Experiments in Woolgathering

This conversation took place a few days ago, I pasted into a draft post and only just now got around to finishing the post. (more…)

The vet called at about 8 this morning to let us know we could come get Ru. So, I dragged Rachel out of bed and off we headed. 50 minutes later we’re home, with dog and fast food breakfast (heh, it’s my day off).

Rusalka was pretty lively when she came out, at least more that I expected. They gave us some antibiotics to give to her, and depending on the results of the culture from her bladder, which we should get in a few days, they may change them to something more effective against whatever bacteria they find.

In addition to the bladder stone removal, they also removed a mole from her lower right eyebrow. It bugged me to look at it, I can only imagine how much it bugged her having it. To do this, they shaved around her eye. Needless to say, it looks pretty weird, and not in an attractive way. Other than that, unless you look at her belly, the only other odd thing is the shaved band on her foreleg where they had the IV stuck in. It’s like some poodle affectation.

She conked out pretty quickly once we got her home, and no doubt she’ll be pretty out of it for a few days. Aside from the meds, we just have to keep her relatively calm for the next two week, to give things time to heal.

And, lastly, an image of the post surgery Ru. You see her weird shave eye area, and bald band on her foreleg.

Ru’s surgery was today, and it went well. She’s spending the night at the vet and we’ll get her back tomorrow.

I am realizing (as is Rachel) how used to her we are. Now, it’s not like we’re never not around. I travel for work, for example. But we’re never both home without her – if we’re both here, Ru is too.

Not feeding her, giving her her medicine, having her come start at me while I eat (never know when something might get dropped, and even at 13 she’ll move fast to grab dropped food), is proving quite odd, disconcerting.

I’d just never really thought about this, since, obviously from what I just wrote, this situation hasn’t come up. It’s never an issue if I’m at a hotel in New York or DC or something, but my instincts here, with Rachel present, are completely that Rusalka should be as well.

Let’s hope the call to come get her comes earlier rather than later!

Well, the old group had a good run, a very good run in comparison to most groups, and now it’s sort of atrophied. One person doesn’t care what we do, one person doens’t want to RP at all and another can only RP if we don’t have to “make new characters too often”.

Not much enthusiasm there to say the least.

So, I started asking around and found a pair of couples who want to get in on some weekend RP. That gives us 5 players (in the RPG sense, since one ‘player’ ends up being the GM¹ [usually – there are games where that responsibility is spread throughout the participants]) which in my experience is a ideal number. The acceptable range is 3 to 6 in general I find, with 4 or 5 being the best. More than that and things bog down, less and it can be difficult to sustain momentum.

Anyhow, next comes the setting and system. Rachel definitely wants to use a ::high fantasy:: setting, and since she’s GMing first and everyone else seems to at least be willing to do fantasy that’s what we’re going to do.

We wrestled a while with whether to roll our own setting, use one from a novel, or use an existing RPG setting. We sort of split the difference between rolling our own and using one from a novel: we’re using a map from a board game, Elfenland and creating the setting from that. You can see the 1280×1024 version of this map here.

The system decision was actualy easier, and made first. We’d had the creator of The Burning Wheel, Luke Crane, give us a demo at Origins last year and were pretty impressed. Very cool system, in particular the combat and character creation aspects of it stood out.

So, the stage is set. We’re all getting together for the first time on ::February 6:: – and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the signing of the ::Treaty of Waitangi::.

¹ Game Master

I’ve been thinking about the parallels in two things lately: ::role-playing game:: systems and ::programming language::s.

In both areas there have been efforts to make universal or generic solutions. The write-once, run-anywhere mantra of Java and the similar message of .NET (which are really only the most successful of many attempts at software portability). In games we have systems like ::GURPS::, ::D20::, Unisystem, TriStat, and so on.

The problem is, and this is recognized to some extent in both camps, though moreso in programming I think (more on this in a bit though) is that when we take part in or participate in these activities, we do so (or should at least) with a particular end in mind. I.e. the goal is not ‘just to write code’ or ‘just to have fun’.

The former is self-evident I should think; we want our code to do something, even if it’s something trivially simple.

In the latter case, I don’t think as many people recognize this. However, if it weren’t true, why is there such a profusion of RPGs and RPG systems? I suggest that it’s because people want to RP in a particular way in a particular setting. I also think that few RPers really recognize this and this contributes a great deal to the ‘failure’ of games. On top of the fact that few RPers are aware of how they want to play, there’s no guarantee that all players in a given group even want the same type of play (consciously or otherwise).

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Our dog, Rusalka is 13, roughly (she was a rescue, so we don’t know her exact age). Like pretty much all dogs, she’s figured out what a few English words mean. For example, ‘treat’, which a few years ago, we started to spell out, since we couldn’t talk about a grocery list with dog treats in it without her hearing the word and getting in our face, ready for the aforementioned treat.

Eventually though she figured out that ‘tee are ee ay tee’ meant the same thing. So, now we have all sorts of euphimisms for ‘treat’ – which aren’t the point of this post so I’m not going to list here.

Now, Rusalka has problems with bladder stones occasionally. Sometimes we can give her some prescription dog food and that will get rid of them. This time, however, that didn’t work. So she has to have them surgically removed.

Now, to the actual point. Yesterday morning we were sitting around, with Ru, and Rachel brought up the surgery. Naturally, we are concerned for Ru. She’s old, and although it’s a fairly simple surgery, there’s still risk involved. Apparently, Rachel was feeling very sensitive about this, because rather than say ‘surgery’, she spelled it out – as if the dog, which has had surgery a grand total of twice before (and once when she was very young to get spayed), knows what the word means.

Needless to say, I sort of felt compelled to point out that the dog hasn’t had surgery enough to recognize the word. Hell, if she had, we’d probably be broke – even this simple surgery is going to cost us about $1000. Good thing we’re getting a big tax return this year.

Anyhow, we got quite a chuckle out of it, and I promised to blog this, so … ta da.

Two dreams, one violent, one naked, sort of.

I don’t often remember my dreams well, so to have remembered two vividly in the same number of days is abit extraordinary. So, to celebrate the occasion, I blogged them. Enjoy.

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So, I finished Iron Council a couple days ago. As fans of Miéville:http://runagate-rampant.netfirms.com/ know this is his third book set in the world of Bas-Lag. (more…)

Okay, people who want to comment here now need to be registered, courtesy of a small hack for WordPress. (The lack of this feature stock WordPress I find annoying and inexplicable.) Hopefully this will cut down on the casino spam bots.

In other news, I have a beard. It will be 4 weeks this Thursday since I last shaved. I have to say it’s very interesting having facial hair. To feel it when the wind blows is an odd sensation. Feeling the water in it after I shower is weird too. In general people seem to like it, which is a good sign. Eventually I’ll post a picture for the curious.

I finished China Miéville’s Iron Council this morning. I’ll write a full review later, but I’ll say now that I did not like it as much as Perdido Street Station or The Scar (his other books I’ve read, which are set in the same world).

While we’re on the topic of books, I discovered that there was a movie made of “Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s:Lhttp://www.capitanalatriste.com/ The Flanders Panel which stars Kate Beckinsale (who is on The List). So, since I liked Ninth Gate which was (loosely) based on Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas (which is much better than the movie) and Kate is in it, I figured that was a good enough excuse to read The Flanders Panel next and then watch the movie, this being the opposite order in which I experienced The Ninth Gate and The Club Dumas. The symmetry of it pleases me.

Continuing with the biology theme, I present ‘The List’ – that is the list of famous women for whom I’d leave Rachel. Don’t worry, she has her list (of men) too.