(I posted this in a slightly different form in another forum. But, I liked it so much that I posted it here, too.)

When we were growing up, my parents worked very hard to help us overcome racial barriers. Part of this was the forbidding of racial humor…unless it was about your own race. Because, honestly, most racial jokes are really just about someone doing something dumb and aren’t really connected to the specifics of that race at all. So, all the Polish jokes that we heard were retrofitted to be Puerto Rican Jew jokes. Honestly, I’m fairly confident that I know all the people who are both ethnically Puerto Rican and ethnically Jewish, and, if there were any doubt for the audience, you could always tack on “Swedish”. Then you knew that you were safe. So, you know, you’d get stuff like this:

How many Puerto Rican Jewish Swedes does it take to change a lightbulb?
What’s a lightbulb?

Or there’s the one about the Puerto Rican Jewish Swede inventing copper wire….

But the point that my parents were insisting upon was that you should only laugh at yourself.

Now that I’m older, I look at this and I think. There are two categories of laughter. You can laugh at someone, or you can laugh with someone. (There’s laughing near someone, but that’s really just a variation of laughing with someone. I think.)

Laughing at someone is an act of war. There’s a time and a place for that, just that there is a time and a place to fight. But, laughing at someone is a way of fighting. It pushes people apart.

Laughing with someone is an act of peace. Indeed, it is an act of fellowship. It can be a way of acknowledging an unfortunate truth, or sharing a common experience, or even sharing pain. But all of this is in the context of togetherness. It draws people together.

Now, sometimes, you can laugh with someone about something that is actually painful. Christian’s immigrant joke[*] is one good example of this. Another is the practice of telling each other stories where you were horribly mangled as the result of the actions that you took in the story. We laugh together about the strangest things.

So, how does this relate to stereotype humor? I submit that stereotypes exist for a reason, which is that there is often a seed of truth in them. Just to pick an example, jokes about geeks are funny, because geeks often act in the way depicted in the geek jokes. I consider myself to be a geek, and I laugh the hardest at those jokes. “I cast…Magic Missile.” Right? Now, I’m not a nasally, whiny, basement-dweller. But I am part of that group, and so I know that there’s truth in that depiction. Heck, I know it because I have been a basement dweller.

Now, if a fellow geek shares that joke, it’s fine. If a friend who is a non-geek shares that joke, then it’s fine. If someone is using that joke as a weapon against me, then it’s not.

I wonder if racial/gender/stereotype humor works like that. It’s not that we should shy away from it per se. Personally, I tend to think that Jewish jokes are pretty funny, and rabbi jokes remind me of my grandfather. If you can laugh with me, then we’re fine.

Just don’t laugh at me.

[*]Here’s the joke that was being cited:

A family of poor immigrants are applying for citizenship. The border patrol officers, a mean bunch, tell them that if they swim across a deep, ice cold lake, they’ll immediately make them citizens. So they all set out to do it. The father makes it. The mother makes it. The teenage daughter makes it. But the little boy flails and drowns. The mother starts crying.

“What are you crying about,” says the father, “He was just a bloody immigrant.”

Funny? Yes. But, it’s an uncomfortable sort of humor, isn’t it?

(This post was cross-posted to the Forge.)

Yay! More playtesting! And today, since I’m getting into the groove, I’ll actually do it up as a full-blown AP report. Aren’t you happy?

Quotable

“I just want to see him get along with his daughter….”

“And not backhand her across the room?”

“Yeah.”

Play Report

Tracking this story is a bit difficult, especially as a large portion of the mental effort for the game has been tweaking rules and such. Plus, there’s the ongoing mysteries to which we, mere players, are not privy. Allowing for that, I’ll try to give a brief outline of the story so far.

The intro to the case was Debbie Sandberg’s coming to see Robert George, a DEA desk jockey. Agent George had been involved in Debbie’s arrest for drug dealing, but he had dealt fairly with her (or so she thought). Debbie suspected that her probation officer (Courtney Jackson) had stolen her address book, which still included a number of old drug-dealing contacts. She wanted Robert to recover the book for her.

Well, it’s been several sessions. In the intervening time, we’ve uncovered a possible drug-dealing ring headed up by Jackson (the P.O.), a murdered security guard that worked for Jackson, a couple of ugly love triangles, and discovered Robert’s estranged daughter is smack dab in the middle of it all. Oh yes, and she is pregnant with the child of the murdered security guard, who may or may not be dirty.

And there’s a stash of cocaine worth a million dollars hidden out there somewhere, and everyone wants it.

As Crystal said last night, “Why do we do this to ourselves?” Or, to quote the movie Brick, “There’s not much chance of coming out clean.” Nope. Not for any of them. Not even Robert George.

And last night, it got worse.

When we last left Robert, he had established that, indeed, Courtney had stolen Debbie’s address book, which lends a great deal of weight to Debbie’s claim that Courtney is running a drug ring. During this session, Robert went to follow up on another lead. He had discovered that Debbie had been in contact with her old cell mate, Stephanie, and he got the address where Stephanie had gone.

But first, he ended up meeting with Steven Sandberg, Debbie’s husband, who doesn’t know anything. Poor guy. He fell for a cute skirt, and now he’s starting to pay the price.

Robert refused to tell him anything, but since he is a DEA agent, Steven is starting to suspect something.

Then Robert went to where Stephanie had gone: her boyfriend’s house.

Turns out that the boyfriend’s “house” is actually a trailer in a local trailer park. Debbie’s car was there, too. Robert noticed a joint in the ashtray of her car. Then, when he knocked on the door of the trailer, his daughter Mollie answered. Upon seeing him, she slammed the door and locked it.

Debbie came out and tried to wrap up business with Robert so that he would go away and leave them alone. Instead, Robert tried to get into the trailer. When Debbie stood in front of the door, he pushed her out of the way and forced his way in. There stood Mollie, gun in hand, pointed at him.

Then Robert drew on her. “Let me in,” he said. Then he moved forward, pushing her gun hand to the side.

The gun went off. Outside Debbie screamed.

Mollie tried to bring the gun back in line. Robert chopped at her wrist and then backhanded her. For a split second, he had a flash of doing the same to her mother. She fell backwards, hitting her head and lying quite still. Alive, but unconscious.

Stephanie was in the living room with a shocked look on her face. Laid out on the coffee table were several firearms. Apparently these women were going to war. But why?

The answer would have to wait until another day. We declared the session over.

The Setting

I don’t want Dirty Secretsto have to be about the noir genre in its look-and-feel. I wrote Legends of Alyria to try to get at the roots of fantasy without needing to have orks and elves and things like that. In a similar way, Dirty Secrets isn’t about femme fatales making eyes across a smoky nightclub. You can certainly do that, but I wanted to bring it closer to home.

Thus, my default setting, which I phrase like this: Your town, last week.

The idea is that you should set your story in your town, drawing on your knowledge of the geography and underside of your town. As a result, our game is set in Peoria. So far, that’s been working quite well. There’s the silly fun of messing around with familiar locations in our town. But, more significantly, geography becomes an easy way of communicating character to each other, simply by defining where different characters live. So, for example, Steven and Debbie Sandberg are fairly well-off. So, they live up in the Lynnhurst subdivision. (Actually, they live in Ralph’s house. That was fun.) Conversely, Bill Cornman and Mollie George were living together in one of the projects on the South Side, and Jeff’s trailer was located in King’s Park, next door to Billy Dennis. The players are all familiar with these locations, and there was general nods of agreement when characters were situated accordingly.

Some System Insights

How about that final scene? Pretty nasty, wasn’t it? Yeah, we didn’t like it, either. In fact, we really don’t like Robert at all. He is going to have to do something fairly impressive to redeem himself in our eyes.

I was the opposing player for the final scene. In certain respects, that makes me the “GM” for the scene. I decided that I wanted to mix some things up a bit. First, I introduced Mollie into the scene, which no one was expecting. Her relationship with her father is quite possibly the only humanizing point about Robert right now, and I wanted to put it under stress. Next, as we headed into conflict, I decided to put Robert in a situation where he and Mollie were forcefully opposed to each other. Having two of the Violence sync up was helpful as well.

That’s when I figured something out about my game. Conflict resolution can be tricky to win, especially if you’re opposed by a player who is good at Liar’s Dice. But, if you’re willing to sacrifice some dice, you can dictate at least most of the Violence in the scene. So, in this case, my Violence die and the public Violence die were both “6”s. That means that, if the final bid was for dice with a face value of six, there would be two points of Violence required in the narration, regardless of who won. And so, that’s what I did. I bid in 6’s, which I was hoping to win, I admit. However, even though I lost, I was able to shape the corresponding narration through the Violence Dice.

Then, I pushed the conflict with a Violence conflict. This is similar to the “Challenge” round of regular Liar’s Dice. Whoever makes the initial bid locks the face value of the bid. Aces are not wild for this round. Then, when it is called, instead of losing dice, the difference between the bid and actual number of dice is the amount of Violence produced by the conflict. This portion of the conflict resulted in Robert’s actual attack on Mollie. Again, even though I lost the conflict, I was able to shape the outcome through Violence.

Now, there’s an important point to be made here. The rules state that the winner of the conflict gets to assign the Violence to any Character that he wants, and that it must be the result of Character agency. What that means is that you can win a conflict and assign the Violence to your own character. In this case, it means that Crystal could have chosen to assign that Violence to Robert, if she had wanted. This allowed her to choose the thematic statement being made with the Violence. Would Robert sacrifice himself to be a loving father? Or was the job more important?

His answer was very clear.

This was nifty because, while the game has certain random requirements that are dictated to the players, it still allows a lot of freedom to guide the story within the parameters given. Ultimately, the outcome of that final scene was informed by the dice but chosen by the players. Which is exactly the way I want it to work.

More Research Help

We tested the Research idea from the last post about drawing random words or phrases from a hat. It didn’t really work out well. I’m thinking that I’ll try with a preset word list, or something. So, the quest still goes on for a good research system. I’m open to ideas.

Recently, I had a shocking revelation: all in all, I’m a pretty low-class guy. For example, the “classical” arts hold some appeal to me, but right now, I’m way more interested in turntablism, particularly from artists like Portishead (“Only You”, “Wandering Stars”) or DJ Krush (“Kemuri”, “Still Island”). There’s something about the improv or semi-improv assembling of music from snippets of other music that appeals to me. It’s musical collage.

But, see, I also really enjoyed this entry from DJ P. (It helps if you realize that he is gesturing at the other DJ, who is off-screen to the right.)

Hmm.

Of course, it’s a particularly urban form of low class. My friend Bryan has been trying to turn me into a hillbilly, which is certainly not high class, but he does not approve of my current interests.

Originally, there was going to be a serious point here, but I’ve changed my mind.

I’ve added a helpful Terror Alert Level to my links page. Now, Bert, Ernie and the rest of the Sesame Street gang can tell you exactly how scared you’re supposed to be.

For those who are interested, my wife Crystal is blogging again. Her blog is entitled “Organized Chaos Called Home“. Go read it now!

(This playtest account was cross-posted to the Forge.)

We playtested Dirty Secrets again on Monday. (Our regularly scheduled playtest on Thursday night was cancelled, due to sick children.) In this session, we finally got around to resolving a Crime, which is probably the major system of the game that hasn’t received any real testing yet. This gives me the opportunity to elaborate on how this works.

The Crime Grid

One of the goals of Dirty Secrets is preserving the essential mystery about the key Crimes that have occurred during the course of the game. This is an attempt to preserve the shock and surprise of reading a detective novel when the Reveal finally happens. At first, I was keeping track of Facts which incriminated various Characters and whatnot, but then I discarded all of this in favor of a different system.

Let’s face it. The average detective novel is ridiculously convoluted, and rarely are they set up as a whodunit. Rather, the shock of the Reveal is usually not because of the logical direction of the evidence, but rather because of the relational context in which it occurred.

To this end, I came upon the following system for Crime resolution. At the beginning of the game, there are a certain number of Crime sheets (similar to Character sheets) available for use during the game. One of them has to be a Murder. In addition, there is a Crime grid set in the middle of the table. This is either a 3×3, a 3×6, or a 6×6 grid, depending on the length of game that the players want. At the beginning of the game, a counter is randomly placed on the Crime Grid. After each Investigation scene, whoever won the scene’s conflict gets to move the counter a certain number of spaces in a straight line, based on the intensity of the conflict. The player then gets to write down a Character name in the space where the counter ends up. The counter has to be moved across all empty spaces. If this isn’t possible, then the player tries to resolve a Crime. He selects one of the available Crimes and then rolls two dice, which will give Grid coordinates. This is where the counter ends up. If the space is blank, the Crime goes unresolved for now, and the player writes a name in the space where the counter ended up. Otherwise, the Character whose name is in the space is the perpetrator of the Crime. The players then use the currently established facts to justify this outcome.

As the Grid fills up, it gets harder and harder to move the counter legally, thus forcing an eventual resolution of all Crimes in play. Once all Crimes have been created and resolved, the game ends.

Currently, we are playing with a 6×6 Grid. This seems to be working fairly well, although it definitely produces a “novel-length” game. We’re about five sessions into this story, and we’re just finally resolving our first Crime. The next time through, I’m definitely going to need to try with a smaller Grid and see what happens. I’d like this game to be able to be used for a quick, pick-up game. Five sessions isn’t exactly a pick-up game (he noted dryly).

In play, it all worked out rather nicely. The investigator (Robert George) was breaking into the house of his client’s probation officer (Courtney Jackson) to see if she had stolen his client’s address book. (This was the Crime that started everything off.) Crystal had been angling for this scene for a while, so she had maneuvered the counter into a corner of the Grid to make it easier to trigger a Crime resolution. She also pushed in the scene conflict, thus forcing the counter to move two spaces instead of one. The conflict, by the way, was getting past the large German shepherd that was guarding Courtney’s house. Eventually, George was triumphant, allowing him to enter and search the house for the book. Crystal then narrated finding the book and ended the scene. Because of the location of the counter, Crystal was able to trigger a Crime resolution. She selected the theft of the book and rolled. Oddly enough, the counter landed on a space with the name “Courtney Jackson”. So, officially, by the rules of the game, Courtney had indeed stolen the book. Otherwise, we would have had to justify how the book had ended up in Courtney’s house.

Of course, we had established the importance of this address book earlier, since Robert’s client (Debbie Sandberg) was a major drug dealer at one point before being caught and going to jail. According to Debbie, Courtney is running a drug ring out of the Probation Office and wanted the contact information in Debbie’s address book so that she could expand her network of contacts. Although, now that I think about it, I wonder if it has anything to do with the large shipment of cocaine that went missing just after Debbie was thrown in jail….

Anyways, the point is that it was very easy to justify why Courtney had stolen the book.

So, at least for the first time out of the gate, the Crime Grid seems to be working. A good thing, too, because this is the system that I’ve probably been the most nervous about. It’s a tricky thing to balance player authorship and GMful play on this side with a desire to create complete audience surprise on the other side. I think that I’ve managed to do it, but this is a system that will need a lot of testing.

Division of Authority

In a previous post, I said:

However, last night, I realized that I also need to be looking for the techniques that we apply during gameplay. After all, the three of us have gamed together for quite some time, and there are a variety of techniques that we apply without really thinking about it. If the success of the game relies, even in part, on these techniques, then I need to be sure that I know about it so that I can communicate them in the rules manuscript. I’m not just testing the rules; I need to observe the emergent behavior that the rules produce and be able to explain to a stranger how to produce similar effects.

One major area that has turned up has to do with the division of narration authority. Who gets the final say on what? We had an extensive discussion about this in the wake of our last playtest. This was really helpful, because it finally helped me put words to what I’ve meant the game to do. Essentially, the game relies on a balance of two factors.

The first factor is an explicit assigning of narration authority to certain players. The investigator player has final say over the status and actions of the investigator. The current opposing player has final say over everything else. However, there is a Challenge rule, which states that any narration by any player may be overridden by the unanimous consent of the other players. In other words, if the rest of the group doesn’t like what you’ve said, then they can veto it. (Hat tip: Spione and Universalis) So, at any given time, it should be clear who has the authority to say “Yea” or “Nay”.

The second factor, though, is what I am currently calling “friendly trespass”. What I mean by this is that any player should feel free to narrate anything, even if it wanders onto someone else’s territory. In fact, all narration should be almost a free-for-all of ideas and suggestions being pitched out by all players. Of necessity, this will result in someone entering into an area that is controlled by someone else. But that’s okay; it’s “friendly trespass”. Of course, it should be understood that the appropriate person can say, “No, I have a better idea” and overrule your idea.

In other words, the game plays as a free-for-all, with an explicit authority structure to fall back on when necessary.

So, for example, during the German shepherd conflict, Crystal wanted Robert to have a flashback to pitching for his Little League team when he was growing up. This was to justify Robert’s being able to hit the dog with a chunk of concrete. This was within her authority, since she is the investigator player for our game. However, Gabrielle and I weren’t buying. We accepted Robert’s throwing the concrete; we just didn’t think that Robert was enough of a team player to have been a baseball player, and we didn’t think that it was really an appropriate time for a flashback anyways. Thus, the rest of the table vetoed a portion of Crystal’s narration.

This requires a functional game group, but I’m finding that it works quite well in play.

My Research Scenes Are Awful

And now, an appeal for ideas. Dirty Secrets has several scene types to encompass several broad types of action. One scene type is the “Research scene”. This is when the investigator goes poking around a crime scene or in records of some kind to find out some raw information. From a structural perspective, the point is to introduce some new facts to give the investigator some direction when he is stalled out. Here’s my dilemma. I don’t want a research scene to allow for a massive data dump. There needs to be some constraint. On the other hand, it doesn’t really make any sense to use the standard conflict system for a research scene. Trust me; we’ve tried. So I need a simple research system.

What I currently have is this: the investigator describes the actions that he is taking to research and lays out the sort of information that he is looking for. The opposing player then makes up 1d6 facts for the investigator, based on the investigator’s narration.

This works okay, but it feels boring. Any ideas on improving this?

What Now?

The next step is to finish the current story that we’re playing through. After that, I figure that I’ll write up a basic playtest draft, both to gather my scattered thoughts and to allow others to take the game for a spin. At that point, I’ll probably solicit for some blind playtesters and do some more testing myself.

I’m feeling pretty good, actually. The game feels like it is coming together well.

In May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen opened fire on student protestors and demonstrators. Four students were killed, and nine were wounded. Of the four dead, two were not even part of the demonstration.

In the wake of this event, Neil Young wrote the song “Ohio“

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

But this post isn’t about Kent State. Rather, it’s about rock and roll.

Some of my Christian brothers oppose rock music for a variety of reasons. I’ve heard rock decried because of the backbeat or the instrumentation. I’ve also heard it decried because of the focus of rock music on anger and rebellion.

I’m not really not going to go into much depth here about the first category of items, as they have been addressed elsewhere. Rather, I want to focus on the second category.

Anger. Rebellion. These are bad things, right?

Right?

Well, are they?

The Bible does not teach that anger is wrong. Rather, the Bible is concerned about the reason for your anger and the results of your anger. Look at Mark 3:1-6.

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Jesus was angry with the Pharisees, because they were more concerned about “catching” Him than caring for the sick among them. To the Pharisees, this man was just a pawn in their ongoing duel with Jesus. To Jesus, this man…was a man.

Thus, He becomes angry.

Casting Crowns followed in His footsteps when they wrote their song “Does Anybody Hear Her“:

She is running
A hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction
She is trying
But the canyon’s ever widening
In the depths of her cold heart
So she sets out on another misadventure just to find
She’s another two years older
And she’s three more steps behind

Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even knows she’s going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?

She is yearning
For shelter and affection
That she never found at home
She is searching
For a hero to ride in
To ride in and save the day
And in walks her prince charming
And he knows just what to say
Momentary lapse of reason
And she gives herself away

If judgement looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we never even met her

What about rebellion? This one is trickier, I admit. As such, I grab for the dictionary:

Rebellion: 1 : opposition to one in authority or dominance 2 a : open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government b : an instance of such defiance or resistance

There are God-ordained authorities that must be respected as such. To rebel against them would be wrong.

However, there are other “authorities” in this world that must be rejected. These range from the pressure to conform to the world (Romans 12:2) to the demonic forces in authority that tyrannize this world (Ephesians 6:12). Is it okay to rebel against these things? Is it okay to refuse to yield to the pursuit of personal pleasure and affluence? Is it okay to cry out against oppressive tyrants that crush the weak?

And is it okay to have music that expresses these emotions?

I think so.

Neil Young was angry when he wrote “Ohio”. In this song, he spoke for the dead, unjustly killed, and he spoke against the rulers of the day, who had permitted such a thing to happen. Is this something worth being angry about?

Casting Crowns was angry when they wrote “Does Anybody Hear Her”. In this song, they speak for the rejected and neglected that we as Christians are failing by our hypocrisy and, as such, they speak against the pressure to conform to the “good conservative Christian” stereotype. Is this something worth rebelling against?

A few weeks ago, we came across this passage during family devotions:

Moreover, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God. The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from Beyond the River. And whatever is needed–bulls, rams, or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, or oil, as the priests at Jerusalem require–let that be given to them day by day without fail, that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons. (Ezra 6:8-10)

Upon reading this, Crystal asked, “So, does that mean that the temple was rebuilt using government grants?”

I blinked at her.

“Yes, I guess that it was.”

Indeed, it was a government grant from the Persians.

The application of this lesson I will leave as an exercise to the reader.

My grip slips. With a cry, I fall backwards. My arms scrabble for a hold but find nothing. Arms windmilling, I tumble through the sky, towards the river.

“No!” I shout. I come back to myself. I am still clutching the cliff’s edge. For now, I am safe. But my grip is slipping.

A shadow falls on me. It is my friend, standing above me at the top of the cliff. I would reach out my hand to him, but if I let go, I will most certainly fall.

“Help me!” I beg.

“Hurry!” I plead.

“Do something!” I demand.

“You’re going to have to let go,” he says.

“You’re crazy,” I say.

“There’s no way,” I tell him.

“It’s really quite safe,” he says. “I’ve done it myself. It’s the only way out of this mess that you’re in.”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “You’ve got to help me.”

He sighs. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll help you.”

“Ouch!” I yell. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you,” he says. He steps on my fingers again. “I figure that this is the only way to get you to let go.” He starts jumping up and down.

My grip is slipping.

I yell for him to stop. I curse him.

My grip is slipping.

I scream in pain as he starts hammering on my hands with a rock. “I thought you were my friend,” I yell.

“I am,” he says, and then it is over.

My grip slips. With a cry, I fall backwards. My arms scrabble for a hold but find nothing. Arms windmilling, I tumble through the sky, towards the river.

I hit the water. It is very cold.

Then, suddenly, all is light.

“I guess that wasn’t so bad after all,” I say, massaging my sore hands.

“See?” says the friend. “It would have been easier if you had believed me sooner.”

I nod slowly. “I guess you’re right,” I say. “I guess you’re right.”

Today I found out that a friend of mine is finally moving away from Peoria. His last day at work is Thursday. He’s not here today, so I’m not sure when exactly he is moving, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that it is this weekend.

To quote Good Will Hunting, I know that he is moving to “see about a girl”, and truly I wish him God’s blessing as he pursues this noble calling. And yet, I had hoped that, perhaps, he would change his mind and begin his married life here in Peoria.

I know that I’m supposed to be happy for him, and somewhere in my mind, I guess that I am. But really, all I’m feeling is this dull, twisting knot of pain in my chest.

(cross-posted to the Forge)

Last night we playtested Dirty Secrets some more. Came across some more rules bumps, as expected, and lots of areas that need more clarity. I still think that I’m on the right track. I know how I want most of the things to work; it’s mostly a matter of expressing it in words.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to discuss the last scene that we played through.

Robert George is our investigator character. He’s a DEA agent doing a little moonlighting for some extra cash. Even though he is in his mid-40s, he has not advanced in the ranks. Indeed, he is essentially a desk jockey, who is unconsciously living out some of his power fantasies through pursuing this investigation. In our previous session, we had established that he once was married, but his wife divorced him about 10 years ago.

Actually, it was worse than that. Robert came home one day and caught his wife in bed with another man. Robert chased the man off and got into a screaming fight with his wife. During this fight, she told him that she had set things up so that he would find them. He had abandoned and neglected her, and so she wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt her. Enraged, he slapped her across the face.

Their five-year old daughter saw it all.

For the last ten years, Mollie hasn’t said a word to her father.

Until this night, when she called her father, because she was in trouble. Robert found her in the apartment of her boyfriend, who was lying on the floor, shot through the head. That’s where we picked up our story last night.

We didn’t get very far last night. We started too late (mostly because of a last-minute beer run), and we ran into some rules snags. But finally, we found Robert back at his apartment with his daughter Mollie. It’s 3 a.m. Mollie’s boyfriend and father of her unborn child is dead. Mollie and Robert haven’t spoken in 10 years.

Now what?

It was heart-wrenching to me. Crystal (narrating for Robert) described his pathetic efforts to fix some food for Mollie. He put together a bologna sandwich, made from cheap bologna, white bread, and squeeze mayonnaise, sprinkled with crushed potato chips, served on a styrofoam place. He tried to make some chamomile tea from some old loose tea that a co-worker had once given him. Of course, he fumbled the tea ball, so there are tea leaves floating in the tea, which he served in an old, chipped mug.

He wasn’t trying to be cruel, you understand. What made this all so heart-wrenching was that this was the best that he had to offer.

Even the tea was significant. The co-worker who had given him the tea was an “attractive woman”, who had been hoping that she could maybe start a relationship with Robert. But he was oblivious to what was going on. Now, at least for the audience, the tea is just one more reminder of the failure of this man as a human being.

So, Robert serves this meal to his daughter. And then he proceeded to pump her for information. Because, even now, the case still has a priority. He wants to try to reconnect with his daughter, but he can’t quite get out of “work mode” to really do the job.

When we got into conflict, both Crystal and I dialed our own Violence dice to 1, where they couldn’t hurt anyone. The third Violence die rolled a 1, which put it out of play, for which we were all happy. Afterwards, Crystal admitted that she had prayed that the public Violence die would roll a 1, because none of us could bear the thought of Violence in this very fragile scene.

Still, it hurt to watch.

I’m not sure what my point is, really. But this was such a deeply meaningful scene to me, I had to share it.

At last, the threatened house tour emerges. Because YouTube only allows a maximum of 10 minute clips, I had to break it into two parts. There’s a bit of overlap so that everyone can remember where we are.

Part 1

Part 2

Plus, a brief dialogue clip starring Arianna and Isaac. I was showing them how each side of a dialogue is actually filmed separately and then cut together in editing. This was the result:

Dialogue

And, um, yes, I made up most of the dialogue.

Yesterday, I received a package in the mail. That wouldn’t necessarily be all that surprising, except that the package was from Jerusalem!

My prize from this contest had arrived. Now I am the proud owner of “Dice Games Properly Explained” by Reiner Knizia. (Yes, that Reiner Knizia.) This has already been helpful in my current Dirty Secrets development, as it mentioned a variant rule for Liar’s Dice that will possibly be quite helpful in the game.

Thanks, Yehuda!

First, if you haven’t seen “300″, you really need to watch the trailer. Go on; I’ll wait here.

Now, based on that trailer, it would be hard to expect a reasoned, historical presentation the Battle of Thermopylae. “300″ is not about history; it’s about the myth of the 300 Spartans, the ultimate last stand, that we love to tell over and over. So, “300″ homes in on those features, not the uncomfortable history that actually sits behind the story.

And is this really a bad thing? When I went to see “300″, I was expecting an uber-macho film with over-the-top action and crazy costuming. And that’s what I got: Spartan supermen with tough guy lines.

Of course, the fun bit is that some of the tough guy quotes were actually said. “Come and get them” has to rank up there with the best that Schwarzenegger has given us.

I must confess, though, that I left the movie theater uncertain as to what I thought of the film. There were several areas that concerned me.

The first was the sexual explicitness of the movie. There were several scenes that were fairly explicit, including one with rampant sexual deviancy. Now, I understand why those scenes were there. (Well, two of the three; the whole thing with the Oracle was actually gratuitous.) However, I wish that the filmmakers had decided to achieve their story goals in other ways. As it is, I’m hesitant to recommend the movie as it stands.

I’m also concerned about the violence in the film. Let me be clear; I’m not throwing out the use of violence. I spoke highly of Apocalypto, which was another violent film. Also, the violence in “300″ was highly stylized, reflecting its comic book origins. There was lots of blood, but it was more like Mortal Kombat than true battlefield carnage. And yet…what does it say about our society that a popcorn movie is full of such violence?

Also, I had to laugh when the movie tried to set up the Spartans as the guardians of freedom and liberty. Since I’m too lazy to do my own research, I simply refer you to this link, where some of the actual history is discussed. I’ll let a quote suffice:

The Spartans were a highly militarized, brutally hierarchal, and ferociously violent civilization. And that’s the opinion of a Greek who is very friendly to the Spartans. They often refused to fight in foreign wars — like the Ionian Revolt — because they were afraid of their own slaves revolting.

For that matter, what about the Spartan childhood which was depicted fairly accurately by the movie? The physically imperfect are killed at birth. At six you are taken from your family to live in communal barracks, where you are brutalized until you survive your rite of passage. Nice place, eh?

So, yeah, I’m not really buying “Sparta the free”. Or, as was said by Joshua BishopRoby

300 is a movie about a city that intentionally turns its citizenry into psychopaths and the one moment in history when that turned out to be a good idea.

That all being said, there were some positive things about “300″ that I’m going to point out.

First, there’s something irresistably attractive about someone who refuses to be corrupted, even if taking the high road is harder. Leonidas is easy to like for this reason.

But, even moreso, I want to call attention to Gorgo, his wife. Now, my understanding of Greek history and culture is that there’s no way that a woman would have had the sort of sway that Gorgo has in the movie. Chalk it up to another anachronism. But I think that Gorgo is a wonderful picture of what a good wife can look like. Gorgo is a submissive wife, to be sure. She was trying to be a helpmeet to her husband, not pursue her independent goals. Yet, at the same time, no one could accuse Gorgo of being weak. On the contrary, she was tough as nails without ceasing to be feminine.

As a result, her husband values her opinion greatly. In the trailer, you can see the brief exchange between Leonidas and Gorgo, right before he kicks the Persian messenger into the well. He has drawn his sword and has it to the messenger’s neck. But, before he takes irreversible action, he looks to his wife. You can see the conversation play out in their expressions.

“What do you think, dear?” Leonidas says. “Should I kill the Persian messenger and plunge us into war? I’m thinking that I should, but I wanted to know if you were seeing something that I’m missing.”

“Hmm,” Gorgo says. “No, you’re right. Better go ahead and do it.”

Now that’s a wife.

So, what did I think of “300″? As a raw action film, I rather enjoyed it, and I think that there are some valuable examples in the film. Just, don’t expect too much of it.

I happened to be searching YouTube for something else, and I wondered if they had taiko videos. They did! Here are a few:

Shamisen vs. Taiko–This is particularly melodic

Kodo–Irodori

Urban Taiko