Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "People's Drug Store crowds, 14th and Park Road," at the former Gross Pharmacy. National Photo glass negative. View full size.
LONDON – Today's museum of choice was the British, for its Moctezuma exhibit. The show goes long on the broad historical narrative and stunning objects, with lots of sculptures in which the human hearts of sacrificial victims were stored. If you were on the lookout for a sober study of the everyday lives of the Mexica, this was not the painstaking work of cultural anthropology you had in mind. I would have been down for either approach and was happy to see the stunning objects. The Spanish propaganda art celebrating and reframing the Conquest was also interesting, and not something you'd see had the curators gone for the more ethnographic approach.
Less promoted but also stunning is a collection of Mexican political printmaking, mostly from the early 20th century. I wish I'd had more time to take in the details but by that point the call of lunch had grown too strong. It's frustrating to face the limitations of one's attention and stamina in a town so full of great museums. But you can only take in so much and it's better to remember what you do see than to greedily whoosh by a bunch of stuff for the sake of having done so.
Then it was on to Pret A Manger for the much-heralded Christmas sandwich. Whoever said that sublime moments of fleeting experience can never be recaptured has never eaten this sandwich. My trio of traveling companions agreed that I had not oversold its splendors.
A crazy thing about game publishing is that you can collaborate with people for ages without ever actually gaming with them. So this trip I contrived to run a session for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
simonjrogers, gbsteve, Brennan Taylor & his wife Christa, and uthoroc and his better half & last but not least spencerpine. It was a GUMSHOE recreation of “The Repairer of Reputations”, the first of Robert W. Chambers' Hastur stories. The conceit was that Chambers then-futuristic take on 1920 New York was really a dreadfully wrong alternate history, spawned by widespread reading of The King In Yellow. I used a define-as-you-go method of character generation whereby each player brought a new PC on board by describing the investigative ability they needed at the moment and the reason that PC happened to have it. The trick worked well both in getting the action rolling quickly and giving the group a sense of investment and ownership over their characters.
We broke in the middle for a fabulous repast involving the titular foodstuffs, plus fabulous cheeses. After these gustatory delights I barely had the heart to horribly destroy the player characters, but fortunately soon recovered my will to appall. Most of them managed to hold on until the climactic moment when Mr. Wilde and Hildred Castaigne staged their Hastur-backed coup attempt in alternate America. Then there was much insanity, exploding bodies, and a partially successful exit from the Government Lethal Chamber. Appropriately enough, the character who started proceedings with the slimmest grip on sanity was the sole survivor to wander into the smoking ruins of the new Hastur-free America.
Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "People's Drug Store, 11th & G streets, night." National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.
As we celebrate the season of gluttony, Winston decides to dispense with the silverware and push his face straight into his Thanksgiving feast. Don’t tell me you haven’t considered doing this yourself at least once.
We give thanks to Rich over at FourFour!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Kittens, Winston!
Occasionally I feel the urge to get off my duff and crank out a character sketch. Strangely, this urge usually strikes strongest when it comes to drawing other people's characters in campaigns I'm running. I guess when I'm on the player side of the table I've got my own character pretty well pictured in my mind. Or maybe drawing someone else's character is a way for me to At any rate, I'm currently working on some such sketches for my bi-weekly Wilderlands D&D game. First up is what is turning out to be the group's de facto leader, an Otterkin ranger named Rumple Wumpkin (no, I am not joking).
Modeled on Mouse Guard, the redoubtable Rumple was tweaked from the original C&C ranger class with a couple choice additions from the AD&D 2e Beastmaster kit (at my suggestion). As such, she has already amassed a small gang of animal followers, most notably a badger named Conan. Standard combat operating procedure has mostly revolved around Rumple charging into combat, flinging Conan at her target to throw them off balance as she brings her morning star crashing down on their skulls. Last session, Conan even managed to lay the final death blow on one opponent!
More sketches to follow as I get them finished...
(Oh, and a note on the broken pole--as I mentioned in a previous post, Rumple's 10-foot pole became a 5-foot pole when she tried to use it trigger a revolving door trap.)
( Game-Specific Info... )
My question is, does anyone have any suggestions on how to maintain a horror atmosphere, both in-game and out? Any other suggestions or questions relating to mechanics, monsters, or just anything?
March 1943. Vaughn, New Mexico. "Eastbound train about to leave the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe yard on the return trip." Medium-format nitrate negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.
“I leave you alone for the day, and just look at this mess! The toilet paper’s shredded, there’s trash all over the floor, a team of squirrels is running a telemarketing call center from the guest bedroom, and a man outside wants to know where to install my weapons-grade uranium centrifuge!”
Did you order these 24 pizzas, Emily D.?
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Pups
March 14, 1940. Washington, D.C. "Veteran Polish weather expert joins staff of Smithsonian Institution. With home, laboratory, and invaluable records of years presumably lost in the recent Polish War, Dr. Henryke Arctowski of the University of Llov, one of Poland's foremost scientists and former Antarctic explorer, has started at the Smithsonian Institution the monumental job of determining direct effects of changes in the Sun's radiation on weather conditions on Earth. Recognized in all countries as one of the greatest living authorities on world weather, Dr. Arctowski is continuing his studies in efforts to find relationships between solar conditions and rainfall, barometric pressure, etc. His earliest meteorological observation began as a young geologist on the Antarctic exploring ship Belgica in 1897-99." Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.
Tongues wagged this week as papparazzi spotted superstars Britney Ears and Hugh Jackrabbit at a romantic getaway in Tahiti, protected by their bodyguard Bruno.
Well, I never, Carly R.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Bunnies, Naughtiness, Photobomb, Pups
I've heard people say that in a fantasy setting, the technology / civilization growth isn't that important, the story is the important part, and the rest of it is just wallpaper to let you tell the story. I consider that lazy thinking, really -- society is defined by the technology around it, which alters the culture, which alters your way of thinking. These changes may start slow as a culture builds itself, but as it progresses it begins to wind up, the changes coming faster as the ability to change things becomes easier or more spread out through society.
Even a 'cataclysmic' event will only go so far. Unless you reset all of society to 'zero', it will recover, and it will recover faster than it required to get to that point in the first place. On Krynn, a fiery rock dropped on the heart of the continent, wiping out the core of society. Fair enough, I'd consider that a... significant... setback. The gods themselves turned back on civilization. Fair enough. This creates a fairly important need in civilization. Those regions remote from the impact still exist, and probably haven't lost much. The gods turning their back? A big thing, and that need would probably force a rather significant push forward, as alternate methods to compensate for the loss of clerical magic is researched and civilization moves ahead. 350 years between the Cataclysm and the start of the War of the Lance? Take a look at what 350 years can do to a society. Say, 1200 AD to 1550 AD. Or 1500 AD to 1800 AD. Or 1650 AD to the present. Some regions, of course, will advance faster than others. I'll admit some places on Ascalon would have moved ahead slower (the closer you are to Ground Zero), but the further away the nations are, the less impact the event would have, and the easier it would be for them to compensate. Add to this the fact that those areas harder hit would probably be absorbed by their more powerful neighbours.
I've also heard the argument that magic would slow down the advancement of technology -- that the 'need' for technology would be curbed. Very unlikely, I think. Magic in most settings is restricted to the middle/upper class, meaning the middle/lower class is still working through mundane methods. This means that they're more likely to innovate and adjust, technologically, as the demand is there for efficiency and greater production. On top of this, of course, is magical innovation, those people who want to improve on magical theorems and rituals, not to mention the blending of magic and technology, applying magical principles and rites to help progress society.
That last bit, I'm certain, would progress civilization faster, not slower.
Honestly, it feels like, in most cases, this trope applies. I'm glad I've found an exception, a shame it is an online game and not an RPG...
- Location:Home
- Mood:
contemplative
Pilgrim cataloon sweetness courtesy of Gawker.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Cartoons, Kittens, Pups
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