Because it had my favorite Sarah Jane Smith in it I decided to watch the last two Dr Who episodes. Okay we've watched the first one, and due to its ending we'll probably watch the second.

But its fan fiction at best, and not even very good fan fiction.

I can do better. Maybe.

At least I wouldn't have such a stupid Davros (doesn't he know that if he can divide cells enough to make millions of Daleks than he doesn't need more than a few stem cells tops? Stupid super genius).

Oh, and Daleks are way too overdone.

If anyone goes by an RPG store tomorrow and sees a copy of the Trail of Cthulu give away grab me a copy. Tomorrow is the day of the potlucks for the kids.

The starchild is hugely into princess stories and we just got Princess Grace from the library today. And one of the princesses mentioned as Noor Inayat Khan whom I had never heard of. Which is a great outrage, so I decided to post about this amazing person.

So we ran esoterrorists, which got me thinking that I would like to use this for a long-term game.

So I posited a secret history of crime, in maybe a few cities, and considered the place of magic.

Then I let it brew for a week and came up with a campaign framework. Let that serve as a call for players, wait and see what happens for interest.

Its no secret that I like (love) occult weirdness, eliptony, conspriacy and the unexplained. Its my natural stomping ground.

And so, as I consider Secret History of Crime as a Gumshoes game I have to look at what the elvel of occult is going to be.

I love Occult Detectives and occult spies, and there is a very cool arching story I can tell, with lots of neat side stories.

But then again, it would be interesting to play these with little to no supernatural. I think it really would depend on where the inetrest (if any) would lie.

G. K. Chesterton claimed that “The first essential value of the detective story lies in this, that it is the earliest and only form of popular literature in which is expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life”, by which he means “the poetry of London,” and urban text of histories and meanings waiting to be read.

( City as character )

Using the gilt tag prompted me to go back and look at them.

I'd still like to do sexy Rome. Actually that deserves its own post.

Drink and the Devil had done for the rest strikes me as the best of the ideas from that time. Not that they all weren't good, I think I was just in a horrible place for gaming.

Damn too many of these were good ideas. I hate this utter lack of free time.

The boy was describing some comic he's reading (Time Warp Trio) on the way to soccer

the boy: So Frankenstein was created by Marry Shelly because she had some bad dreams and then told some ghost stories on a lake.

Me: Yep, thats a pretty famous event.

The boy: And with her with this Dr Polodori guy who wrote a story about a Vampire.

Me: Mm, hmm

The boy: And he based it on a poet named Byron, who became a vampire in the comic.

Me: Byron is one of my favorite poets

the Boy continues to rattle off about poets telling ghost stories on some lake in Switzerland and how cool Frankenstein's monster is.

These are the types of conversations my family has.

Just in time for the new Indiana Jones movie the BBC reports that archaeologists are really, really sure the crystal skulls are fakes.

Not that such surety will settle the matter for true believers.

I just got the book I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Black World by Trevor Paglen from the library and its very very fun. I definitely want a copy of this one.

If folks are up for it how about Wednesday the 21st? I'm not feeling well today (home sick) and gaming tomorrow might be a little too much.

peaseblossom suggested that I should export all the blogs I read into Google reader, as it appears people can't believe I suck so much at pop culture references (trust me I miss them all). So I did, but now I can't figure out how to share my feeds, all I can figure out how to do is share individual items.

Help?

Oh, and the public page is here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17358649324155503028?hl=en

I think.

The boy is reading Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett and illustrated by Brett Helquist and he asks

"Dad, who's Charles Fort?"

So I explain that Charles Fort was a scholar who collected the unusual and the unexplained and believed the world was a stranger place than science allowed.

And the boy says "He wrote a book called Lo!, do we have that?"

And then he was curled up reading Fort until his grammy showed up.

I definitely have to read this kid's mystery.

Last night we played Esoterrorists for the first time. bluegargantua, bryant, foxtown, jeffwik and peaseblossom were there. Bryant, Jess and Jeff have already written about this on their livejournals so I won't go into the player's side.

For me it went pretty easily. There wasn't the stress of what should be exposed when and I never felt like I was drowning in exposition or pulling teeth. Which was nice.

Prep wise I'm worried this game would be hard to run long-term, I'm also worried that it lends itself more to serial play than I like and there would b some difficulty in having long-term NPCs an big plots, both of which are favorites of mine.

I think I very much underestimated the amount of stuff necessary for a story or a night. We ended just before the end of the first arch (I planned three thinking I'd need it). I actually think the one arch would have been fine and I should have paced things better. That said what we did do was very fun.

Still curious how the action mechanics will work, and especially stability. Next session will see more stability checks (I could have required a few for the research going on but didn't think of it until after I wrote the thing).

I think with practice I could get writing adventures down to 1:1 with gaming time. Which may be more prep work than I've done in a decade for a game.

And I'm with Bryant, next time I run this I'm bringing a tack board (I have a nice foldable one at work) and letting the players arrange clues all Wire style.

Speaking of next time, is there interest in continuing? Wednesdays work very nicely for me.

I have five players (Jess, Tom, Bryant, Kirby and Jeff) and an adventure mostly ready to go. We'll start at 7 at my place, but feel free to be there earlier like around 6:30.

This game is not set in the OV default setting of Esoterrorists. The basic idea is that folks are investigative types who have had little to no experience with the supernatural (though may have occult knowledge) and this will draw them in.

All the characters have, in their past, a significant mentor, Dr Emily Thorne, who has a distinguished teaching record of 30 years in linguistics and classical studies and she's now curator at the MFA. Her son went missing 24 hours ago and she's reached out to you for help. In the years since you were her student you've gone and forged your own life (allowing players to be police, FBI, CIA, academics, etc) but when she called you came to Boston immediately.

With 5 players thats 20 points amongst the investigative, remember you don't need supper high scores. Take a look at these sample characters for ideas.

Here's the Investigative Ability breakdown:
( Read more... )

Took the kids to Free Comic Books Day today, we ended up hitting New England Comics in Cooldige Corner. Which is not where I planned on being (I was thinking Comicopia) but with the housewarming tonight I needed to pick up some things and thus we were nearby.

I'm glad we were. One of the starchild's favorite artists, Andy Runton of Owly was there, and she got the newest book A Time to be Brave signed (with illustration) and also a picture of Owly ice skating which she is very ecstatic about. She did a great job waiting in line for an hour behind all the annoying older guys getting art work for way to many relatives so I also bought her a stuffed Owly.

The boy was very excited when he got home and read his issue of Super Friends (which we bought, Tiny Titans was the Johnny DC title this year) and found a picture he had done of the Justice League when he was 6 on the letters page.