alice yet, but I think it’s a similar kind of “dark Wonderland” adventure feel. It doesn’t have to be, of course– you could as easily have the ferocious animals attack the PCs with nerf teeth and fangs, or with idiotic ditties, instead of having them actually attack with real natural weapons. In fact, since this is most likely the first part of the adventure that you’re likely to run, it’s probably a good idea to soften these dire animals quite a bit– the “little crocodile” is too deadly otherwise (+12 to damage each time he hits, which is probably every time– not a problem if you’re the hit point horse, but a serious problem for any rogues in the party!)

Basically, the party got through the Pool of Tears, the Duchess’ house, and the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (largely because I pulled a lot of damage from the monsters in the Pool of Tears). By the end of the Tea Party, the party was pretty well wiped out. Kastan in particular was severely hampered– he was unable to get his spells (no teleport for Safanah), and at the Tea Party, he contracted the dormouse’s narcolepsy.

So, with a sleeping Kastan and a hyperactive Kirvi, the party made it home. You should have seen Tara– she was acting like a 3 yr. old at Disneyland. It was really amazing. She was almost incomprehensible at times, because she was talking too fast. She was also not terribly concerned about the rest of the party, and would have gone through the little door if she had been given half a chance, regardless of the fact that Kastan was asleep (and therefore, Pradeep was effectively out of the game).

I still have to award XPs for the night. The players tell me they had a really fantastic time, which is good. They didn’t suffer any permanent harm (at least, not once they got back to the party healer), and we stuck around talking about the adventure for about 45 minutes before calling it a night.

Sure, they only got through half of the adventure. But they tell me they now have a motivation (go back to Dungeonland) for future quests, and that it was fun anyway.

Well, I just sent out an evite to the people I’m inviting to play in my “Tabula Rasa” campaign. This is an idea I had, based on movies like Memento, a Buffy episode (titled “Tabula Rasa”), and the computer game Planescape: Torment. Basically, the characters wake up with no identifying equipment or clothing, with no memories of who they are.

The characters start at at least second level– I might actually make it even higher, so that they know they have a history, just not what it is. In 3rd edition D&D, you can take on a new class pretty easily, so they would be able to take whatever class they wanted when they go up to the next level, or continue to advance in their starting class, provided they could figure out what that is (shouldn’t be too hard).

After the initial adventure, which is designed to help them identify their ability scores and skills, the campaign really begins. In addition to the “standard” adventures that a group of PCs might go on, the campaign’s overarching structure is designed around mini-campaigns in which individual PCs learn who they were before their memories weer wiped. When they reach a high enough level, if they are still motivated to pursue this goal, the PCs will be looking for the source of the mysterious amnesia (which has afflicted others, not just themselves), and hopefully stop it (although I guess if they’re sufficiently evil, they might want to help it continue– I don’t know.)

Many people have already commented that this campaign has the primary difficulty of being too easy to figure out character class, abilities, etc. But I have to remind them that that’s not even close to the main challenge of the game. In fact, I’m counting on the players to be able to figure out the class and abilities before the end of the second game night. I mean, how hard is it to figure out if you know how to cast a spell? The characters themselves will have the kind of cultural knowledge that comes from reading the PHB– they know roughly how much magic is in the world, and what a barbarian is, etc.

The real challenge, however, is trying to find out who they were before. Locating family members, for example. Tracking down what tiny clues they might be able to find. Meeting and knowing NPCs will become important, as those NPCs will not only be allies, but will also be valuable sources of information. Learning what roles they played before, and how those roles have collapsed in their absences (all of these are PCs who had some sort of special role in the world– their sudden disappearance has been the cause of chaos and trouble for their former friends).

Finding out who or what caused this to happen is an even bigger fish to fry.

I had a job interview this morning in Milpitas, which went fairly well, I think. It’s always hard to tell– is it a good interview if it takes 2 hours?

Last night during dinner, the phone rang. We hate to be disturbed during dinner (who doesn’t?) and John almost didn’t answer the phone. But I answered, and it turned out to be someone from a job I had applied to a month ago. Well, he wanted to see if I could come in for an interview this week, and I made an appointment for this morning at 10 AM. Yay!

I actually know someone in the company, another tech writer, so I was glad to talk to him after the “nervous” part of my interview (talking to software developers who don’t know how to interview a technical writer). They all said I had a lot of varied experience, which was something they appreciated.

Anyway, after 2 hours and talking to another tech writer, I finally left. It was very nice, but I had the unsettling feeling that, as their first interviewee, I wasn’t hitting the radar screen very hard. I’m going to contact the person I know inside the company and see if there’s any way I can follow-up without being a pest. Also, I’m going to mail each person I spoke to a personal thank-you note for spending the time to talk with me today.

In unrelated news, tonight is Game Night, the fun-filled weekly evening of competitive play! Tonight, we have enough players for Cranium, which is a pereniial favorite. Cranium is a really cool game in which your team has to successfully complete four tasks (creative, performance, logic, and word) and then solve a final task (of a type determined by the other team) to win. The tasks for each of the groups are on individual cards. A creative task might be a “win lose or draw” kind of contest, or it might be a similar contest, but with your eyes closed. Or it might be “win lose or sculpt” where you have to sculpt the thing into playdoh. For performance, you might have charades, celebrity impersonations, “name that tune,” etc. One time we played and Ken did this really bad Dances with Wolves charades where he tried to mime a wolf and dancing. We did not guess correctly, but then we may have been guessing wrong on purpose just to see him prolong the humiliation.
But game night doesn’t just happen on its own, you know. I have to make the Jello shots hours in advance (I just put them in the fridge right now), clean up the house, do the dishes, vacuum, and make sure the guest bathroom is presentable to company. It’s not that I have to do these things before game night (well, the kitchen was in kind of a state), but rather that there are some people who are coming over tonight whom I would rather not have see the house in its normal state of disarray.

I gave blood today. I’m O+, which makes me some kind of universal donor. It’s kind of cool– I donate every 8 weeks now, because it’s important, and our blood region needs universal donors. Plus, they call me to remind me to make an appointment, which is really neat.

Anyway, I gave blood today. And on my way home, I heard a song titled “Superman” on the radio. This isn’t the one with the real “riffy” kind of chorus that sings “Kryponiiite.” It’s the one that sounds like it should be the soundtrack to Smallville or something (and maybe it is– that’s one of the few “supernatural teen” shows I don’t watch).

Anyway, I got to thinking. See, I saw the original Superman movie when I was very very very little. I think we saw it in the drive-in with my folks. And Christopher Reeve– well, it would have been a miracle to find anyone better suited to that role, you know what I mean?

But see, that’s the problem. Reeve wasn’t able to find good roles after Superman because he was Superman. I mean, he had a couple of roles after that, but he found that “ultra-good-guy” persona as hard to shake as Schwartzenegger’s Conan was for the big Austrian, or Stallone’s Rocky was for him. I mean, if you really define a role, it’s hard to break out of it. Especially when you’re a large charismatic actor with some real acting talent. The fact you can act is seen as bonus to the directors who want to just have “some big guy” in their action movies.

OK. Fast forward through the 80’s and into the 90’s. Reeve still can’t get a part.

And then it happens.

In a terrible riding accident, Reeve’s spinal cord was damaged. No more walking. Now what? Is this the end of Superman?

In a way, yes. Reeve can now go on to do the kinds of roles that don’t rely on his physique. But on the other hand, our world is changing in terrible, terrible ways, and they revolve around our great icons.

• Superman is in a wheelchair, possibly for life (though I won’t discount Reeve’s power of persuasion!)
• The fairy princess got divorced and died in a high-speed tunnel accident with her boyfriend.
• The Twin Towers are a heap of rubble.

I feel as though there’s something at work in the world that is great and terrible, perhaps something slouching toward Bethlehem to bring us all down with a whimper. I don’t know, of course. I just know that our iconic heroes and our princesses are gone or immobilized.

Perhaps now is the time for us to be our own heroes.

Or perhaps, it is time to give up heroes entirely, as they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of saving the world right now.

I don’t know. I’ve lost a pint of blood today, and I’m just a little sleepy. But looking at how our world is so. . . . broken. . . . . I just have to sigh and wonder if we can ever fix it?

Last night I programmed a MySQL database and learned how to do a simple query in PHP!!! Hooray!!!!!!!!

This is so awesome. Really, I cannot believe how incredibly cool this is. Now I know enough to be dangerous– I can program my students’ grade pages to have a dynamically-generated grade entry.

In a couple of weeks, I might even figure out how to do access control with PHP and MySQL!