September » 2008 » DarrellHardy.com

3 The Old Man’s Story

“The moment the blades came out, the party folks backed off to give us some room. Duels didn’t happen every day, but they were common enough with this crowd that they knew the score.

“As we maneuvered for position, occasionally swinging at each other, we gradually moved to the front of the ship. It was more wide open up there, more flat. It’s what they used for a dance floor sometimes.Â And I started to wonder what I got myself into.

“I’d been a decent swordsman that last time we’d met, though it was more luck than skill that kept me alive that time. But my two years with the sand-walkers had really honed my skills. Those boys don’t mess around when it comes to sword training. And the constant attacks by the dune apes meant I got to practice for real almost ever night.

“But Slaggorn was no ape. And as I found out later, he’d spent the last two years fighting border skirmishes against Myratas. So while I was getting good, he was getting even better.”

2 The Old Man’s Story

“Half way through the party, old Slaggorn tracks me down where I’m shooting the breeze with the baroness. He’s smiling and insulting me without really insulting me — you know, nothing you can officially take offense at — and I just blow him off. I never was much good at the social games those lords and ladies like to play. I’m ignoring him, but I can tell he’s getting mad, so then he starts in on the baroness.

“Now, the baroness, she knows how to play these word games. She starts sparring with him, upping the ante, until she’s got him cornered. He either has to shut up and walk away, or step across that line and say something truly insulting. Either way, with all those fancy folks standing around watching, Slaggorn wasn’t going to get out of there with his honor intact.

“If he were a calmer man, Slaggorn would have graciously admitted defeat, offered a toast to the baroness, and spent the rest of the party on the far side of the boat. But if he were a calmer man, he wouldn’t have been Slaggorn. And he was mad. He didn’t pause for more than a second before he dove across that line.”

The old man finished off his bottle and reached for another.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He insinuated that the baroness had killed her father when she chose to marry the baron.Â Gave him a broken heart, he said. And then he said her father was better off dead, because he couldn’t see what his daughter had done to the family name.

“I couldn’t let that stand. I challenged that pompous ass to a duel. Reckon I had my sword in hand before he even accepted. If he’d said no, I probably would have run him through then and there.

1 The Old Man’s Story

The old man laughed and handed me a beer. I saw three empty bottles already sweating on the floor next to his chair.

“Fallin’ off the roof was nothing,” he said. “Now falling out of the doggone sky – now that’s a fright.”

I smiled and leaned back. That was all the encouragement he needed.

“This is when I was… overseas, of course. I was on one of them flying boats they had over there, like I told you about. Well, this one was the biggest I’d ever seen. It was like an aircraft carrier — huge! You could have three or four football games going on at the same time on that thing.

“Well, the baroness was holding one of her masked balls on this thing, and of course she invited Slaggorn. Out of courtesy, mind you — I told you about the tussle him and me got into back in the desert — nobody thought he’d show up — but the S.O.B. not only shows up, he brings his full retinue and makes a grand entrance!”

He chuckled to himself and took a long pull on his bottle.

Protagonism

I need a protagonist.

He’s male – I’ve got that part – and probably youngish, like late 20s. Old enough to know his way around the world, but young enough to serve as a believable action hero.

I was thinking of making him a cop. That would cover “believable action hero” in one broad stroke, but I don’t know much about cops. I’d have to do research, to write it well, and that’s not where I want to spend my research time.

Maybe he’s just some office schmo. That I could write believably, and a white-collar drone is certainly an archetype accessible to most readers. But as a permanent resident of the office habitat myself, I question a desk-jockey as action hero. Unless he’s out there jogging in the mornings and boxing on the weekends, he’s likely not in the best shape for action heroics.

Unless he used to be more physically active, and still carries the fitness with him. That might work. Especially if he used to work some labor job (say, roofing, since it’s something I know something about) and recently “graduated” (his opinion) to the office domain.

So yeah, I’m doing prep work for National Novel Writing Month. My second attempt at hitting 50 thousand words in a month. Since I’m working on my own project this time, and not a contract gig, I’m feeling pretty good about pulling it off.

Virtual Cheezy Poofs

I miss my old roleplaying group.

Granted, we hadn’t been gaming as much in the past few years, and often went months at a time between sessions, but it’s one thing to say, “Hey, we should do some gaming some day,” and another to say, “Next time we’re back in Minnesota, we should really do some gaming.”

The odds are against it.

So I’ve been looking into “virtual tabletop” software. For those who are unfamiliar with the idea, it’s communication software that lets remote players share a “tabletop” (usually a map or whiteboard) for moving playing pieces on, and usually includes some sort of text-based chat so everyone can communicate. The fancier programs even have voice and/or webcam support, to really give you that feeling that you’re all sitting around the same table, rolling dice and munching Cheezy Poofs.

I tried out a handful of different programs (see the link above if you’d like to do so too). We ended up going with MapTool, which lets you import any image as a map (or a token) simply by dragging it onto the window. When you need a quick map or image or NPC,Â even while playing, you can hit Google Images and have what you need on your “tabletop” in seconds.

I strongly recommend MapTool for all your VT needs. I found only two small drawbacks with the program:

1) You can’t dynamically resize the tokens. If you need to make something bigger or smaller, you have to right click on it and select the size from a drop-down menu.

2) You can’t have multiple maps loaded at once. And when you change maps, there’s no easy way to bring all the player tokens to the new map. (Actually, I suspect there are tricks and workarounds for this issue, but haven’t had the time to dig through the forums and see what people are working on.)

For communication, we all used Skype. It’s great for voice communication (of course) but also has a chat feature that also lets you pass documents to everyone on the conference call. There’s no easier way to remotely hand out the handouts.

Dropping by Tacticon

On Saturday, I decided to check out Tacticon, a local gaming convention. When I looked it up online, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was being held just down the street from our apartment.

It looked to be a good local show, with maybe a couple hundred gamers – though the RPG players were all quarantined elsewhere in the hotel – and a good sized dealer room. I spent more than my share of time in the dealer’s room, where one of the local retailers was having an RPG blowout sale. I picked up Rippers, Edge of Midnight, and the Zantabulous Zorceror of Zo for a mere five bucks each. Awesome!

Chocolate + Grahams + Will Wright = Spores

Living as I do on the bleeding edge of games and electronic entertainment, it seemed only fitting that I test out the Spore Creature Creator mere days before the full product is available, and only a few short months after the Creator itself was released for free.

I’d been meaning to download and install the thing for ages, but got caught up with other projects (like playing Wizard101 – with my kids, of course). Finally got around to it this weekend, when I remembered that (a) it was on the latest PC Gamer CD, and (b) my girls love creating characters. They will gladly play through the visual char-gen process for any computer RPG numerous times, just playing with the different options. (Yes, they will be all over City of Heroes when they get older.)

So… Install… Set up… And immediately both girls are all over it, eager to try their hands at playing God. I installed a second copy on the computer of my beautiful and talented wife, and each girl is studiously playing on her own computer, laughing with delight as she bring her odd new lifeform to life

For the uninitiated, here’s a YouTube clip showing the Spore Creature Creator in action. As you can see, it’s a sort of “Mr. Potato Head meets Dr. Frankenstein” program, in that you combine a bunch of body parts as you see fit, then bring them to life.

Cool, eh?

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