Sources of Inspiration: Play on Target Podcast Ep. 46

This week the Play on Target podcast does a round-robin to talk about various sources of inspiration. Each host offers up two different books or tools they've been thinking about and what that's brought to the table. Some of us talk about games, some about online resources, some about fiction books. I scribbled down some things I'd never heard of. I particular happy with our back and forth about how you'd translated some of these concepts into play. 

PLOT: More Sources of Inspiration

Play on Target Episode Round Up

Since we cover things tightly tied to gaming in the episode, I want to talk about some interesting non-gaming books here. I listen to a lot of my books now- while I’m driving, doing busy work, painting figures, playing Euro Truck Simulator. But I can only do that with non-fiction. For some reason my brain can’t track fiction books; they leave me cold. I had the same problem with radio dramas, so I should have expected that. 

In any case I’ve worked through some just blah books recently (What if? by Randall Munroe; When to Rob a Bank by Levitt & Dubner; and Forensic History from The Great Courses series). But three others have stuck with me. I tend to read for gaming. If I’m doing a particular genre I try to read materials at least tangentially related. So when I last worked on fantasy, I went through Byzantine and Arab history. When I was thinking about wuxia and L5R, I worked through Chinese and Mongol histories. I even listened to a massive biography of Howard Hughes for a Changeling game (long story). I sometimes read off-topic, as you’ll see. Of my recent reading, I can recommend three  books, with some caveats.

Blood Royal by Eric Jager is ostensibly a true-crime medieval murder mystery. In 1407 Louis of Orleans was killed by assassins in the streets of Paris. That appealed to me. I’m running a City Guards game, so I wanted to see some of the primitive investigation process and its limitations. Not that I’m bringing any realism to the table, but sources like this give me details and ideas to throw in. It’s narrated by Odo from DS9, so that’s a plus.

But a murder mystery this is not. It is a procedural for the first half of the book. There’s a good deal of sharp set up: detailing the investigator Guillaume de Tignonville, Provost of Paris; the nature of the city; the political realities of the time; and the atmosphere of the early 15th Century. That has lots of cool bits and some ideas for relations between institutions. However, if you’re an amateur medievalist, you’ll probably already know most of this. Anyway, we get a ways into the book before the murder happens. Then there's some cool stuff about the investigation: how they interviewed, what they looked for on site, how they secured the scene. But then the murderer’s revealed: pretty quickly and pretty obviously. In some ways it feels like the investigation doesn’t matter.

And then we switch to the second half of the book covering the political fallout from that revelation. That goes on and on and on. The second half’s more a history of the civil war and English invasions which tore France apart. Don’t get me wrong, it has sharp detail but it’s far away from what the title promised. It is a great book for anyone doing courtly stuff: lots of detail on the back and forth, as well as how different parties responded to different slights. So I recommend this with reservations. If you go in knowing the limitations you might be cool with it. 

Forgotten Ally: China’sWorld War II 1937-1945 by Rana Mitter was an impulse buy. I don’t know Asian history very well so I’ve been trying to correct that (Foundations of Eastern Civilization and Barbarian Empires of the Steppes from The Great Courses). I had a fairly good sense of the Victorian era, especially about Shanghai. But I had no clue about the 20th Century. Since I planned to run an alt 1930’s game, I wanted to explore parts of the period I didn’t know well to help with my world building. 

This book is heavy. This book is hard. Everything’s in painted in shades grey or maybe really everyone’s just dark as night: from the Japanese devastation of cities in the invasion, to the Nationalists breaking the dykes on the Yellow River and killing 500,000 people, to the earliest Communist confession campaigns. Everyone's awful. Beyond that, the attitude of Western officials and their treatment of China throughout the war is sickening, from Churchill to Stillwell to Roosevelt. I knew that the conflict between China and Japan had happened before WW2, but I hadn’t had the context. China became vital to Allied strategic objectives once the the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. But the Allies seemed to ignore that the country had been at war, on their own, for four+ years already.

So, for me at least, it colored in a whole page of history I had only the briefest knowledge of. It isn’t a pretty picture, but does show the political and cultural realities of the time. If the book has a shortcoming, it’s that focuses on big name actors: Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Jingwei, Mao Zedong, and their various rivals, allies, officers, and family members. We get some on the ground details: usually about conditions in cities under siege, horrors in the countryside, and observations from elites. The book was especially interesting since I read Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem about the same time. Having some of that historical context made many references come alive in that sci-fi novel. Recommended, but only for those who have a real interest in the period/place.

Finally.

So yesterday the Bundle of Holding posted that they’re doing a bundle for Aces & Eights, a Western rpg. I always check out the BoH offerings, and I’m generally a sucker for them. Then I read that in this setting, the South won the Civil War and the North splintered into fragments.

And I got a little nauseous. Because I thought about the implications of that. Not about the game; I don’t know it; it might well be awesome and redemptive.

But I’d just gotten through The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist. And that’s all I could think of when I heard that premise: all the horrors and violations of the Whipping Machine, the corrupting hypocrisy it infected in everyone, and the sufferings of the enslaved under a terrorist authority.

The Half Has Never Been Told analyzes just how integral Slavery was to the growth of America. It punches through the bootstrap notions of the rise of American industry. It makes clear how much the North depended on the South to even begin to become what it was. And how much everyone knew that and acceded to the demands of that institution, because they’d invested and bought into it. The book breaks down and analyze the machine that was slavery. It shows how it squeezed efficiencies out to rival industrial development. And it did this via murder, rape, terrorism, and torture. How it consciously and deliberately shattered the enslaved destroying family bonds, corrupting religious connections, and making them into raw materials.

This book changed the way I look at things. It tints statements about economics and humanity I read. It’s amazingly well-written, painful, and compelling. I could say more, but it’s almost more a gut feeling. If you’re at all, even vaguely, interested in any facet of this: 19th Century history, economics, the Civil War, race relations, slavery, or the like, I really, really think you should try this out. 

PLOT: More Sources of Inspiration

Play on Target Episode Round Up

If you like RPG Gaming podcasts, I hope you'll check it out. We take a focused approach- tackling a single topic each episode. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes or follow the podcast's page at www.playontarget.com.

Tanith Lee RIP & 10 GM Echo Authors

Tanith Lee passed away this weekend. She was a great writer- and although I hadn't followed her recent work her earlier stuff (To Kill the Dead, The Birthgrave, Silver Metal Lover, Lycanitha, and especially Tales of the Flat Earth) hugely impacted me. In particular I think everyone should read Death's Master. Her books shaped how I saw the fantastic, what kinds of stories I imagined, and what fiction could be. There's a set of writers that I hope I can echo for atmosphere when I run. I go back and re-read them to think about the kinds of elements and details they use. Tanith Lee has always been high on that mental list.

Also...This is my 991st post. So I'm heading towards 1000. In these last ten posts I hope to do lists and inventories, with some commentary. However posting will be light as I'm prepping for Origins and my Games on Demand sessions as well as awesome guests arriving just before that. I have to pull together possible games for them (so commanded by Sherri). The Post-Apocalyptic lists will return in June! I know I haven't kept up with those, especially with the release of Mad Max: Fury Road. I have the next two in process. Here's a quick list, sans commentary to kick off the race to the millennium.

Also- I'll be running at Games on Demand at Origins in the Friday 2PM and Saturday 9AM slots.  

10 Game Echo Authors

Here are ten fantasy/sci-fi authors who have impacted me and I think affect how I run and the kinds of atmosphere I want to convey. I don't know if I succeed. Maybe it's hubris to even think that. But if I can echo even a fraction of that, I'd be pleased. I'm not talking about story, but about their tone, atmosphere, and imagery. 

1. Tanith Lee
2. Jo Clayton
3. Dave Duncan
4. Steven Brust
5. Howard Waldrop
6. Jessica Amanda Salmonson
7. Roger Zelazny
8. Philip K. Dick
9. Clark Aston Smith
10. Michael Moorcock

Yours?

Nebula Awards Cool News

Earlier this week the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced their nominations for the Nebula Awards. I'm going to raise a cheer that my sister, Cat Rambo, received a nomination for her short short "Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain" from her awesome collection Near + Far. That's pretty damn amazing. That collection as a whole is really excellent and worth reading (in my somewhat biased opinion). Cat taught me to game with old white box Dungeons & Dragons. She's playing in my G+ Changeling the Lost game as well. Most of what I learned about caring about more than numbers in RPGs began with her and her campaigns. You can see a full list of the nominees here on i09. You can see Cat's Amazon page here and her weblog here.

So that's pretty cool.

Reading for GMs: Six Recent Reads in Brief

As I've said before, I usually read things and watch movies with an eye to how I might use that in gamemastering. That's part of the reason I've been working my way through Getting to Yes: How to Negotiate Agreement Without Giving In and What You Need to Know About Project Management. here are six other books I read recently and some thoughts, especially on how they might be useful or not to GMs. 

Tokyo Vice

Written by an American who covered the crime beat for a major Japanese newspaper for many years. It has some truly seamy stuff in it, probably of more use to GMs doing a noir or more procedural game. It can get dark at times and looks at aspects of Japanese life and criminal influence either not covered or else glamorized in other media. The material can be pretty awful and rough at times. I think it is most interesting as a consideration of the way that journalists have to act as investigators. The relationship of the police to the news reporters is complex- and worth considering in terms of how players might have to work and care for NPC contacts. There’s also the consideration of the author as a gaijin- an outsider status he never overcomes despite many years of working in the country. For GMs considering “fish out of water” details for PCs that might be useful fodder.

The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines

This book does deliver at least part of what it suggests- with a listing history of various female superheroes from their first appearance up through the modern day. His take feels fairly comprehensive until we get closer to the modern day, at which point, with the explosion of titles in the early 90’s, he ends up picking and choosing. There’s definitely a focus on mainstream and popular characters, with few other indie or second tier characters covered (Lady Death and a few others). Madrid does tie some insights about the eras of these characters and their depictions as well as a consideration of the double standard of treatment for them. However the result is more anecdotal than analytical. I would have like to have seen some great higher level consideration of the issues and how feminist theory relates to the presentation. There’s some passing mention of most of these characters being written by men (with Gail Simone shown as an exception), but less consideration of what impact that has. Nor what impact the depiction of these heroines might have in terms of male vs. female readership. Not a great resource unless you really like superheroes and want some additional perspective.

Also, the book illustrates the need for a really good editor- the repetition of words and phrases becomes especially irritating when you listen to the audiobook version as I did.

Ready Player One

A decent novel, set in a dystopian future where everyone’s involved in a massive VR game revolving around 1980’s culture. I enjoyed it, though it was pretty light. I did like the contrast between the awful pseudo-cyberpunky world and the VR landscape- governed heavily by concerns about costs and economics. Worth reading for anyone planning on running a game with a VR element- at least to consider how these kinds of things might get played out at the table. How do you create stakes for the players in the simulation setting? How do you connect that with their real selves?

John Dies at the End

Written by one of the senior editors at Cracked.com, I enjoyed this, but not as much as I wanted to. I’d recommend it for anyone running a modern horror or supernatural game. There’s definitely the feeling that the main character may be caught in a horrible and sadistic GM’s campaign. It has Lovecraftian elements, mixed together with a serious helping of William S. Burroughs. I made my way through it, but I will admit to feeling a little fatigue as I went along. There’s a sense of flippancy and speed which means the book never feels like it has any heft. Not unlike Ready Player One above, it feels like a book for the web generation. It never fully resonates with me- it grabs me while I read it, but one I put it down, I detach from it. Still there are some great bits it would be awesome to lift or borrow for a game.

The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies

An interesting deconstruction of structural elements in films. I’ve talked before about how those techniques can be brought to bear ongamemastering. A chunk of the book considers the format of the studio system and the economic and business issues involved- making those less useful. The author’s at his best when he’s breaking down films and showing the multiple readings possible. If you’re a cinephile, probably worth checking out.

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

Meh. I was a little disappointed that the title is more metaphorical than literal. I does offer a nice “on the ground” approach to describing the landscape. For GM’s running anything close to the period it will be useful. It provides some nice details and descriptions which could easily be picked up. Pretty readable; if you can find a cheap copy, pick it up. 

Samurai Library: Useful Books for GMs

THE UN-HIDDEN SCROLLS
I declared it samurai week for myself, so here's a reading list of books I've found useful for doing samurai games. I've avoided film and vgs because I'll cover that elsewhere. Feel free to suggest more.

COMICS
Usagi Yojimbo
Stan Sakai: 26 collected volumes; 144 issues
This series is a pleasure to read. Stan Sakai puts a huge amount of research and creativity into every story. The various anthologies offer an easy way to pick up these issues, but individual floppies include Sakai’s comments on characters, situations, and background. The longer story arcs (like Grasscutter) show complex plots which GMs could adapt. It also offers insight into daily life and particular crafts (such as the issue which involved kite-making). Despite the “ronin” centered stories, it remains useful for all kinds of samurai games.

Lone Wolf and Cub
Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima: Twenty-eight volumes
Strangely the comic that doesn’t feature talking rabbits is the less realistic one. Lone Wolf never stops going to 11. Despite a focus ninjas and ninja-like assassins, it remains compelling. L5R’s Kolat seem closer to the assassins in this series than to conventional ninjas. LW&C has visuals, enemies, and situations which ought to inspire. Take a look at some of the crazy combat situations and complications they throw in. Think about how you might model those in a game. The series does slow down from time to time to present a look at life in this period, but that’s fairly rare. Better in manga form than any of the movies or TV shows.

Satsuma Gishiden
Hiroshi Hirata: Three volumes
This epic can be a mess at times. I slows down into some seriously long info dump sequences. But in some ways that makes it perfect for a samurai GM. I’d call this a combination military & action manga.

Ooku: the Inner Chambers
Fumi Yoshinaga: Six volumes (more coming)
I don’t know how to describe this, except that its nothing like the comics mentioned above. Instead of swords and blood, it focuses on court and manners. It is a manga deeply involved with politics- conventional and gender. It presents an alternate historical Japan where a plague has been killing off the males of the country. Those losses have required changes in the structure and society, not least of which is the existence of a female shogun. The manga revolves around life in the court and the tensions and infighting gripping those who serve it.

FICTION
The Tomoe Gozen Trilogy (Tomoe Gozen; The Golden Naginata; Thousand Shrine Warrior)
Jessica Amanda Salmonsen
These books do a brilliant job of mixing samurai culture, magic, and myth. This is a world where anything can happen. It draws on the legendary character of Tomoe Gozen a little but moves well past that. The books present a clash between the Shinto and Buddhist conceptions of hell and magic worth reading. Gender politics take up some space in the book, but mostly it concerns itself with a powerful heroine facing obstacles mundane and mystical.

Sano Ichiro Mysteries
Laura Joh Rowland: fifteen volumes
I’m kind of a snob when it comes to mystery fiction. More that I have a few genres I really like and most others don’t grab me. I really like historical mysteries for periods I’m interested in (like Ancient Rome). A good detective story takes you through the background and setting in depth. It offers a tour because it has to play fair with you. The Sano Ichiro mysteries take place in late 17th century Japan. And man they can be a slog to get through. I’ve read about a half-dozen of these and I don’t think I’ve ever walked away thinking: “That was a good read.” But that being said- the novels are full of plots, characters, and details worth stealing. The “Magistrate” campaign is a classic form for L5R and other samurai games. You can easily rework many of these stories for your party (assuming they haven’t read them). They helped me develop a couple of nice plot arcs for my Ryoko Owari game. Think of these like junk food and filler, but take notes while you’re reading. Another historical Japan mystery series is I.J. Parker’s Sugawara Akitada books. I’ll have to confess that I couldn’t even get through the first one. They may get better, but I haven’t yet gotten my second wind.

The Scorpion: Clan War First Scroll
Stephen D. Sullivan
I don’t like game fiction, and I got burnt in the early days by gaming novels so I’ve avoided them. However I like the L5R setting so I gave these a try. This first volume works if you’re an L5R fan. It actually manages to hit the role that the Scorpion have to serve within Rokugan. It takes a couple of liberties, but they work in the story. I enjoyed it and felt like the series has real potential. Then I read a couple more and they were really bad. In particular the second volume, The Unicorn, is absolutely terrible. But this first one is good, so that counts for something, right?

NON-FICTION
Everyday Life in Traditional Japan
Charles J. Dunn
This is a fun little book available in a couple of different printings. If you’re hunting for a good book to add details to your samurai game, start here. Dunn covers each of the different classes in depth and then spends some time looking at life in traditional Edo. Really great resource to help a GM paint a picture. You’ll probably recognize a lot of the ideas from here reworked in various games.

Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879
Noel Perrin
It may seem like an off choice given that most samurai games move black-powder to the sidelines. But Perrin’s book examines the culture and control which allowed them to turn their back on a technological innovation. The author examines the stated reasons and advances a few theories about the how and why of it. The book gives insight into the power of symbols and the means by which the powerful maintain order in a society like this.

A History of Japan, 1334-1615
George Sansom
There are a number of good and solid histories of Japan. This one’s pretty classic. He gives a solid academic overview of this vital period in Japanese history. There’s more focus on events and higher level concerns (politics, wars, foreign relations) than cultural issues and details. Still it gives a good sense of the shifting nature of the samurai class and how they exerted control.

The World of the Shining Prince
Ivan Morris
This is a great cultural history, dealing with 10th-11th century Court life. It use The Tale of Genji as its centerpoint, commenting on details from it and illuminating that world. Fun and readable. You know it is a great book when you see passages from it plagiarized wholesale in various samurai rpg products.

Religion in Japanese History
Joseph Kitagawa
A little dry and academic, but covering a topic worth learning about. The first half of the book covers “religion” in the samurai period. It focuses on high level issues (doctrine, control, social movements) over what the faith looked like on the ground. Still if you’re considering having such faiths play a role in your campaign, it presents a good starting overview.

The Samurai Film: Expanded and Revised Edition
Alain Silver
This gives a great history and overview of the genre, pointing out films you may want to track down. Silver has chapters focusing on the work of Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Gosha. Other chapters examine particular genre elements and how samurai have impacted non-Japanese cinema. He also provides a decent filmography. Well-illustrated, I recommend it as a primer if you’re going to start devouring these films.

Lafcadio Hearn and Stephen Turnbull: I won’t go into this, but you’ll probably find lots by these authors- much of it highly useful. Turnbull in particular is an industry. That’s both good and bad. His stuff always has lots of great material in it, but if you read enough of him you’ll end up going over the same research several times.

SAMURAI WEEK

Samurai RPGs: Kami & Katanas (Part One)

Samurai RPGs: Kami & Katanas (Part Two)
Samurai Library: Useful Book for GMs
Bushido: RPGs I Like

Guest Post: Two Influences on my Gaming Life

A couple of friends in my gaming circle generously offered guest posts for this month, to help me round out the year with some different voices and ideas. Today's post comes from Steve Sigety, who blogs at Kaijuville. Steve and I have played together since- I think- the mid '90's. He's run Call of Cthulhu & AFMBE for me, and I've run CoC, GURPS, M&M, d20 and our homebrew for him.

Two Influences on my Gaming Life

Like most people I'm a product of my influences, and that is particularly true of my gaming hobby, whether it means video games, board gaming or tabletop role-playing games. The experiences I've had with elements of popular culture have affected how I play and run RPGs. These various cultural properties have taught me many lessons, and represent many different attributes. In this post, I'll discuss what a novel and a television series taught me about gaming.

If you delve deeply into Robert E. Howard fandom, eventually you will encounter the arguments about L. Sprague de Camp and his role as editor in charge of Conan and other Howard characters and stories. While I understand the fervor -- and when looking at his role in changing and adapting stories in order to gain ownership, I agree with the reasons -- it has to be acknowledged that de Camp played a vital role in popularizing Howard's work in the mainstream of popular culture. One reason that I will give de Camp a pass on this score that he is partially responsible for one of my favorite books, Conan the Conqueror.

Howard didn't necessarily plan to write a Conan novel. Initially, he has submitted some short stories to a British book publisher. Denis Archer returned the stories because the British market wasn't at that time conducive to a collection of short stories, but if he had a novel... After reading that letter, Howard went to work on a manuscript. Archer went out of business before Howard could send it, and it was later printed serially in the pages of Weird Tales from December of 1935 to April 1936 as "The Hour of the Dragon". Published as a novel by Gnome Press in 1950 under the title Conan the Conqueror, it later became part of the Conan series of paperbacks edited by de Camp, starting with Lancer in 1967 through to Ace in the 1980s.

It wasn't until the Berkley Putnam edition of The Hour of the Dragon, shepherded by fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner in 1976, that Howard's version from Weird Tales saw print as a novel. This or the recent Wandering Star/Del Rey edition are the preferred texts, but I can't help but have a special spot in my heart for the Ace paperback. It became one of my favorite books growing up -- I'm fairly certain that I picked it up from among the shelves of books with similar Frazetta covers at the Waldenbooks on the second floor of the local (now demolished) mall. The paperback is comfortable and fun to read -- each page is jammed from header to footer with text but it never seems crowded. The font appears to be plain Times Roman, although a little more rounded and easy on the eyes. I've put books back on the shelf because of an uncomfortable text font. This paperback just seems like the perfect way to read pulp fiction.

A frequent criticism of Conqueror is that it's too derivative. It used the basic plot and some scenes from "The Scarlet Citadel" and ideas from "The Phoenix on the Sword", two early Conan tales. Certainly if an idea is successful once, Howard might use it again in his work. It also seems fair to think that Conan would have faced multiple challenges to his throne. Another criticism is that it's too episodic. While that may be a valid observation, I think it's one of the novel's strengths. This isn't a book full of meaningless dialogue and scenes where nothing of consequence occurs. Leave that for the multi-volume fantasy epics. This book moves. Things happen, and they're directly related to the plot. Al Harron recently discussed some of the plot elements of The Hour of the Dragon on his blog, specifically the motivations of the characters involved in the betrayal. Those were some points that I didn't really think about before.

Conan the Conqueror taught me several lessons about gaming, one of the first being about the episodic nature of events in a campaign game. I frequently try to plan and pace my games with a TV or movie feel, and thinking of each session as a TV episode can help. The scenes in Conqueror feel like different sessions of an RPG. Each separate scene could be fleshed out as a short story, but here they all tie together into the events of the novel. Another point is that the scenes are distinctive and the atmosphere is visceral. The Ace paperback was without illustrations, but they were unnecessary. From Howard's descriptions I can clearly visualize the back-alleys of Tarantia, the hills of Poitain, and the haunted catacombs of the vampire Akivasha under the pyramids of Stygia. The descriptions vividly brought these places to life for me. Finally, this was one of the first books outside of Dungeons & Dragons where I discovered vocabulary words like hauberk, cuirass, poignard, and burgonet. The only other work of popular culture that did more for my vocabulary was the Fantastic Four.

"Risk is our business! That's what the starship is all about!" -- Captain James T. Kirk

As someone who grew up in the late 70s and early 80s, I'm part of the Star Wars generation. I like Star Wars but I've always considered myself more of a Star Trek fan. As early as I can remember, my family and I would watch the syndicated reruns of the original series on TV.

Maybe it's because of my love of history, and Star Trek portrayed "future history". The crew of the Enterprise were real people, (mostly) from Earth, just like us. There was a chance that humanity would make it out of the 20th century and into a future of space travel, exploration, and contact with new life and new civilizations. Despite the dangers being faced, Star Trek shows us an optimistic vision of our possible future.

What Star Trek taught me, with respect to RPGs, was optimism in the face of danger and the value of cooperation. Those could be life lessons as well. It portrayed a future where competent professionals went about their business, doing what they do best, together as a team where each member had value as a person and skills that were valued. They were judged on their expertise and not who they were or what they looked like. The Medusan ambassador Kollos in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" is from an alien species that is so mind-bendingly different in appearance that humans cannot look at them directly without going insane (a very Lovecraftian idea).

One of the best and most obvious instances of this philosophy occurred in the 3rd season episode "The Savage Curtain". After the alien "Abraham Lincoln" is beamed aboard the Enterprise there is this exchange between Lincoln and Lt. Uhura:

"What a charming Negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know that in my time some used that term as a description of property."

"But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words."

Even though there are moments where it flared up again, at least in most of the Original Series prejudice is a thing of the past.

It is also worth mentioning that Star Trek was among the first dramatic TV series to have B-plots that directly impact the A-plot. S. John Ross referred to this in the Star Trek Original Series RPG Narrator's Guide and Ken Hite has mentioned it when discussing Star Trek in interviews. Will the crew discover the vaccine for the aging virus in time to re-start the engines before they spiral down into the planet's atmosphere? That's a great multiple-plot race-against-time trope of the sort you might see in an RPG scenario.

These are two pop culture influences on my gaming life that immediately came to mind. Others would include H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, giant monster movies, Star Wars and many more. What are your influences and how do they manifest themselves in your gaming today?

Howard Waldrop: My GM's Library

 The Set Up Tangent

 I was aware of Howard Waldrop before I was aware of Howard Waldrop. In grade school I recall looking over the shelves of the bookstore we went to and seeing The Texas-Israeli War. It looked like strange book and at that age, I really didn't get it. But I always looked at it and remembered the weird title. Then in high school, I bought most of the new Ace Science Fiction Special series, edited by Terry Carr. That included Gibson's Neuromancer, Robinson's The Wild Shore, Scholz & Harcourt's Palimpsests and Shepard's Green Eyes. But the one I read a couple of time, simply because I couldn't wrap my head around it, was Waldrop's Them Bones. It completely threw me, something so different from what I was reading at the time (PK Dick, Tanith Lee, Harlan Ellison, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Piers Anthony, and so on). Stupidly I never thought to follow up on that book. It didn't even register to me that Waldrop wrote the set up story to the Wild Cards universe, "Thirty Minutes Over Broadway!", even though I read that a couple of years later.

It actually took a strange link up of events to get me to finally focus in and catch what was going on. In 1989/90 I did my junior year of college abroad at American University in Cairo. It was a strange experience. In the second half of the year I managed to pull together a serious GURPS group and ran a campaign which had a solid beginning, middle and end. Since other forms of entertainment: TV, movies or going out to bars had significant barriers, gaming offered a nice outlet. But even more than that, reading. You could find amazing cheap editions of books in stalls on the street- usually in Britsh editions. Often you could find weird authors and a good deal of sci-fi. That's how I finally read all of Dune, a bunch of WS Burroughs I couldn't find in the States, Borges, Amis, and even PD James. These got passed around in our community. There was a girl I realized later I was in love with, Ann, and another I was seriously infatuated with who played in the game, Ellen. From the former I learned to be a more outgoing person, from the latter I got great books.

Strange Stories Read Close Up

The best, by my reckoning, was Strange Things in Close Up, a Legend Books anthology bringing together Waldrop's short story collections Howard Who? and All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past. Ellen didn't like the collection so much- she was an Egyptologist and had some issues with one of the stories. But I loved it- I loved the work and craft that went into every story. I read the collection over three times and then someone borrowed it and I never saw it again. I like to imagine that the copy I got through Amazon used is the same copy, somehow having made its way here by wild coincidence.

Waldrop most often writes alternate history stories, the kinds of what-if and world making things I love. But it isn't that he just comes up with a premise- he absolutely works through it and finds a completely new approach to it. As always I have to bring these things back to role-playing games- and I think Waldrop offers a great model for GMs thinking about new worlds. Not only about finding interesting corners and niches in them, but about how to present that world carefully and subtly to the readers. New worlds require info dumps, and Waldrop's stories never feel like that. Instead they're refreshing- and honestly I've learned about more cool and obscure things through Waldrop than perhaps anyone else. A close second would be Ken Hite, who is the Waldrop of the gaming world- I've always thought that. I didn't know about Izaak Walton's background for I read “God's Hooks!” or anything about Phlogiston before I read “...The World as We Know't”.

I think my favorite story by Waldrop is “The Passing of the Western.” Spoilers: because it is about an alternate Wild West in which Rainmakers battled Robber Barons. But it doesn't tell that story- instead it sort of tells that story in telling about the Western movies made in the early 20^th Century based on those tales. But it doesn't even tell that directly, instead the stories in the form of pieced together articles and interviews from film magazines looking at those movies.

And it works. And I love it. And I love the idea that you can tell a story that indirectly and let the pieces accumulate for an effect. I think that applies fully to comic book storytelling and to gamemastering at the table.

I recommend you read Waldrop if you haven't. Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Night of the Cooters, Things Will Never be the Same: Selected Short Fiction 1980 – 2005 or Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003 are all great places to start. If you like Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmission series or even just smart and remarkable sci-fi, then read waldrop.

Punch-Line

Why am I telling you this? Why am I going on in this way? Well mostly because I wrote an alternate universe story, DC Comic's Project Superman from Flashpoint. Mind you I had a lot of circumscribed and directed plot points from the powers above, but I got the chance to muck with the history. When I went to write it, I went back and re-read all the Waldrop stuff. Which leads me to this picture my sister, author Cat Rambo, took at ArmadilloCon 2011.

That's Howard Waldrop reading the first issue of Project Superman.

Twelve General Thoughts

So a couple of quick things since I've been off the blogging radar for a little while. A general post here and then I'll get back to an rpg post in the next one.

1. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read and look at our story in Legends of the Guard #2. I thank you for your generosity in spending that effort. It means quite a bit to me.

2. So the doctor says that my foot injury is probably a tendon tear in the right heel, or something close to that. I'd gone after a full week of pain, figuring that was a reasonable window to get worried about it. Unfortunately I was informed that these kinds of injuries take two weeks to heal up. On the plus side I have a full license to be a lazy slob and prop my feet up until I recovered.

3. So I suspect that the injury came out of the increased exercise Sherri and I have been doing. We'd been walking 4-5km in the evening as our “dailys.” Sherri's approached this current health and weight loss program like a true gamer: with careful min-maxing, planning out of strategies, and making things into quest tasks. She's finally quit smoking as well which makes everything a little easier. So all good things-- once I'm able to walk around again and actually do some physical activity for a significant amount of time.

4. I love my doctor-- I went in with a list of other general health questions and such and he pretty much walked through the list in under five minutes. He's pretty direct and doesn't go for a lot of extra testing and such.

5. Three additional reasons for the delay in blogging: one, worked on a quick project proposal for something Gene's wanted to do. We'll see if that comes together-- I think we managed to put two really great spins on a classic property for a short story. Two, been sketching out ideas for a screenplay I want to write. I don't know why-- but it is something I figure I can reformat once I've done it into something else. Its built on an idea I put together for a collaboration that never went anywhere.

6. ...and three, I'm working on a new rpg campaign. I've mentioned what I'm thinking about to a couple of people and I've started to sketch out some notes. I'll use Action Cards again, with some twists. I want to talk about some of the things I've picked up from reading John Wick's new samurai rpg, Blood & Honor. Not ideas about samurai stuff (that's not the game), but more about campaign and community building in games. I suspect this game will be closer to City of Ocean...or not, still thinking about the frame.

7. Went to two movies this last weekend (thanks to Kenny & Tammy). I loved Inception, even in those parts where I was aware of the artifice. Nolan does a really great job of building up the visual grammar of the film in order to help the viewers keep track of where they are from moment to moment: there's effects based both on the colors and stages setting as well as based on certain repeated sequences. I can't even imagine what that screenplay must look like or how he wrestled that beast into place. Like Momento he goes in really novel directions-- but I think this is more accessible than some of his other movies. I also saw The Sorcerer's Apprentice which was fun, if goofy. It was a good summer movie in the classic "Hero's Journey" mode but really could have used an editor to cut about ten minutes out to increase the pacing.

8. Hans Zimmer did the score to Inception. In some ways he's become as ubiquitous as John Williams or Danny Elfman. Some of Zimmer's scores feel a little weak (Pirates, Kung Fu Panda, The Last Samurai) but others really work for me (The Ring, The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes). I think Inception falls in the latter category. He has some great moments, particularly the dream-fixed sequences, which have more than a little echo of Philip Glass. Since I love Glass, I enjoy hearing Zimmer do his own take on that.

9. Rock Band 3 will have the ability to rate items in your collection and thereby determine how often they come up in the random sets. That's enough for me. I'll be buying that. That plus new songs makes that pretty much an obvious purchase. I also have to get a second upgraded guitar, but now I think I'll probably wait on that unless there's a huge deal somewhere. Current fascination is with the game Blur on the PS3. If you have a PS3 you really ought to buy this-- it is insanely fun.

10. The New Pornographers album Together is quite good. Not as great as Challengers, but really strong. Explosions in the Sky finally announced they will be going back to the studio to make an album for 2011. Other than that I've been listening to Beirut's Gulag Orkestar again more recently-- that's a solid album.

11. Finished a Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William Bernstein. Really, really good and pretty much exactly what I wanted out of this kind of book. A detailed history combined with cultural ideas and explanations. If I walk away from a non-fiction book with one or two really distinctive new ideas or ways of thinking about things I feel pretty satisfied. I came away with at least one per chapter.

12. Last but not least, with the new diet I've been trying a number of new dishes and recipes, some with more success than others. I made a Beef and Cucumber Salad, with the beef being a kind of fine oriental stir-fry, and it was pretty amazing. The cucumbers became really bitter but complimented the beef and flavorings very well. Not a bland dish. The Shrimp & Spinach Miso soup I made Sherri liked, but I found a little earthy for my taste. It had edamame beans in it which I found odd, but I liked the miso flavoring. Also Sherri liked the Thai Stir-Fried Rice with Chicken and Mint better than I did. It used brown rice which I was worried about, but came out nicely. Still it was fairly bland-- it needs more kick and flavors to it, which I'll put in next time I make it. I think that's a common problem with the Weight Watchers recipes-- they are a little bland to make them workable for a larger population. For example the Chicken with Savory Peaches I made-- which I liked-- will be significantly improved by the application of a doze of red chili flakes in with the ginger and garlic. Lastly we made Southwestern Tacos in the crock pot that turned out really, really well-- simple and on the plan. The trick lies in how well fresh lime goes with beef. Really, really well as it turns out.

On Imaginary Books I Want (as a GM)

Couple of miscellaneous notes:

*Legends of the Guard #2 came out Wednesday with the story by Gene and I. There's an interview with Gene and I on David Peterson's blog as well. I haven't actually seen the comic as the shop was sold out-- I'm hoping they'll have copies back in next week. Anyway, buy a copy if you see it.

*Last weekend I had the opportunity to sit down and play Action Cards for the first time. I've been running it for about ten years, but hadn't yet played it. In the back of my mind I had still been thinking that my players were humoring me by claiming to like the system. But I can say that I really enjoyed it. Kenny's doing some great stuff with the tools and I'm more excited about the Halo Universe setting than I thought I would be.

On Imaginary Books I Want
I mentioned before that I often...um...mostly read with an eye towards game applications. I have a number of pet topics in the back of my mind. Usually that relates to some concept I'm considering in a campaign or story. I'm always interested in history, but usually social, cultural or even economic-- material I think I can actually bring into play at the table. Or perhaps another way, material which I can use to color the atmosphere with passing references. Right now I have games that span several cultural and technological levels, so I look at things from the Ancient World up through Victoriana (for the Steampunk stuff). So a few things I'm hunting for right now.

In my last post I mentioned my dissatisfaction with Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. I found another book that, at least early on, seems to be more suited to my desire to see a decent history of economics and trade in history-- William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World. It is about 400 pages long, and we don't even get to the 20th Century until the last fifty page-- so yes, right on the money for what I want. I'm about a third of the way in at this point and I've learned quite a bit with some eye towards applications for world building.

I'd like to find another good book on how history (and even general social sciences) were done in the past. I've read Ernst Breisach's Historiography and a couple of others, but I'm wondering if there's another and better synthesis of these ideas. Most of the books I've looked at do a wide ranging survey, I guess I'd like to see something which examines a specific period, like the Ancient World, the Dark Ages or even the Early Modern World. How and why was history recorded in these periods, how was it viewed, what uses was it put to? Not to give too much away, but this relates to a concept I've been thinking about for a long time-- a fantastic setting with competing historians battling for control by retelling and revising the stories of the past. As an example, think of people telling different stories about the fall of Sauron in Middle Earth to gain both a political and magical advantage.

On a related note, I've been hunting for a number of years for a good resource for non-Western Historiography. Just about everything I have focuses on Europe and later America. But how was history treated in the Middle East? Byzantium? Japan? India? China? 18/19th century Latin America for that matter. I have a little sense of that in the case of China based on the great historical novels, Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but in some ways that feels like only knowing how history is treated by reading the Aeneid and the Iliad. I'd like a good overview of this field, perhaps with some sense of comparison with Western methods. And I'd prefer something that doesn't get into 20th Century developments as I don't really want to get into the complexities of post-Colonial social sciences.

I have a number of books on Ancient Rome, including some odd-ball academic texts. One of these is Robert Turcan's Cults of the Roman Empire. It actually deals more with the invasion and syncretism of outside cults into the Roman Empire in the later period. While that's interesting, it gives me a little less sense than I'd like as to how the classic gods we associate with Rome were actually worshiped. I'd like to find a book particularly on that topic. As much as anything, I'd like a sense of the rituals and the evolution of rituals. In that regard a book that had a kind of history of ritual and ritual development in the Ancient World as a whole would be really good. Some of this comes from my desire to run a Rome game. On the one hand I'd like to do something like Cthulhu Invictus and on the other hand, maybe a kind of Hellboy, Conspiracy X or LXG set there would also work. I also have a really good idea for how to do a more fantastic version, but I want to come back to that in a later post when I discuss some of John Wick's recent rpg material.

I really enjoyed Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror- though it has been a while since I read it. I heard it suggested that people perhaps invested a little too heavily in it as a source of parallels for present times. In any case, what I'd really like is a book which provides a good, on the ground look at life in the Renaissance, but for a variety of places not just Italy. Part of what I'm looking for is a good comparative look at the cultural and social history of the Early Modern world and a sense of the interactions between the various groups. I'll admit to being lost when it comes to the status and breakdowns of the German states of that period. I'm not as interested in military or religious history there as I am in intellectual and everyday living details.

I have a really interesting book by Jacques Barzun that I work through from time to time, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. It reminds me of my other favorite history book, The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson. I want some books like that but for other places and periods. Particularly I want a good cultural history of Latin America from the 17th to the 19th Century. I'd like something like that for China as well (or for Asia or another Asian region for that matter).

I'd like to find a good and comparative history of cities. I have a couple of those “Life in...” books, but I'd like to see something that provides a kind of cross section look at urban development. What systems arose in the earliest cities? How did those transform over time? How did different cultural, economic and environmental forces affect the development of urban centers in different places. I'm a big fan of urban settings in my rpgs and so I'd like something that has some color to it to perhaps provide some alternate models or cities or at least provide some supporting logic for world creation.

Anyway-- reading suggestions are welcome.

Next books I'm actually planning on picking up: Occult America; Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History; Ackroyd's The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling; and maybe The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World.

Current favorite song as well: “Spaceman” by The Killers.

Selections from a GM's Recent Reading

Sidebar: A couple of quick points to follow up from my last post about Playing Chicken with the GM. To answer a comment Kenny made to me-- the post wasn't done in reaction to anything which just happened in the games. I've had that topic in the back of my mind and finally got around to sketching out some of the difficulties. The terminology we use potentially obscures the topic. For example, we could describe the act of “Playing Chicken” as the player 'challenging' the GM. However I think that gives the impression of a different kind of relationship at the table, with the GM as a controlling power-holder. I've been in those games, but in recent years those have become fewer. I guess there's something to be said for trying to evaluate and judge a legitimate versus and illegitimate challenge: in less technical terms, whether someone is being a d*ck or if they have a legitimate grievance.

I think the topic's a potentially useful one-- but also one fraught with some risks. Looking too hard at this can lead to over-analysis or invite recriminations. Most gamemastering guides have some discussion of the group and social dynamic-- with the common approach being to break players and gamemasters into types. But I wonder what a serious social analysis of the tabletop role-play dynamic would be if executed over time. How would you define that kind of study? Through thick description? Through language or expression analysis? Self-reporting? Would you compare rw interactions to those of the table-top? What comparisons between groups? In some ways I'm not sure if the analysis would be more psychological, anthropological, or sociological.

Me, I just want some tools to help me recognize and deal with problems at the table before they get out of hand.

Reading
I have to admit that even when I read for pleasure, I tend to be looking for elements or ideas which I can incorporate into games or other forms of storytelling. Imagine it as a kind of purpose-driven reading. With that in mind, here are some things I'm working through:

As I mentioned before (I think) I've started back into Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves. I've read it before and even on the second read through I find it manages to create a real sense of dread for me. He has a lot of tricks going on the book, mostly meta-textual, but the work holds together. One of the details that strikes me is that it is a 'horror' novel which works on several levels-- a work about a work about a work. Yet he keeps you twisted and lost about your emotional investment in the levels. I think there's perhaps some lesson to be drawn from that about maintaining atmosphere at the table: where we play in another story and try to elicit vicarious emotions through that. I don't know what the lesson is yet.

I also picked up and started reading a coy of Boy's Life by Robert McCammon (my sister left a copy here when she visited). There's a real King/Straub vibe in it, but a little more distance than in those authors. At first I was pretty sure it wold be a conventional aping of King's style, but then there's the moment when the neighborhood boys develop wings and fly around. I don't know what to make of it. On the one hand, I like a kind of magical realist approach to things. On the other hand, the story hasn't pulled me through enough-- it feels like a series of anecdotes. Also, as with King, Straub and some other authors, there's a nostalgia for a period of time growing up in America that I really can't connect with. I grew up in the 1970's and I'd rather see a fictional work which considers that experience. Or at least which has details I can bring to bear on a game.

Then again, I keep reading these Falco mysteries set in Ancient Rome. I've been working on a couple which I picked up but hadn't yet finished, The Accusers and Venus in Bronze. Next month the Falco Companion, an encyclopedia to the series, will be coming out. I'm pretty excited by that. I still want to do an ancient Rome game and I think I finally have a hook to hang that on-- but I'll come back to that. The thing I appreciate about the books is that they do have strong detail without being to melodramatic like some of the other historical mystery books. I know the details and plots from those I'll easily be able to lift and transform for games.

Related to that is A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by Alberto Angela. I won't say it is the deepest historical analysis, but the author provides a real ground-level view of what living in ancient Rome would be like. I'd love to see more material like that (like perhaps some Renaissance period places). It has a kind of pop style to it, and he switches to anachronistic observations from time to time, but overall I'd say this is an excellent resource for anyone running a game set in this period (or in any like period). I need to find and consult with a historian about a couple of ideas this brought up.

I'm also just about done with Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Unfortunately I read this while grilling the other night and left it out in the rain. It remains readable, but I'll have to throw it away when I'm done. Not that I'm entirely adverse to that. I think I'd tried one of Ferguson's earlier books, but I can't recall anything about it. My hope, and certainly one reinforced by the back cover and a quick flip through, would be that this book would be a nice, comprehensive history of money, wealth and financial instruments. I'm always curious about those issues and how I can place them in the backgrounds of my games-- more as a passing detail than anything else. At the same time when I am doing world or nation building, I don't want to be too exact on details but I also want it to have some logical consistency. Unfortunately The Ascent of Money ends up being pretty cursory about the history-- passing anecdotes and quick overviews on the way to making assertions about the modern world. Feh. Not so useful to me.

I'm also disappointed with the Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies. Mind you that's one of those Barnes & Noble press bargain books. I'd hoped for more, but it does show the general banality of conspiracy and secret holdings in the real world. The Illuminatus it is not, nor even Foucault's Pendulum. I'm more hopeful about the Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols-- though that may turn out to be banal as well. Still, it might prove useful for the Scion campaign or for the Changeling game. The latter is built on a set of ideas about symbolism and a relation to strangeness.

I've also started reading a John Bellairs anthology I found at Goodwill. I'd always seen The House with a Clock in its Walls in bookstores growing up, but I never read it (or either of the two succeeding young adult novels). I recall seeing a brief snippet adaptation of it on a CBS Saturday Morning reading show-- but that was a teaser to get you to read the book. In any case, I'm working on it now and enjoying it-- a nice set of details for modern games. Strangely I'd always had an imagined story in my head about the plot of the book-- which actually influenced some of the plots in the current Changeling game. I'd also never put together that Bellairs wrote this and one of my favorite fantasy novels The Face in the Frost. All of which are fertile and useful things for GMs who use magic in their games.

Lastly and full circle to my point at the start, I've been re-reading The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. It was also at Goodwill for a buck and so I picked it up. Generally Haden-Elgin's work is OK-- providing verbal pattern illustrations-- but has a kind of narrow application. It also seems like the examples provided lack any real subtlety. I'm going to track down some of the supplemental volumes to see if they might give some further insight.

Book Finds for Game Resources

Chicago
This weekend we went into Chicago, and ate beyond my stomach's means. Describing that would be a post in itself. Gene and Lisa are incredibly hosts-- able to move us through an amazing number of things in an organized way while still feeling like a nice, relaxing weekend.

Still reeling from an Ethiopian meal we went to Powell's Bookstore which is apparently close by Loyola. I'd forgotten what a really good used bookstore is like. As always I keep my GM's lens on when out searching for various things.

In and among the sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks I found a couple of Dave Duncan books I was missing, Book Three and Four of “A Man of His Word”. Now I just have to find volume two and I'll be set. Well, close-- I still have a number of other Duncan books I want to track down. I think he's an underrated genre author-- everything he does is solid and interesting, but perhaps not as flashy as some more modern approaches. Still he can be beaten for really thorough world building which he lays out clearly and plays with inventively. I found a copy of John Brunner's The Sleep Look Up to replace the one I lost and Richard Cowper's The Road to Corlay. That latter book I think I remember starting to read, but not finishing. It has a Colin Murray cover which I love so I picked it up for a buck.

The best find among the paperback fiction was Trevor Hoyle's Through the Eye of Time. That's the second volume of a trilogy I read years ago that was tremendously strange in a Stanislaw Lem kind of way. I've had the first volume for years but haven't tracked down the other two. Now I just need the third. I suppose I could go and find them on Amazon, but I like having some stuff I hunt for in places like this. So a good haul-- though no Norman Spinrad, Tim Powers or Howard Waldrop.

For game resource books I found a number of nice and cheap volumes. Oxford University Press has a series of handbooks for various mythologies in nice trad paper format. I picked up the volumes on Hindu and Chinese mythology new for $5 apiece. They aren't deep, but will be useful both for the wushu game and if I get around to running Scion again. Each volume has a 'chronology' of mythic events, a general overview, encyclopedia entries on gods and topic and a list of other resources for investigating the mythos in more depth (including electronic resources). So a very good buy for that price.

Sherri found a great illustrated book on ballroom dancing as well. That might seem a stretch for gaming, but it has a purpose. She's been thinking about activities for her character in the Changeling campaign which would give her a better opportunity to interact with non-Changelings. The PCs have been told by the freehold that they need to find a group or place to join to maintain their ties to the real world. So this will be a nice resource for me if I do scenes there-- since I really have no idea of what is involved. I love these kinds of things and being able to spin out deeper background color at the table.

I'm not sure exactly how I'll use it but the weirdest find was Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film. It is an academic film criticism and analysis book, which means some slogging through. It has been a few years since I've read this find of film analysis and I have to reorient myself. But the gist of the volume is that some recent films (obviously The Matrix and Donnie Darko, but also Dead Man and American Beauty) have a deep undercurrent of Gnostic philosophy (or Cabbalistic or Alchemical which he directly ties in, though I'm not sure he entirely makes his historical case there). Amusingly he references Flicker right away in the footnotes to the introduction. I want to read through this and see if I can replicate his analysis as applied to perhaps anime or even rpgs-- not for anything scholarly, but just to see how loose the theoretical construct is. More importantly I'm curious about how he defines Gnostic themes-- and if some of what he talks about can serve as an undercurrent in a campaign.

The best find at Powell's was another copy of Robert Turcan's The Cults of the Roman Empire. I'd lost my other copy in the fire. For the longest time you could only find a copy for over $100 on Amazon, but it now seems to be back in print. Still the copy I found is in great condition and only cost a little over $10. I still want to do an Ancient Rome game one day-- perhaps the Hellboy Rome game I mentioned before. This book looks at the various foreign cults of the period and how they existed or got integrated into Roman life and culture. It is a nice model for syncretism for that setting or perhaps for other fantasy campaigns. It has lots of great color and detail, with less on the theoretical analysis of the religious shifts. I suspect that will prove useful at some point in the future.

Finally we went to the Art Institute on Monday, which reinforced my general skepticism of a lot of modern art, particularly installations. They had a new exhibit on the Arts & Crafts movement which frankly seemed weak and badly staged. Still out of that I discovered the name Kitaro Shirayamadani. So far as I can tell Shirayamadani was apparently worked at Rookwood Pottery from 1885 to just after WW2. He was Japanese and helped bring or at least worked with “Japanism” in the Arts & Crafts movement. I don't know much about him, but that has to be an interesting story-- being an art and Japanese in Cincinnati during that time. The vase of his they had on display was a strange mix of Japanese color and design with a sort of Midwestern style images of flying geese I believe. The note on the item suggested he went back home for several years in 1915, so I'm curious about that as well. There seems I be a dissertation on him available which I want to track down. It is these kinds of characters that fascinate me-- great for use in games later.

But probably the most interesting thing about the trip this time was getting to see the Thorne Rooms. I don't believe I'd ever seen these before. I've been going to the Art Institute since I was a kid so they either had them put away or I missed them. The Thorne Rooms are exquisitely crafted dioramas of rooms from various periods, fully furnished and decorated. I've done some miniatures and worked with a miniaturist for a while, but these things we unbelievable. The level of presentation, detail and craftsmanship was amazing. On that level they are brilliant inspiration for the table-top gamer. However what prompted me to pick up the book with photos of each of the rooms was something else. I try to read historical source material with an eye to finding visual details I can throw into scenes. I made a bunch of notes about interior decorations and design in the Regency period to use in the Steambuckler campaign. This book has great examples and images of those rooms and rooms of many differing periods and places. That should be great for future travels in the Libri Vidicos campaign, especially if they go to mansions or country estates. Plus the book itself is lovely.

South Bend
Have to thank Rob for pointing out the New Year's Day sale at the local remaindered bookstore. I found some interesting things there-- some real surprises and treats. In and among the comics and graphic novels section I found significant runs of the Doc Savage and The Shadow reprints recently done by Nostalgia Ventures. Each volume collects two stories from the old pulp novels. They aren't done in chronological order, but do have some nice notes and background material in them (including classic illustrations). The first volume of The Shadow anthology, for example, includes a Lester Dent (the creator of Doc Savage) Shadow story. I'd read about that story in the Duende History of the Shadow and it was great to finally be able to read it. I grew up reading from my sister's collection of Doc Savage novels and even reading them now, they hold up as goofy, two dimensional but ultimately interesting. I picked up the first two volumes for each line; the store had about the first dozen of each and maybe in the future I'll pick up some more if they're still there. A great resource for doing pulp adventure games.

I found a good and cheap copy of Jo Clayton's final unfinished novel-- Drum into Silence. It is the final volume of a trilogy I'd avoided picking up before because I wasn't sure if it would ever be completed. Now I have to hunt down the first two. I've mentioned before that Clayton's one of my top ten for fantasy/sci-fi writers. I'm hoping when I finally get to reading the series as a whole it will be worth it. I also picked up a really nice and cheap copy of Umberto Eco's Baudolino. I hadn't cared for The Island of the Day Before and thought Foucault's Pendulum was less original than people gave him credit for. However mention of Prester John on the back of the book made me pick it up. I'd mentioned that legendary figure in my City of Ocean game (another thread which traces back to Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmission).

Finally I picked up Chinese Calligraphy: From Pictograph to Ideogram: The History of 214 Essential Chinese/Japanese Characters. It has a historical look at the evolution of individual characters, but examples. More importantly it presents a nice overview of central cultural concepts and ideas in Chinese society. I hope that will be useful for providing color and background details for my wushu game. I don't necessarily need to be historically accurate, but I want to be able to impart the flavor of the setting.

Research
On a related note, my niece asked for suggestions for her research project for the semester, so I threw her a number of ideas which appealed to me. Whether she'll like them or find them doable is another question:

1. Japanese History: the impact of weapons control and disarmament. See for example the laws requiring the peasants to turn in weapons in order to be melted down for religious statues-- use of these rules to maintain control over the populace. Also see parallel with the period when the Japanese gave up gunpower weapons. Considerations of the impact of that development on later encounters with the West.

2. Marco Polo from the Other Side: A consideration of how other cultures saw Europe when they first met them (China, Japan, etc).

3. Prelude to Star Wars: An examination of literature of the fantastic in the 19th Century-- its prevalence, impact and how that affected later writers.

4. The First Police: British dislike of social control meets the needs of a growing metropolis in London-- how several major cases there led to the creation of the first real police force. Alternately: forensic and crime detection systems in the late 19th and early 20th century: photographic systems, cataloging and so on.

5. How history gets told: a look at a single major event (like the fall of Constantinople or Rome) and how historians in three different eras told the story and defined the causes. A case study in historiography.

6. Music and War: A consideration of the impact of WW2 on classical music: displaced composers, destroyed orchestras, the Nazi purge of Jewish composers and musicians, the soviets use of music as a propaganda tool.

7. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Novel: A look at genre fiction in China-- most of what we take for granted as martial arts movies actually come out of books, both historical (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and more recent (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia) interesting to consider how a culture can have a whole genre of literature that doesn't really get translated outside the country but has a tremendous impact. For America that would be westerns.

8. Puritanical Backlash: A look at the shift in cultural ideals from the Regency Period in England to the Victorian Moral Codes. The former we associate with a kind of permissiveness, but the latter ends up being so strict even today we think of Victorian as kind of restrictive and uptight. Is there a parallel with the modern conservative movement.

9. Paints and Pigments: Historically the secrets of how paints and colors we mixed were tightly controlled by artists. Those chemical secrets allowed them to create certain kinds of effects. Might look at that and how the rise of the chemical industry allowed anyone access to those secrets.

10. Sir Francis Walsingham: the Great British Spymaster of the 1500's.

11. Ready Access to Information: how the advent of the cheap printing press-- allowing broadsheets, flyers and newspapers-- parallels the impact of modern technologies for the dissemination of technology.

12. Any god will do: A look at how the Roman Empire dealt with foreign gods-- integrating them into the culture and adding them to the fashionable trends. The practical means to which the Romans put the gods as a mean of civil unity and control.

13. Corporations as Persons: A look at the Supreme Court decision which granted personhood to corporations in the United States. How that decision came about and how is affected later legal decisions in the US and the development of the American Economy.