Good Friday

Welp, we've made it through to Triduum, somehow, someway. Kids have the next 10 days or so off school (which means no "remote learning"...thank goodness!) though my wife's work continues. As for my own work: well, I'm through Book 1 (Men & Magic) and on page 26 of 36 of Book 3 (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures).

Oh, yeah: and I'm attempting my second batch of chipa this morning. The first recipe fell flat (literally and figuratively), but the new one holds promise; used this video after the other recipe I had was just...not...good (won't bother with a link). There's a problem with not having queso paraguayo  in this country (at least, not anywhere around my house) but the ratio of yucca flour to corn meal seems to yield the right consistency.

[also my wife, rather unfortunately, just composted all the leftover banana leaves we had from cooking tamales the other day...if I'd known, I would have saved them for baking the chipa instead of parchment paper. Ah, well...]

SO...things are going mostly well and I won't belabor readers with my non-hardships. Best wishes for you to all have good weeks (well, as good as possible under the circumstances) and hope you find ways to be with, love, and appreciate your friends and relations. That's what I'm trying to do...and it's keeping me (mostly) sane.

[all right...this chipa recipe seems to be a winner. Cheese isn't quite right, but it's not bad at all. Puffed up pretty good]

And speaking of insanity: I told the kids about the Tomb of Horrors and now they really want to "solving" it (or, at least, surviving). They were a little disappointed that it was for such high level characters, as their own PCs have pretty paltry XP totals. However, maybe we'll try running it with pre-gens...just for fun.
; )

Making Things Easy

Blogger tells me this will be my 2000th published post to Ye Old Blog...and that tomorrow (in about 30 minutes) will be my 10th anniversary since starting this damn thing.

Ye gods. That's a lot of ...

I suppose it would be appropriate to say a few words about my blog journey thus far. Looking back the main thing that strikes me is how darn ignorant I was when I started this a decade ago. They say, teenagers think they know everything and 20-somethings aren't much better, but at age 35 (when I first started B/X Blackrazor), man, I thought I had it together.

Shit. I didn't even know that much about Dungeons & Dragons back then.

Since then, I've written a couple-few books, learned a little about publishing, learned a lot about the history of our hobby and about the industry that sprouted up around it. And, oh yeah, I lived in a different country for three years and pumped out a couple kids...still trying to get a handle on the whole "father thang" (eight years in and counting).

I've learned, and I'm continuing to learn. If you'd asked me where Paraguay was back in 2009 I probably could have told you "South America." Probably, though I wouldn't have been able to locate it on a map. Now...well, there are probably a few caucasian Americans in town that know more about Paraguay than me, but they probably teach or study the subject at university. And I probably know a bit more than them about current events.

And the last week or so I've been spending my spare minutes (few that I have) reading up on the rest of South America. It's a shitty, depressing subject. Ten years ago I'd already read Confessions of an Economic Hitman and was well aware of how collusions between multi-national corporations and certain first world nations have helped bring about economic ruin and instability to the region. What I've only learned in the last few days is how the groundwork for that kind of rape and corruption was laid centuries ago...how the bullshit economy of Paraguay is symptomatic of the whole damn continent and the business that's been done there since the 16th century. And how even Spain and Portugal, the conquerors/colonizers of Latin America benefitted precious little from the wealth that flowed out of the region. The kings received their quinto and did bupkis with it, and they allowed their own countries to languish and lag far behind the other powers of Europe, the industrial powers: England, Netherlands, Germany, etc. Not only were they corrupt, evil, and inhumane, but short-sighted...and the Iberian peninsula, while not devastated in the same fashion as their former colonies, isn't on any great, stable ground.

Good food, though. I do love Spain. 10 years ago I'd never yet visited it. I've been there three times now and thoroughly enjoyed every minute I was there (except driving in Grenada. Please God never again).

Anyway...ignorance. Ten years has gone a long way to pointing out the depths of my ignorance on a variety of subjects: gaming and game design, fatherhood, world history and politics. I've gotten to the point where I'll (probably? hopefully?) never claim to be a subject matter expert again...there's simply  too much to learn and I've had the shallow depths of my knowledge exposed too many times.

Also, looking back, I see that I've written a lot of dumb posts over the years. This was more common in the early years, back when I was more prolific ("frequent") in my blogging, and I had the time to spew every last dumb thought I had on the internet...and the lack of restraint to prevent myself from doing so. Not that I don't still write dumb things (I do) but I post them to the blog a lot less frequently. I have another 97 "draft posts" sitting on this blog that will probably never see the light of day, and I'm fairly certain that's for the best. Why make things hard on myself, when I could make them easy instead?

Which is one of the reasons I'm strongly considering retiring this blog.

Not that I'd stop blogging entirely...I'm thinking of starting a new blog, one with a sharper focus. Something to futz around with for the next ten years or so, instead of this rambling string of silly rants and lunatic ravings.

Maybe.

All right, that's about all the retrospection I can stand for one night. I will like to say THANK YOU to all folks who've bothered to stop by and read the blog over the last decade. Your readership, comments, feedback, and emails are much appreciated, and a big part of why I continue to write this thing ("crazy" is the other big part). To all of my readers...wow. It's hard to believe you folks can still stand me after all this time. Really. God bless you all as you have blessed me.

Thanks. Truly.

RPGaDAY 2017 #4

From the #RPGaDAY2017 challenge (info here):

[as I'm starting this thing a little late, I shall be doubling up on my daily posts until I catch up. Early posts will be post-dated to the date they were originally supposed to appear]

Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?

Which game have I played the most? Is that a trick question?

I just got back from Paraguay in August of 2016.  Paraguay, in case you didn't know, is a gaming desert. There is no gaming in Paraguay. There's soccer. There's beef. There's poverty. There's a certain lackadaisical attitude towards sexual mores. There's good wine and fairly terrible beer. But gaming? No.

Since I got back I have spent most of my time as a "single parent;" my wife is out of the country two to three weeks out of every month. My evenings are not free for gaming as I have two small children for whom I am responsible. When my wife is in town, she wants my evenings. So gaming? No, not really.

I did play a modified version of Swords & Wizardry with GusL from Dungeon of Signs a couple weeks back. This was over the internet. My six year old would really like to play D&D, but his reading, writing, and comprehension skills aren't quite up to it. Probably in another year or so.

I had planned on going to the Dragonflight this year, but unfortunately a trip we had scheduled had to be changed due to the current heat wave in Montana (ah, yes, global warming strikes), so unfortunately I will be in Missoula the weekend of the convention.

Maybe next year will see some gaming. The last twelve months...hell, the last four years...have been a bit of a crap sandwich in this regard.

[sorry...really can't find anything positive to say on this subject. Maybe that GusL runs a swell game]

Fan Service

While I don't miss living in Paraguay, I've actually come to miss some things from that country (as I figured I would). For example, last weekend I ditched my old propane grill and picked up a cheap charcoal burner so that I could do a Paraguayan-style asado at my house...various cuts of red meat, rubbed in coarse salt and slow-roasted over several hours to be consumed in pieces sliced and shared (along with grilled sausages, mandioca, and fantastic sopa paraguayo baked by my lovely wife). Sure we consumed a medley of vegetables, too (we're a little more health conscious, after all!) but it was a nice reminder of flavors we enjoyed...and missed...from our time down there.

Another thing I've come to miss over the last nine months of American life is quality soccer. Sure the Seattle Sounders won the MLS cup this year (my son and I watched the championship game in a local Greenwood brewhouse), but the professional level of play in the U.S. is, unfortunately, not quite to the standard seen in South America (or, indeed, other parts of the world...the Classico this year was one for the ages!). This became readily apparent when my 6-year old (at the time five) joined his first American soccer team and played like a frigging superstar: scoring 8-10 goals a game, going end-to-end with the ball through multiple defenders, scoring goals from mid-field, one-timing passes like Leo Messi. Jaw-dropping for the other parents at his school (who said he needed to play with the 4th graders and bring some much needed power), and immensely entertaining for Yours Truly. However, it's more a mark that the competition in the States...and over-all player skill...just isn't up to the same standards as in South America.

The trophy is taller than my boy. We've measured.

Plus, my son brings a lot of enthusiasm to the game...after all, soccer is really the only show in town in Paraguay, and it's pretty much all he played and talked about with the other boys while he attended school there for a year-and-a-half. It made for an especially memorable MLS finals as we got to cheer famous Paraguayan Nelson Valdez (the guy on the left in the above photo), who was excellent in the Sounders' championship run.  After the season ended, Valdez (whose actual last name is Haedo-Valdez, and who is known in Latin America as Nelson Haedo) transferred to Paraguayan professional team Cerro Porteno, which just happens to be  my son's favorite pro club in Paraguay. When we visited Asuncion in February, we had a chance to see him in his second game with Cerro and, due to my wife's connections, our children got to meet Nelson in the locker room afterwards. He was was warm and gracious and signed all their jerseys (both Sounders and Cerro) and gave my boy a memory he'll cherish forever. For a fan, one couldn't have asked for a better experience.

I would certainly NOT consider myself any kind of "international superstar," but I know that I have a certain degree of fame (or at least notoriety) for my writing. A month or two back, the kids and I were up at Around The Table in Lynnwood (probably playing a game of Blood Bowl), when Nick (the co-owner) introduced me to some guys who were huge fans of Five Ancient Kingdoms; folks who owned and were playing it and whom I'd never before met. Their enthusiasm and praise was...well, frankly, it was a little over-whelming. I'm just not used to complete strangers gushing over my creative works, at least not face-to-face, and I may have been at a loss for words. I only hope I was nice and humble with them and gave them a good impression (i.e. that I'm a nice guy) and not some sort of aloof asshole.

Yeah, sometimes I worry about this kind of thing. I'm not really anti-social...I'm usually pretty gregarious in social situations. But deep down, there's a part of me that simply has a hard time believing folks really value my creations, despite the monthly evidence of payments being deposited for my PDFs and the emails I receive asking for a re-release of the B/X Companion in print form. And perhaps it is this doubt that has (in some subtle, subconscious way) contributed to me dragging my feet when it comes to actually getting around to re-printing the book, despite the numerous requests.

[which has led to some amusingly ridiculous incidents: like the person selling a copy on eBay for over $1K. I mean, it's not like I'm dead or something!]

And SO...I am doing a new print run of my B/X Companion. Called my printer today, in fact, to get a price quote. This will be a limited run...probably a hundred copies or so...and I'll need to check postage rates before I put the order button on the web site, as shipping prices have gone up the last few years. But the book's price should remain the same: $24.99. Once I have product in hand, I'll let folks know it's cool to order again.

Time to get back into this publishing thing.

All My Life In A Bag

I leave Paraguay, almost certainly for the last time, on Thursday night. It's exciting and nerve-wracking and bittersweet all at the same time.

My son is VERY excited to be going back to Seattle. He is at a good age to do it...he'll certainly miss his friends (he has several good ones here), but the sting will be a lot less than when he's older. How many school chums from kindergarten do you remember and pine for?

This is "me."

It's a little surreal seeing my bag packed. We have a single suitcase for each of us (plus a couple carry-ons with diapers and clothes for a short stint in Panama), and it needs to include all our clothes, shoes, and toys (including books and DVDs). That I could fit my entire life from here into a single bag...wow. Actually, it's not so strange that I have so little to pack (the bulk of my possessions remain in Seattle with my beagles). No, it's that I was able to exist down here for so many years with so little of the "stuff" I consider essential. My house back in the States may be ready for a serious purging of the extraneous upon our arrival.

Of course, not EVERYTHING is going in the big bag. The really important essentials will be going with me in my trusty backpack:

My research books.

I doubt I'll have time to blog anything more before I get back to the US of A...and even then I'll be doing a shit-ton of "transitioning" (getting Diego settled in school and Sofia in some type of daycare arrangement in addition to job searching). But I'll be "making the rounds" and trying to keep abreast of the blog-o-sphere as much as possible.

Wish me luck, folks.

L is for Lance of Lancing

[over the course of the month of April, I shall be posting a topic for each letter of the alphabet, sequentially, for every day of the week except Sunday. Our topic this month? Magical weapons for a B/X campaign. All such weapons are +1 to attack and damage rolls unless, unless specifically noted otherwise. Each of these weapons should be considered unique items]

L is for Lance of Lancing.

This weapon is awesome. You should totally get one.

Sorry. I'm just really tired of doing these. Did you see Dae-Ho Lee's walk-off homer in the 10th inning yesterday to break the Mariner's five-game losing streak and record their first win at Safeco this season? It was great. I love that baseball players can look like any shlub on the barstool next to you, squeezed into an ill-fitting uniform, and still possess the hand-eye coordination to his at off-the-belt, 97mph fast ball, and just clock it straight into the cheap seats (where there were approximately a dozen fans). I watched this video half-a-dozen times which, after a train wreck of a game, is just a bit of much-needed catharsis...I mean...well, never mind. Living with the M's as your home team for forty years is an endurance test I wouldn't wish on any baseball fan. It's nice to see a little excitement in the team and the 62 fans that cared enough to show up for the game. Anyway, I can't actually watch games or anything, seeing as how Paraguay could give two shits about baseball, so highlight videos and (sloooow) running internet updates are about the only way I can suffer the season with other Seattle-ites.

I think I may be suffering from depression at the moment. That is, I may have been suffering from it for a while. Or something. My mind's not really in the blogging game. Yes, I still put out ridiculous, rambling posts, that are too long for folks to read, but...

Really, I just want to go away for a while.

I spent a lot of time reading old retrospective posts on Grognardia the last couple days. It's not a substitute for actual gaming. I spent a bunch of time reading my own posts the last couple days (1770 posted since 2009. Incredible). It's not a substitute for gaming. I considered purchasing and downloading a bunch of PDFs. Didn't...that's not a substitute for gaming either.

It's not the lack of gaming (or the lack of Mariners broadcasts, for that matter) that leads to depression. But even as I've written before that I have anxiety about the future, I've started to really, really dislike the present. This country...I keep finding myself thinking that I cannot wait till I can wipe my feet on the doormat of my final exit from this place. Over lunch today, my wife (who usually tells me I'm too negative...go figure), just unleashed a torrent on how much she hates this "upside-down land" (as she calls it). I just listened to her. When she first proposed the idea of us moving the family down here, I told her "sell me on Paraguay." She said, "they have great juices." I said, "anything else?" She said, "the people are really nice."

I think her opinions on both counts have changed since then.

And yet, this is The Happiest Country In The World. Though I'm not sure what they use as their criteria. Satisfaction with infrastructure can't be part of it. Incidence of child rape can't be part of the equation. Poverty level? Homelessness? Medical malpractice? There have been thousands of folks in downtown Asuncion protesting having to pay taxes the last two weeks (not an increase in taxes or an exorbitant tax rate...just the fact that they have to pay taxes at all)...they don't seem to be particularly happy.

Maybe the poll only reached people with land lines. They sure didn't ask me.

*sigh* I'm irritable again (one of the several signs of depression...I exhibit most if not all of them). I'm going to go eat some Indian food now. Spend some time with my family. Get away from the computer. I don't know if I'm going to keep doing this A-Z thing. I need a break.

Just...a break.

Feeling Tekumel

[FYI: this may turn into a weird, haphazard series of posts]

Just got back into town...um, Paraguay Town (i.e. Asuncion) yesterday morning after a delightful 5- or 6-day (who can count?) mini-vacation in Mexico. Hope everyone had a happy Easter, by the way.

I've got a lot on my mind (as usual) but with regard to gaming, most of my thoughts these last few days have centered around M.A.R. Barker's world of Tekumel, a campaign setting familiar to folks who are familiar with the game Empire of the Petal Throne. Most of those readers fond of frequenting "old school" blogs have probably encountered articles on EPT, though it's not one I've written much about. However, being in Mexico got me thinking of Tekumel, and I've dug out my PDFs of EPT (purchased back in 2014) and took the time to reread them. I find there's quite a bit I'd like to say on them.

But  the question might be asked "what brings JB to the subject of Tekumel in the first place?" Well, Mexico, of course. Some of my readers may be unfamiliar with Oaxaca region...that's where I was over the Holy Week/Easter holiday. Oaxaca is a mountainous southern state in Mexico, bordering the Pacific Ocean. It has some great beaches like Puerto Escondido and Hualtuco...some nice resorts if you're into that kind of thing (I prefer the rinky-dink beachfront hotels with the hammocks), and good surfing. But we weren't at the beach, this trip...we were in the capital (the city of Oaxaca) up in the mountainous center of the state.

Oaxaca is a region of many cultures...eight major ones, by their count. The Aztecs really never conquered it because of the difficulty assaulting cities in a mountainous region (up until the last couple years, even the "good" highway to Oaxaca was incredibly long and curvy, if not downright treacherous in some parts). There is a lot of cultural pride in Oaxaca...they celebrate their indigenous traditions and dances on an annual basis (think "Hawaiian Luau" style at the hotels plus weeklong festivals in the summer), and the place is a center for traditional handcrafts ranging from elaborate brocaded shirts and dresses, to ceramics made from black Oaxacan clay, to elaborately painted wooded figurines, to painting and sculpture and music.

Their cuisine is considered the best in Mexico, which is saying something considering the overall quality of Mexican cuisine, and a lot of American chefs study in Oaxaca. They pride themselves on traditional foods including grasshoppers and grubs, worms and ant eggs...but they also have mariscos (seafood) from the coast, and their own tesado-style of cooking meats. They are probably best known for their mole salsas (you can get four or five different kinds in most restaurants: black, red, green, yellow, etc.) and their mezcal (that's the drink like tequila that has a worm in the bottle...I prefer it to tequila as it's generally smoother, more refined...plus, tequila is the devil). Their food tends to be more sweet and less spicy (they're big on chocolate)...but that's a trend one finds the farther south you go through Mexico and central America.

Religion is a pretty big deal to Oaxacans and they have a couple incredible cathedrals and old monasteries, the stonework and facades of which rival some of the better churches in Europe. The temple of Santo Domingo de Guzman is spectacular, its huge interior completely effaced in gold to a degree that would make a dragon blush...I kid you not (the screenshots I can find on the internet really don't do it justice). Holy Week in Oaxaca was packed to the gills with tourists from around the country as well as other parts of the world.

But the real highlight for me is Monte Alban...the 2000+ year old ruins of a pre-hispanic city-state that sprawls in an elaborate design on the top of a high hill. My son was very excited at the prospect of seeing pyramids and "looking for treasure" and while he didn't actually discover any gold (he did get a few keepsake souvenirs) he was duly impressed. Again, it's hard to find images on google that really do justice to the place...it's so extensive, so well preserved (being situated where it is and abandoned prior to the coming of the Spanish, it was protected for years before archaeologists started excavating in earnest), you really have to see it to take in its magnitude. And these are just the skeletal remains of a nation that thrived and conquered at the same time the Jews were chaffing under the yoke of Roman dominion. The culture that built it was every bit as sophisticated as anything found in Europe or Asia or the Middle East at the time...even without the large domesticated animals and iron/steel production.

Amazing stuff...especially when you factor in all the artifacts and actual treasure that was looted from the ruins and now resides in Oaxacan museums. I took a lot of photos of placards and historical texts that I need to translate into English (I might post some here, eventually). But it was looking through these things, and the museums, and the preserved culture, that got me thinking about Tekumel...because Barker based so much of his world on Mesoamerican culture. And the main thought that went drumming through my head was this:

It is so hard to hold onto one's culture.

Barker's campaign setting is an amazing one. Truth be told it's an infuriating one (to me), because it is so damn good...but I digress (I'll talk more about EPT's setting in a different post).

However, despite its excellence, his date/age ranges feel like their off by at least a decimal point. The premise of the setting extends over a timeline of more than 100 millennia...Tekumel is a lost Earth colony that was terraformed some 60,000 years from now before falling into a pocket dimension and "evolving/devolving" culturally over the course of another 50,000 years into the setting in which PCs find themselves.

That's just an incredibly long time, even in terms of science fiction. The idea that ANY remnants of human culture would remain after such a length of time is terribly far-fetched. Some of my readers are old enough to remember a time before wireless telephones and personal computers and television sets with more than half a dozen channels...and that's a piddling amount of time ago. Consider how different the human race is, culturally, from just 1000 years ago. Hell, consider that the Golden Age of classical Greek culture was only (approx.) 2500 years ago...and the rate at which we've advanced...politically, philosophically, and technologically...only continues to  speed up, the more we grow. 2500 years from now our advances...and changes...in culture should be more fantastic than anything present day folks can imagine.Will we even think like (what we call) humans 10,000 years from now? How about 20,000?

110,000 years? It's hard to even imagine what the next 20 years will bring to the world.

Look at how hard it is to hold onto one's culture. Many of the ideas about Monte Alban are based on pure speculation...we don't even know what it's founders called themselves (for that matter, etymologists are unclear of the origins of the name "Monte Alban")...and that's a culture that lasted for over 800 years, only dying out (well, being conquered by the Zapotecs really) around 750CE. That all the hard information on a culture that lasted for nearly a millennia, and that only disappeared around the time of the European middle ages, can be LOST...just gone!...is incredible. All that remains is a love of eating bugs.

[I should mention that the crickets are pretty tasty...I mean, they're toasted and salted, and if you throw 'em into a batch of scrambled eggs, you'd just think they were bacon. Chile and lime, or rolled into a taco is the common way to eat them, and I have. I just prefer smaller ones, as you're less likely to be picking insect legs out of your teeth]

Even the Zapotecs lost a huge amount of their culture...family trees and oral histories and their natural writing system and religion. A lot of that was, of course, by Spanish design and, while I think we can all admit that violent conquest, repression, exploitation, and cultural destruction are BAD, it's difficult to argue that human sacrifice, an extremely large part of Mesoamerican culture and religion would have been a GOOD thing to retain. In Oaxaca there were laws preventing the depiction of Christ on the cross for a couple-three centuries (despite the forced conversion to Catholicism), because they didn't want anything that had any appearance of human sacrifice as "spiritual." Stamping out the indigenous blood rites was at least as high a priority as digging the gold and silver ore out of Oaxacan mountains.

It is so, so easy to lose culture and cultural identity. Do you know what your ancestors were doing 100 years ago? How about 150?

I know I give Paraguay a hard time...often...but at least they retain their indigenous language (Guarani) and something like 80+% of the people speak it. There's no other country in South America that comes remotely close to that...and we're talking about a country where the poor people are as likely to be white and the rich people as likely to be brown as the inverse (THAT's not something you can say about most Latin American cultures...certainly Mexico's economic caste system can be distinguished in large part by the amount of melanin in a person's genetics). And they only managed that due to iron-fisted, isolationist dictatorships, and a subsequent backwater history (perhaps due in part to the former).

[even so, how much have they lost? Aside from their language...and perhaps chipa and a few handicrafts...Paraguay has no cultural identity of its own. They celebrate nothing of their pre-hispanic history, have no real cultural traditions. Their main "big" tradition, besides tea drinking/sharing, is the asado (grilled beef get-togethers) that occurs weekly, where family and friends gather and partake of their beloved cow meat. Oh, how they love their beef! But cows were only introduced to South Americans by the Spanish...what, then, was their "asado tradition" prior to the conquistador's arrival? Knowing a bit of their prehispanic history, I have my suspicions, but it's really not the kind of thing you can bring up with Paraguayans. As far as they're concerned, it's always been beef on the grill, forever and ever, Amen]

Tekumel is a fantasy world based on a premise that strange cultural evolutions occur when you submit people to a crucible of hardship (like being cut-off from your spacefaring empire, marooned on a resource-poor planet, surrounded by hostile lifeforms). Strange things occur, and strange cultures arise. Whose to say that, given the speculative theoretics of Tekumel's situation, it's impossible that a culture like the Tsolyani could arise after 50,000 years? Well, me, I suppose...but only because I've seen up close how easy it is for a sophisticated culture to disappear. AND I've yet to see a case where the culture that replaces is can in any way match the level of sophistication of the culture that was lost.

Does that make sense? It takes hundreds and/or thousands of years to reach a level of cultural sophistication (architecture, art, government, religion, philosophy, etc.). When that is DESTROYED...whether by natural forces or a savage conquest...it doesn't just get replaced with a new sophisticated culture. Cultural sophistication takes TIME; Oaxaca, despite clinging hard to its past, is only a shadow of what it once was. Like its people, its culture is a mix, a mestizo. Beautiful  in its own way, wonderful in its own way, but hamstrung in part because of its synthesis. Because it hasn't had enough time to cook yet.

Which I suppose would make Barker's world appear even more plausible...it's had the thousands of years to "bake" and (culturally) establish itself. I guess I just find it difficult to believe that the people struggling to survive in the wake of a post-apocalyptic galactic catastrophe could get it together enough that they'd survive the overt hostilities of the Hluss and Ssu. With everything else going against them, how did humans manage to fight off those homicidal maniacs AND build multiple thousand year empires?

I guess that's why it's a fantasy game.

I plan to write more about Tekumel and EPT in the coming few days (and probably more stuff about Mexico), but I also want to do this A-Z Challenge thang (it's a good "blogging" exercise). If I get to everything I want, it's probably going to mean a LOT of text. I better wait till Sunday to post this.

Wino (Whiny) Thoughts

Sometimes it's hard to believe (as I sit here in the heat, at quarter to two in the morning, drinking myself into slumber with a tasty malbec) that we (my family) will one day be leaving this country for good...and quite possibly sooner than expected. Heck, we might even be back by March.

Maybe.

"Hard to believe," isn't really the right phrase. I most assuredly believe I'll be back in my home in Seattle, but it's hard to feel it in your heart when you're in the thick of it. Until you actually walk through your door and the whole years spent in a foreign country fades away like a bad dream. Years. I've been in Paraguay for years now. I remember, back in college, giving my then-girlfriend a lot of shit for her major in "Latin American studies." Why the hell would you study that? I remember teasing another good friend mercilessly for her major in Spanish (though I understood her reasons for wanting to learn the language). Who cares if it's the second most widely spoken language in the world (after Chinese)...why would I ever wish to travel south of the U.S. border?

Why indeed.

As I've written before, it is quite possible I will look back on these years as some of the best of my life, because of the free time I have, and the time I have to spend with my children. I have not used it as well as I could have. I could have done more with my children. Or I could have focused more on my writing. Instead, I've half-assed both...but that comes from a lifetime of shoddy self-discipline on my part.

*drink*

Even so, Paraguay has been good to my family. It has been good for me. I am terrible at adaptation. I am a big-ass whiner and complainer. I have been a crotchety old man, stuck in his ways, for decades. Paraguay has forced me to blow some of that shit up. I'm still a complainer. I'm still stuck in my ways. But I can see that and I know it's a choice, and I can choose to be otherwise. I haven't felt that way since 1997...a long f'ing time ago.

But please don't misunderstand: this country is a shit-hole in O So Many ways. I don't mean to be flip...I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Oh, you can make a lot of money down here if you've got money to invest and it doesn't burden your soul to, you know, exploit human beings. That's not really my bag, though. And I wouldn't recommend it for "missionary work," either. No one down here is really interested in being "saved" (in any sense of the word). In the words of Some Great Street Philosopher: "It is what it is." Oh, I have great hope for change...there are a few people who care about that here; more than a few even. But it is really, really hard to buck inertia...and there are folks actively fighting against progress. They don't want to lose their cash cow.

Have any of my readers seen the movie, Dazed and Confused? Great movie...reminded me very much of my uncles in Montana (and, thus, my very young childhood). There's a line in the film, spoken by a teacher to her students on the last day of school:

"Okay guys, one more thing: this summer when you're being inundated with all this America bicentennial 4th of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating...that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes."

And that's certainly true. But here's the thing: slave-owning, aristocratic, white males were the people who had power, wealth, and freedom in their time...the ones who were in a position to make a change, real true change, within (what would become) their country. Such change doesn't come from "grass-roots" organization...the "grass" is too busy worrying about putting food on their table to create an effective revolution. The Magna Carta was forced on the King of England by the nobility, not the peasants. Francisco Madero, the instigator of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, was from an extremely wealthy family. Jose Rodriguez, the true "founding father" of an independent Paraguay was a lawyer and politician, the son of a tobacco farmer, with a substantial education (a doctor of theology, a master of philosophy). 

Real change, for good or ill, needs to be a top-down affair...though if you don't have "buy-in" from the proles, it's going to be tough to make it stick. And one of the main problems with Paraguay is that most (not all) of the people in power don't have any interest in creating any real change. They simply don't give a shit. They're more self-absorbed than your average American. And that's really saying something.

But even without the corruption and the exploitation and the ignorance and the contentment of people in power to let the country fucking rot while they vacation in Cancun and Miami...even without all that, it's hard for me to recommend Paraguay. It's too hot. It's got too many bugs. It's got epidemics of dengue and zika (year-round mosquitos coupled with standing water/sewage from broken pipes will do that). It's got poverty...bad poverty. The kind where people have simply adapted to being impoverished for generations and even when they're offered housing and job training, they go back to their hovels which is closer to their panhandling gig and use the free housing as a "weekend house." It's got...

Blah, blah, blah. No one cares. Most Paraguayans don't really care. They don't. It's just the big tranquillo way of life. Sleep on the sidewalk after lunch. Piss on the street when you need to piss. Sit around sharing your mate in the shade of the mango trees growing through the middle of your un-paved street. Who cares? Abortion is illegal and the age of consent is 14, and they've got orphanages filled with orphans, and they celebrate when some primary kid is having an affair with her teacher because she's "trading up" and there's still chipa to eat and half a dozen professional soccer teams to watch and a red meat asado being fired up for friends and family on the weekend...if you can get there without someone smashing into your car on the drive over to their house (a house with electrified, barbed wire running around the wall and shotgun-toting security in the guardhouse on the corner watching for motorcycle-riding purse-snatchers).

This place. Get me back to my sky-high property tax 10% sales tax and $5 lattes and $50 tanks of gas and people bitching and moaning about (what my wife and I now refer to as) "first world problems." At least I know the taxes are going to paved roads and funded services (like police) and efficient bureaucracy. At least I can get a draft beer that doesn't taste like Corona Light. Yeah, I won't be able to afford a housekeeper, but I still have a dishwasher and a kitchen without ants. Yeah, I'll have to do my own laundry, but at least the whites will come out white. Do you like bathing your children in water that's yellow-green? I don't. There's one sewage treatment plant (it's new) in the whole damn country of Paraguay. Yeah, it rains a lot in Seattle...and least there aren't people (and cars and highways) being washed away in floods every time it rains. Oh, my throat and sinuses are aching to be away from the constant hum of air-conditioners, 24 hours a day.

Naked, promiscuous, friendly savages...that seems to have been the main draw for Spaniards to set up permanent shop here, on this part of the Rio (prior to the Jesuits coming in to educate and save souls, that is). At least, I don't really find much other historic reason for the creation of this country. Sure they were cannibals, but they only ate their enemies (and really only the enemies they respected). Now, of course, they have ranches filled with cattle and thousands of acres of soy beans for export. And the friendliest (i.e. lowest) tax rate in the Americas. But even if I was fluent in the local language, these things would not be reason enough to stay here permanently. I'd rather have paved streets and drivers who give the right of way to pedestrians. I like chipa, but I'll settle for a pumpkin scone. Or a bagel with lox. Or a bowl of non-sugared cereal. Or any of a thousand other options. You don't get options here. I went to the grocery store yesterday and there were no beans. No beans. Like, a can of beans. When was the last time there were no beans in your supermarket? 

Give me the beans. I need that more than the easy sexual mores.

Ugh. It's 3:30am and I'm still venting. I'm sorry. Everyone's asleep but me, but I've got a busy day tomorrow, so I should TRY to sleep. I had planned on writing about D&D (specifically, the strength stat...don't ask; maybe tomorrow). But I've been drinking wine, and I'm feeling "venty." I know I'm probably being terribly unfair in my criticism here (again)...my son's school, for example, is very, very nice and would be wonderful even if it were somehow picked up and dropped down in the United States (it would be better than most of the public schools in Seattle). There are worse places to live than Paraguay, even if you happen to be poor. Places that are getting bombed on a regular basis, for instance. Places in the midst of civil war. Other places living under oppressive regimes and military dictatorships. I'm sure there are folks around the world that would rather be napping under a mango tree in Paraguay. At least they'd have mangos.

Me, I've got the easy life. This...this Paraguayan experience...will all be ending soon, either in two months or six. And no matter how long it actually takes, I'll be spending a good chunk of the time eating meat, drinking wine, and putzing around on the laptop. Bitching and moaning, probably, as only whiny, privileged people can. Lamenting shit that really doesn't matter, killing time till I can get back home...my real home, the only home I've ever known. A place with ocean and mountains and evergreens.

*sigh* I'm out of wine. Time to call it a night.

You Are Here

It's That Time of Year Again...

...the time of rolling blackouts in Asuncion, that is.

Summertime here is a bitch, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, and once again our home has had the power knocked out, almost assuredly due to everyone in the neighborhood running too many air conditioners. It's so strange...all around you see Santa decorations, Christmas trees (all fake), and snowflake art, but it's all a sham. The "white Christmas" tradition is something that belongs to the northern hemisphere of our planet; there isn't even a word in Guaranii for "snow."

I wonder how many swimsuits will be under fake Christmas trees this year. It's bikini season in the malls.

ANYway...thanks to the independent backup power our internet has (we didn't really get why the cable folks installed it back when we were first getting on-line...now it's readily apparent), I can still blog and use my laptop. At least till the power runs out.

Merry F'ing Christmas, Paraguay.

But, man, it is hot. My iPhone was outside for ten minutes and over-heated to the point of shutdown (just like a Battlemech! It had a little thermometer icon with a frowny face that I'm sure every BT pilot has seen at some point during a heated battle...). And I find myself wondering: do I really want to try to catch a showing of that Star Wars movie in a theater here? What if the power goes out halfway through the showing? What a frustration that would be!

I'm sitting in a cool, dark room at the moment and sweat is still pouring off my face.

Anyway, I'll be heading out to Mexico in a few days and I won't have to worry about it for a bit. Ha! How many Americans consider a trip to Mexico to be an upgrade in comfort, technology, and overall quality of life? But there it is...other than the cartels recently moving into Veracruz and the increase of random gang violence, Mexico is going to be a real treat for my family. My wife asked if it was okay if we could stay a couple extra days. A couple extra days away from Paraguay? Eating great food? Of course it's okay!

Ope! Power's back on. And currently 97 degrees and climbing...an oppressive, humid heat. I'm going to be humming the Heat Miser song for the next few days. "I'm Mr. Green Christmas, I'm Mr. Sun..."

Turning A Corner

I'm back in Paraguay. As before, my time in Seattle feels like it was much too short, and even has a "dreamlike" quality to it...as if I just woke up from a long siesta and I never left this land of red earth.  Or "the Land of Cucaraches," as my son calls it.

However, something's different...I feel, well, not exactly happy, but...what? Satisfied? Different, certainly. As if I was suffering though the Five Stages of Grief these last two years, and I've finally moved into the final stage: acceptance. There's no anger, no depressed resignation, certainly no bargaining going on. I've come to truly accept where I am (and just what Paraguay is), and I'm on board with it. You probably won't hear me making complaints like I have been the last couple years. Well, not at the same rate anyway.
; )

We actually got in yesterday morning, after a two day stop at our nation's capitol (well, my nation's capitol: Washington D.C.). Got a chance to watch the Seahawks shellac the Vikings and see the remains of destruction left from a three day storm that killed a bunch of people in Asuncion, including a two month old baby. Third world problems...they tend to trump most of the petty concerns of the average American. Anyhoo...

I've got a lot of different things I want to talk about, but I probably won't get back to regular posting till Wednesday. The baby's up (though she's mostly entertaining herself at the moment), and tomorrow's a national holiday (for Paraguay), so it will be mostly family time (and getting ready for a holiday trip to Mexico after that). Still, I'll try to get some things up as I can. Though I'll warn you right now, I want to write some stuff about superheroes.

Ope...the other kid is awake. Got to go...can't neglect my parenting duties forever!

Once Again...

...my day was shot to shit by bullshit Paraguayan politics. Today, it was bus drivers striking. Not for any reason having to do with, say, driving busses (like higher wages or better working conditions)...nope just an organized effort by one political faction of the government to fuck with another. Absolutely fuck all to do with busses.

Hopefully, I shall get a chance to post tomorrow. This country.

Doing Things Over

It's been a miserable last few days. The wife got back to town (a good thing) but she was sick when she left and worse when she got back. Both kids have been sick (fevers, sore throats, sniffles), which is tough to deal with when you add in the general heat, mosquitos, and throat-drying AC units. Then the baby's getting her canines in which is...well, let's just say she hasn't slept much and neither have I. Oh, yeah...and my boy was pushed off a two meter high platform by another kid at a birthday party (Friday). Fortunately he didn't land on an arm or leg (or head) but flat on his back, knocking his wind out and giving him some soreness, but no other injury. When I was D's age, I broke bones just rolling out of bed...he's a tough kid. But it was pretty scary, and my wife...well, she was a little beside herself by the whole thing. The kid who pushed D just gloated and laughed over my child's stunned form, and while his parents were apologetic later, they weren't even at the party. In the typical fashion of Paraguayan parenting, they'd simply dropped off their kid with his nanny, who was off eating somewhere at the time rather than watching the action.

[I was recently reading an (American) friend's blog decrying our tendency to micro-manage and "hover" too much about our children these days, but I've seen the opposite end of the spectrum down here, and the end result ain't pretty. Clearly some sort of happy medium is desirable]

I'm not sure how much longer we're going to be down here in Paraguay. There's some stuff going on with my wife's work (the reason we're here), and while they want us here and are willing to pay big bucks (well, by our standards) and seem intent on extending our time here, we're fairly anxious to get back. We're getting two weeks in Seattle in November (we'll be there for the Thanksgiving holiday), and we've been spending a lot of time lately talking about all the things we want to do (and eat!) when we're back in town. It's sad just how much there is to miss in Sea-town...and how little there is to miss here. Cost of living, I suppose. Really big chunks of grilled meat. Chipa (which, by the way, I didn't miss at all when I was home in June). Very tasty malbecs. That deliciously rich cordero dish over a bed of risotto that I order at my favorite restaurant every week.

In the final analysis, it's not enough to keep us here. Hell, nothing they have here (food-wise) measures up to Ivar's fish-n-chips with a pint of fresh pulled Pyramid hefeweizen (slice of lemon mandatory). And I don't even LIKE hefeweizen all that much.

The world's best fish n chips. Sorry, England.

No, we ain't staying. Seattle (and the U.S.) has its share of problems, but the "pros" definitely outweigh the "cons." NOW, one might ask if it was worth it for us to come down here at all? Was it good for us? Did it make our lives better to have this experience? If we had it to do over would we have done things differently?

Much as I miss the mountains, much as I would have liked to be in town for the parade after the Super Bowl win, much as I wish I wasn't going to have to look for a new job (ugh) when we get back...I think we made the right decision to come down here. I think it HAS been good for us, for our family. I think it has been very good for me personally...having to deal with all my personal frustration on so many fronts (most of which I have NOT blogged about), has made me a stronger, hopefully better (and nicer) person. I'm glad we came down here.

But I'm anxious to get home, anxious to get back into my house. Anxious to see the beagles again.

Similarly, I find myself considering the things I've done these last few years with my writing and publications. I find myself of the opinion that the B/X game (of which I've blogged so extensively), may in fact be a game that best balances if it ends at "X." That a game that goes behind 14 levels really isn't needed...not just because of the impracticality involved in advancing PCs into levels 20-something, but because the game itself can suffer when stretched to this scale. Certainly, I'm of the opinion that an 8th level halfling, 10th level elf, and 12th level dwarf are decent matches for any of the 14th level human classes in the B/X game...extending human levels out to 36 makes them far less relevant and the suggested "fixes" (allowing demihumans to advance beyond their maximums or using BECMI-style attack/save bonuses) are poor. While my B/X Companion did the job I intended it to do (providing a rulebook for high level play more in line with the original B/X system), there's a part of me that feels (now) like the thing was unnecessary to satisfying B/X play.

Likewise, there are things I'd have changed in The Complete B/X Adventurer, complexities in some of the new classes that I wish I'd streamlined or reconsidered. It's a neat book, with lots of neat ideas, but much of it feels a bit like a vanity project (despite the work I put into it) adding little value.

However, as with this trip to Paraguay, I'm glad that I did these books. Looking back on them after a few years, there's a lot that leaves me unsatisfied (now), but they were good experiences, growing experiences for me. If I hadn't published them, well, I'm not sure I would have ever published anything. Doing the first book showed me what was possible. Doing the second book showed me it wasn't just a "one time" thing.

The current project...let's just call it "Darkness," for the moment...might look like a small one. And at the physical level it is supposed to be a small one; I'm kind of tired of these games looking more like text books for a college course than like instructions for a game. The challenge is communicating everything I need to within the limited space available, giving the player ENOUGH information to make the game work, and work at a high level. And I'm doing it by breaking a bunch of standard D&D paradigms.

Levels, for example. There aren't any. In fact, in the current (25 page) document, I haven't had the need to use the word "level" even once.

[and no, it doesn't have some percentage based skill system like BRP, either. I told you it's a different paradigm]

The concepts found in the book include things that I've been futzing around with in a variety of (unpublished) projects. I'm just trying to pull it all together to make something that's both interesting and sound, with enough detail to catapult one's imagination, and enough system to see you through. As I said before, given the maximum page count, it's going to be tight trying to meet these goals. The game itself is going to need to be tight.

God, it's going to need some serious play-testing.

In other news, both gaming and Paraguayan, Alexis over at the Tao of D&D has been doing some fantastic maps of Paraguay, as a favor (or rather "a present") for Yours Truly. I can't express how flattered I am by this attention. Remember, this is the same guy who kicked me out of his on-line campaign for being an asshole. And, me, a guy who hasn't even gotten around to buying his latest book. Now that I've shit-canned my South American-based FHB in favor of the "Darkness" project, a guy does me a solid with this beautiful hexagonal rendering? Man, I am a jerk.

So, obviously, I will have to return to the SA-project in a different format...probably as a campaign setting supplement for B/X. Because I just can't let good material go to waste. Waste not, want not, right?

[of course, tell that to my other campaign settings sitting on the shelf: Land of Ash, Land of Ice, Goblin Wars, etc.]

Still, it's Alexis, so I'll try to make more than a half-assed effort.

Oh-oh! The baby's awake again! Got to go comfort! Later, gators!

Slammin' Reboots

I was really hope it to make it through my time here in Paraguay without getting into a Goddamn car accident.

No such luck.

Broad daylight, perfect weather conditions, exercising usual healthy caution for the idiot drivers, and stone sober, someone still managed to slam their Mercedes into the back of my car while I was waiting to take a left turn. A 30 year old engineer who spoke more English than I speak Spanish, and he still doesn't have car insurance. What a jackass.

Fortunately, neither of the kids were with me (was just getting back from dropping D off at school) and my car is still completely drivable. I'm waiting till tomorrow to see how bad my back will be, but I'm trying to drink a lot of water right now. Other than that, it was just another gigantic waste of my time as my entire morning writing period was blown waiting for translators, doing declarations at the police station, shuttling across town to the insurance company building, and yadda-yadda-yadda. The wife's currently out-o-town on biz (as I believe I mentioned), so this was all shit I had to get done in my broken Espanol. I'm lucky we have friends who could help me with the bureaucracy.

However, the important takeaway here is that, even if you do everything right, you can still get hammered in the ass. All that talk about "hey, you could get hit by a bus" is true stuff. Folks should not be wasting their time when it could all end at any moment. I mean, take care of the business you need to take care of to keep your life running smoothly, but don't take shit for granted. The current life is going to end sometime, and possibly in an unexpected fashion.

SO...today, I'm trying to relax a bit, though I've been doing perhaps a bit too much of that the last couple days (literally...like, the last 48 hours). See I found a couple great reboots on the Netflix that I figured I'd mention to folks. Slammin' reboots...if you'll forgive the descriptive.

[there's a gaming point to this part of the post, by the way]

The first one is The Flash live-action television series, which I first encountered back in June when I was in Seattle (mentioned this briefly before). Season One just became available, and so I was able to really start watching the series in earnest, having only previously caught a couple of the early episodes (#2-5). Well, after the last couple nights of binge watching (after the kids are asleep), I'm up to episode 10ish, and am really enjoying the hell out of it. I love it, really, and the Flash was never one of my "faves" in the comic book realm (not even a Top 20). The show is well-paced (both within the episodes and the overall story arc), with great acting, and pretty good writing...at least as far as the characters. As usual, its the acting that I appreciate the most, and...well, it just warms my heart to see actors that weren't even born back when I was reading comic books selling this stuff with such sincerity. These, young, pretty people are treating the geekiest material with the utmost respect, and I really dig that.

I mean, you can certainly say that about that Arrow television show and the Daredevil series and (to a lesser extent) some of the recent Marvel films (though certainly not all of them). But whereas both Arrow and DD have a penchant for falling into sappy melodrama, perhaps in a way to make their violent vigilante protagonists more "heroic," The Flash doesn't indulge in the same kind of...hyperbole? Not sure if that's the word I want. Let me see if I can just explain what I mean:

The Flash is a superhero show. It features fictional shit that can't happen in the real world...dude runs faster than the speed of sound, okay? Likewise, its hero is equally fairy tale: an idealistic kid who's got an equal mixture of idealist romanticism (he's not going around beating and killing "bad people") and driven need to help people by being a "hero" (the Spider-Man "oh, I've got powers and responsibility and a guilt complex because of a childhood tragedy" thing). You're mixing the one ridiculous fiction with the other and it works because you have a very tight premise: an "event" that causes a bunch of "metahumans" to show up, but most of them end up going bad and Flash can use his (also event generated) powers to stop them. Maybe there's some kind of metaphor there about power corrupting individuals, but to me it's just comic book tropes well-translated to live action.

Also dig the comic book trope of general color blindness. Lots of diversity on parade as far as people of color, strong/smart female characters, the gay police captain (awesome), and all of it completely unremarkable...as in, no now in the show ever remarks on any of it. There's no commentary, but there is inclusion. Which is just so damn refreshing, but also very comic book-y (since some things are generally remarked upon in the real world). Cool to see.

Old stories, new and colorful cast.

Anyway, I've got to give props to any show that can make the Weather Wizard a pretty badass villain. I mean, they just came right out and said (in the first episode) "we are going to use real Flash super villains and make them vicious, scary antagonists." I have to confess I skipped ahead to one of the last episodes just to see how they would do Gorilla Grodd, who is perhaps the most feared/respected villain of my four-year old (Diego has many favorite villains, but Grodd is the one that scares him the most). All I can say is: sheer awesomeness. Definitely the coolest combo of CGI and monkey I've seen since Peter Jackson's King Kong, and I like the new Planet of the Apes films. I stopped myself from watching the entire episode (too many spoilers in the show as it was)...so perhaps the ape ends up going down like a chump. But still...Grodd. That's just so dope!

The other reboot I've been watching is Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated with my son. I know I've complained before that "they don't make cartoons like they used to," but there are a couple out there that are quite good, better even, and this is one of them. The writers have done an amazing job creating a living, breathing (if ridiculous) world to surround the roving van of mystery-solvers and their talking dog by drawing on the context of the original series that I grew up watching in syndication. And it's so damn funny...there's so much adult humor strewn throughout the series it's like the creators knew exactly whom to target: parents who grew up with the show (like me) watching it with their small children.

Same crew; VERY different attitude.

Compared to the original fare, this is far superior product. We own a DVD of the old Scooby-Doo/Batman team-up cartoons (because, you know...Batman) and, after watching, it a dozen times, it's lost its luster even for the boy (considerably sooner for Yours Truly). This updated Scooby-Doo has great stuff for everyone...I think it is probably more fun for the over-30 crowd (who will recognize many of in-jokes), but there's plenty of slapstick Scooby-Doo humor that has my child guffawing out loud. Even with plots and "spooks" much more scary/menacing than the original shows. Plus the voice-acting includes some top notch talent: Lewis Black? Patrick Warburton? Vivica Fox? Great, great casting pulls. Plus Frank Welker still doing Freddy after 40 years? Pretty impressive...though it's a wonder he can deliver some of this dialogue without cracking up. This Scooby-Doo is the animated equivalent of Batman '66, and I say that with profound respect. Internally consistent, incredibly clever, patently ridiculous, and written in a way that makes you care about the characters in a way you never did before.

Plus a little bit of an edge to offset the mystery and give one a little "real" suspense. It's interesting, which is perhaps the highest praise I can give a show that's (ostensibly) being marketed to children. I find myself looking forward to the next episode, and the only reason we're not binge-watching it during our waking hours is I feel I need to exercise some kind of parental restraint on the amount of television my child watches.

Anyway...

It sometimes feels like Hollywood (and I say this to mean "the film and television making industry" even though I know it ain't all literally "Hollywood")...it sometimes feels like the big production companies can't and won't do anything more than reinvent the wheel.  And, yes, I've blogged about this more than once. But whether it's a "remake" of an old, previously successful film, or a film hoping to play on people's nostalgia for the past, or some obviously recognizable remake with the names/setting changed and the serial numbers filed off...yes, it seems like it's tough for the industry to do anything "new" and/or "original" and color me fatigued much of the time. I mean, even Flash has been tried before as a live-action series (wasn't that the first use of the "rubber muscle suit?" Or was that after the Michael Keaton Batman?)...and here it is again. At least there'd never been a film or series based on Green Arrow (even if the trope of vigilante crime fighter has been around forever). BUT...

But sometimes a reboot ain't all that bad. Sometimes it actually takes a step in evolving the genre (or at least its predecessor) to a higher level. Not always, of course, but there IS still creativity and quality to be milked from ideas and concepts that have been done before, even ones done to death. Quality entertainment can be had if you squeeze these rocks hard enough...or with the correct and proper application of force. And that's neat...it allows me to have my cake and eat it too when it comes to nostalgia. I can explore and indulge in my nostalgia guilt-free, as what I'm watching is bringing something cool to the table. Yes, there are cool, new things to be found...the past isn't always a dead end.

Which is the idea that I feel can be applied to RPG design. Sure, we can take the old concepts of D20 die rolls and XP and levels and dress it up with a couple new-fangled surprises (a few narrative metagame mechanics of indie-persuasion or a card collecting aspect or whatever...pick your tired "innovation"). We can add settings that take advantage of whatever's the new "hotness" of fantasy gaming. But a lot of it can feel like "why bother" when you're more comfortable just dusting off your B/X set and adding a few house rules to taste. Sometimes it's hard to justify a writing project that does little more than "reboot" an existing game.

And yet, and yet...the possibility exists that things can get cranked up to another level even while being inspired by (and indulging in) a known nostalgia. Isn't that what Dungeon World is?

Actually, I have no idea as I've neither played nor owned/read a single "Powered by the Apocalypse" system. However, I'm willing to take other folks' word for it. The point is, there's hope...hope that one can mine some bit of coolness, a vein of fun out of what might otherwise be a tired concept. BUT it ain't easy to do (duh), AND it may involve something I haven't really delved into yet. Not really, not directly, not on this blog.

And that's love. But that's a pretty involved and complex concept that I don't have a bunch of time for at the moment. For now, just consider checking out those shows. Love plays a big part in both of 'em.

Other Worlds

Yesterday, Alexis mentioned me in one of his posts (just in passing, mind you) and it touched off a nerve. Totally unintentional on his part, I'm sure...it just brought up a lot of negative feelings about living here in Paraguay. I wrote a loooooong post about why there's no role-playing in this country, why there will probably NEVER be role-playing in this country, and much of it was super-derogatory regarding the culture and people here. Very, very rant-y.

Fortunately, I didn't have time to post it. My afternoon was fairly busy as we had a birthday party to attend. By "we," I mean the boy and I. He played with his classmates for three hours while I sat around with the other moms, socializing as best I could in my limited Spanish. It was surprisingly fun...or, at least, not as nail-pullingly hellacious as I feared it might be. And it reminded me that I am often too hard on the people here, even in my own mind...negatively judgmental, that is. Maybe there could be a market for gaming here. The limitations of the Paraguayan people are caused in large part by geographic isolation (compared to most participants in our "global economy") and poverty which bleeds into the country's infrastructure. Yes, there's cultural inertia, but it's not an inherent, insurmountable obstacle.

Anyway, I deleted my original post.

West of India, Southeast of Europe

As I said, the point of Alexis's post really had nothing to do with me. His musing on taking D&D to places that don't ape some sort of mythic Europe is not a new idea (though his maps are more concrete follow-through than most folks get to), but it's still a good idea, and one that doesn't get enough play. Or, perhaps more accurately, enough action. My Five Ancient Kingdoms game did not start off as an Arabian Nights version of D&D, but in trying to create a coherent setting, I found myself having to draw in more and more of the Middle Eastern culture I was studying...once you incorporate one part, others need to follow if you want it to make sense, until you get sucked into adopting wholesale swaths of a region and its peoples. The research itself is valuable to the researcher's personal development and growth, but it can be a real shot-in-the-arm to one's game, too. And, hey, maybe alternate settings will have some appeal to folks outside the usual demographic target audience.

Now if only WotC would bother translating their books into non-English languages.

Okay, got to go. Saturday's not a day I usually have time to post.

Heat Sanitized

It's starting to get hot again.

Scorching Sky.

It's been a couple months of Paraguayan winter here, which basically means "comfortable." I wear pants, and long sleeve shirts make semi-regular appearances. A couple windy evenings, I even had occasion to use a light jacket. But yesterday it was 38 or 39 degrees celsius (over 100 fahrenheit), and today it's at least that, and as we enter South American springtime it's only going to get hotter. I am sweating like a pig at the moment, and have been for more than 24 hours.

I was planning on doing some posting about my recent spat of gaming with my 4 (and a half) year old, posting some (poor) photos I took with my phone, but I got sidetracked by something else: a different gaming project. This was a direct result of a blog post posted to someone else's blog. I don't want to get into it at the moment. Really. What I DO want to do is try writing it up a bit. I'm going to try doing that today. Right after this post. And lunch. And maybe a beer.

I find myself wondering, just in passing, if maybe I've lost my edge...or any edge that I ever had. I don't know if anything I've done could really be called "edgy." I think I'd like to be edgy...it sounds cool. But I think I'm more just a loud-mouth who's "on edge" or...maybe...someone who sets other people's teeth on edge. That's not really the same thing.

I don't think one can really set out to be "edgy;" you (or your creative works) either are edgy, or they're not. Trying to be edgy is the surest way of screwing things up in some way, shape, or form. So if I was edgy (and have lost my edge), it really doesn't warrant me pining over what's been lost because...well, because whining doesn't help and trying won't either.

Anyways, I don't feel edgy these days. I feel nice. I feel "cute." I feel sanitized in a lot of ways...scrubbed of anything dark and dirty, with all the sharp edges filed down. And maybe that's a good thing (or, at least, a "not bad" thing). But...well, for whatever silly reason I place some value on a little edginess.

But it's possible that my brain is just in a "melting" phase at the moment. It's hot, as I said.

*Quick NFL Note* The Seahawks' defense looked pretty terrible against 3rd stringers and 2nd-raters last Sunday, giving up 27 points (not counting the special teams TD). Close analysis shows most of this was due to poor play on our linebacker corps. Which causes me to ask the question, just how important was Ken Norton Jr. to our line backers the last few years, and will his loss to Oakland lead this to be an ongoing issue all season? Uh-oh.

Okay, time for lunch.

Star Wars Toys

I'm turning something D&D-ish over in my mind and will (hopefully) have up a post about it later today. Oh, and I've got football on the mind (of course), and have a bunch of "play reports" (with photos) from stuff my boy and I were doing over the weekend. But I just wanted to make a quick mention about the new Star Wars film.

About a week ago, I was in a Paraguayan toy store and got to check out the new Star Wars 7 sets for Lego. This was interesting to me because, A) I periodically check up on the SW7 news and hadn't heard anything about these, and B) the sets themselves and the characters that came with 'em. Oh, and C) the fact that they seemed to be actually be real Lego sets.

I don't know much about the Paraguayan toy industry, except what I've observed in various retail outlets. It's not unusual to find the same toys found on U.S. toy shelves except the boxes are crumpled or open and have substantial pieces missing. Toys with (English) blurbs on the package that say "Push button for lights and sounds!" and the button does nothing. Or toys that are obviously just a bunch of random pieces from different toys thrown in a box with a bunch of Korean trade-branding and a rough Spanish translation, combining things like Thomas the Train with Lego superheroes (sans accessories) plastic set pieces...basically remnants from some factory floor in southeast Asia that have been shipped to South America to make an extra buck.

The high end toy stores are usually free of these strange train wreck toys...but you'll pay four to five times the price of what you'd pay in the U.S. (and the price tags are often in dollars), and you still find some strange stuff. Like this Lego-compatible toy company from Poland that makes WW2 sets including sets based on the German army, including panzer tanks with Nazi SS officers. I mean it's jarring to me (and I'm not one easily taken aback) to find Nazi Lego toys. At least the little guys have "mean" facial expressions...it's just a little weird (especially considering Paraguay's past relationship with the Axis powers and the stories of the country acting as a safe haven for German war criminals). I mean, can you imagine the American Lego company selling a Lego set for a WW2 concentration camp? With little Lego prisoners? Wasn't Auschwitz in Poland?

Well anyway, toys are different down here. For "Invisible Amigos" (the Paraguayan version of "Secret Santa," though done in the Spring for Children's Day...a day that celebrates the country's war with Brazil-Argentina-Uruguay in which 90% of the adult male population was killed off and children were forced to pick up guns), my son received a "Superman" doll that boasted a not-quite-right color scheme and a giant flaming sword. Obviously non-licensed versions of licensed toys and books (Disney, Marvel, Lego, etc.) are par for the course in this town. But these SW7 lego sets were the real deal. Just released a couple weeks earlier than in the USA.

Different rules.

Granted, it was only the new Millennium Falcon and Kylo Ren's "command shuttle" but the packaging reveals quite a bit: like Rey and Finn being the Falcon's new pilots (thus, apparently, taking over the roles of Han and Chewie in the film), or the existence of a new character named Tasu Leech, an apparent leader of the Kanjiklub Gang, and probably played by Yayan Ruhian or Iko Uwais (two Indonesian actors with unspecified roles, per Wikipedia/IMDB).

Anyway, I find this kind of thing interesting. Okay, back to gaming-related stuff (if only so that I spend less time stressing about Kam Chancellor's hold-out).

Reminds me of the old Burger King posters.

[by the way, I am aware that this isn't really "news" as the Lego sets were released in the USA over the weekend. I suppose I could've mentioned it earlier, but it's not like I'm a journalist or something...]

Regarding His Holiness

Welp, I'm off to meet the Pope at the presidential palace. Not sure we're allowed to take "selfies."

Hopefully I'll have time to write more about superhero RPGs when I get home.
; )

Feliz Dia de la Independencia!

As they appear to do every year, the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay did their annual 4th of July celebration yesterday on the 3rd. My wife was able to wrangle us a couple invitations to the event, so that's where I was yestereve.

What an f'ing travesty.

As my buddy Heron recently accused me of living in a cave filled with hate, I will restrain myself from ranting...I realize that referring to Paraguay as a "hellhole" the other day was grossly unfair (considering it isn't in the midst of a civil war or systematic genocide or the invasion of a foreign power). Suffice is to say that it was little more than another "themed party" at which wealthy locals, politicos, and high-ranking military dudes could hobnob and cram their gobs. There was little actual Americana (and precious few Americans!) present. And...

And if I write anymore it will turn into a rant. The whole affair was depressing and I'm glad the drinks were free.

I will say that I find it slightly ironic that the one event I'd expect and hope to have fireworks had none, considering the fervor with which this country like to blow shit up (we had fireworks going off in our neighborhood every other night this week). *sigh*

Anyway...on a much happier note, I spent much of yesterday reading the entirety of Lowell Francis's History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs series over at Age of Ravens. It's an excellent comparison and analysis of PA trends in gaming, especially in light of world events that have shaped our perception on what might constitute an apocalypse.  Long-time readers of this blog know my fetish with regard to PA games, settings, and fiction, so I'm hardly unbiased, but Age of Ravens has been nominated for an Ennie (though not sure why for "Best Website" and not the "Best Blog" category)...it's good reading and I suggest folks check it out.

[on a related...if depressing...topic, I caught the Vice episode "Cold War 2" last night. Maybe the coming decade will see a return to the classic PA tropes associated with WW3 (a la Twilight 2000) as opposed to alien and Cthulhu armageddons]

Hope everyone in the US of A is enjoying a good, old fashioned Fourth of July weekend. Damn, I wish I could be up there right now...barbecues and beer and inner-tubing and Seafair Parades (Seattle only...sorry) and gaming, of course. July 4th weekends were always good gaming weekends for me, back in the day.

*sigh*

I'm going to eat a Big Mac for dinner tonight.

Nearly Back

Which is to say: jet lag is a bitch.

Got back into Paraguay...what? Sunday? No...Saturday night. Took me a couple days to get acclimated to the environment, but I'm still having a hard time getting to sleep at night (with the three hour time difference). And since the kids are having the same difficulty, well, it's made for some rough nights for the wife and me. Mostly the wife (she had to get back to work, after all). Coffee helps. Lots of coffee.

I say "acclimated to the environment" but I'm not talking about the climate. No, I'm talking about settling down once again in this third world hell hole. Okay, yeah, that's an exaggeration...there are plenty of worse places to live (even on this continent). But the contrast between home and here is so great, the initial splash-shock of arrival is pretty extreme. We were not looking forward to leaving Seattle for Asuncion. As we drove to our house from the airport (I in a separate vehicle from my family because of the amount of luggage...we'll be here till November at least), I found myself sinking into a kind of depression as the realization of the situation sunk in. It ain't no Kansas, Toto.

Thankfully, that depression was (mostly) dissipated after 24 or 48 hours. There's a trick to living here: you forget the things you might miss as you adapt to the environment. The "lack of conveniences" fade into the back of the memory and "life as usual" takes over and you stop pining-whining. Besides my mother-in-law is with us and she brought a shit-ton of good eats/ingredients from Mexico with her...the cooking the last couple days has truly been exemplary stuff.

And there are other perks to life here: if you're a fan of association football ("soccer," as we call it in the States), and there's any kind of big tournament in which you've got an interest (like, say, the Women's World Cup or the Copa America...both going on right now), you couldn't do much better with television coverage than Paraguay. Futbol is a passion of most Paraguayans, and from the live TVs above the checkout lines in stores and supermarkets, to the general enthusiasm of the people (you should have heard the screams and fireworks when the national team beat Brazil to advance to the semi-finals)...well, that's a lot of fun. Plus, if you like the occasional slab of steak served to you on an iron skillet, Asuncion is probably only a little behind Buenos Aires in that department.

[tonight is Argentina versus Paraguay in the semi-finals by the way. Considering the Pope (who is Argentine) will be visiting Asuncion in the next couple weeks, the game could be said to have religious implications for the country...ha!]

ANYway...I'm back, more or less. Sorry to the folks who were worried or thought I was dead (and thank you for the concerned emails). No, nothing bad happened to me...I was simply, selfishly, enjoying my vacation. God, I was enjoying it. It was so good to be back in Seattle. Other than my daughter taking a little time to get used to it (she's spent eleven of her first fourteen months in South America, after all), the whole family had a helluva' good time. Gosh...family friendly brew-houses? Baseball and (real) pizza? On Demand cable TV? Self-serve checkout machines at the grocery? Paved streets? Customer service?! Oh, my! Not to mention my very own bed in which I slept like a baby every night.

[I strongly recommend anyone invest in a Tempurpedic mattress. I know they're expensive, but your back will sooooo thank you in the long run. The wife and I first got one close to eight years ago and...oh, man, do I miss having one down here. They just don't have shit like that here!]

Just good living. And it was an absolute pleasure to be able to spend time with family. My crazy brother is a little less crazy when I'm around, my mother a little less stressed and a lot happier with the grandkids toddling about her house. Hard to believe that in 24 hours, one can be more than a quarter the Earth's circumference away from the place you grew up.

*sigh*

Anyway: blogging stuff. Lots to get to. I spent much of my relaxation time reading and researching super-hero RPGs and comics and the genre in general. That will be an upcoming post. Continuation of the Kloane War Knights series, of course...though I'm not sure anyone missed it (in reading back over the blog role for the last couple weeks, it appears the whole "space gaming craze" brought about by White Star may have cooled somewhat, at least with regard to posting. Not sure what that means). I'm tempted to get back to Crowns of Blood as well (had the chance to catch up on my Game of Thrones watching, and I've some thoughts on that). A couple of SciFi related things are on my mind (conversations with Steve-O and my older child's current fascination with the old Star Blazers cartoon is responsible for this).

[just as an aside, my Frontier Space micro game has been downloaded nearly 500 times since it went up. Reading over it again, I find that I really, really like it, especially the combat system. I kind of want to develop this into something, or at least play test it. Also, after re-reading Knight Hawks I find I'm not terribly interested in converting KH in any way, shape, or form...which means the starship skills in FS probably need to be re-written. Yet another "something to do" on the list]

Finally, my most recent obsession of the last couple days (besides watching soccer) has been the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and some ideas/concepts the thing has given me. I want to blog about that this week as well.

But all that's going to have to wait a bit: it's market day (only comes one day a week here) and my suegra is finally awake and coffee'd up (she's got the jet lag, too). More later!
: )