A Dark And Quiet Room

This weekend is the Go Play Peoria Summer 2008 minicon. We will be meeting from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Samaritan Ministries building at 2400 W Altorfer Drive in Peoria. We’re asking for donations to help offset the cost of food and such.

If you’re interested in boardgaming or roleplaying, or if you’re just wondering what in the world I’m babbling about on my blog, come on out!

Emily wrote up this Actual Play report of A Flower for Mara from GenCon. That means that I don’t have to! Hooray!

Plus, it was a really good game. Very emotionally intense, especially since the group decided that Mara had killed herself. Yeah, that was pretty hard. But still, good.

Crystal and I are expecting again. She is due in April. So, she’s feeling lousy, which is good news, because that means that the baby is doing well, but it’s bad news because she’s feeling lousy.

For those of you keeping score at home, this will be number 6.

Since I’m the oldest of five children, I haven’t thought of five children as being a large family. Five children is a normal family.

Six…six is big.

Because I didn’t stick around for Sunday, I didn’t have a chance to contribute to One Cool Thing I Saw at GenCon 2008. But it’s okay, because Josh Roby covered it for me: Zombie Cinema.

This was the first thing that I saw at the con that actually blew me away. Essentially, Eero Tuovinen took a simplified version of Tim Kleinert’s The Mountain Witch resolution rules and crossed them with the corruption track rules from Reiner Knizia’s The Lord of the Rings cooperative game to create a snappy zombie story boardgame. The mechanics are simple enough to be taught quickly, making it a natural gateway game into These Games Of Ours; however, there seems to be enough depth to be a lot of fun for veterans as well. Even better, the rules are delivered with boardgame-style rigor, leaving nothing to handwaving.

And the kicker. Eero is planning on releasing additional board overlays, allowing the same basic mechanic to be used in other genres as well. Then he said, “Heist game” and I was sold.

I have yet to play, and so it’s possible that the luster might be rubbed off after stepping through a story with these rules. And yet, I don’t think so. In terms of overall coolness, this has my vote for Best New Hotness from GenCon 2008.

Okay, so there’s a lot that I should write about, and I’ll need to schedule the time to do it. I ran A Flower for Mara and several games of Dirty Secrets, met neat people, talked game design, and actually got some sleep. Plus, zombies!

But, all that for later. For now, I present you with this, the ultimate gaming table.

Christmas is coming….

Since I’ve started talking about our recent spate of murders, I figured that I’d toss another thought out.

I’ve been tracking the Jessica Wesson reports via the Peoria Journal-Star website and putting associated links on my Peoria 2008 murder map. So I noticed something that I want to point out.

First, a couple of quotes from this article:

John Meisinger, who retired in May as Richwoods High School principal, said he was sick with sorrow upon hearing news of Wesson’s death.

“She was such a fun-loving girl,” said Meisinger, who described Wesson as a big personality, who was quick to give a hug and was genuinely interested in people’s lives. “You see so much potential in these kids. It hits you like a pit in the stomach.”

Though small in stature, Meisinger said Wesson was one who wouldn’t stand for something she didn’t believe in.

“She was feisty, too,” he said of the woman. “She spoke out and spoke the truth. It’s just too sad it had to end this way.”

“It scares me to death,” said Jennifer Ryans, a mother of two teenage girls, 17 and 13, as she stood in her front yard on Westminster Avenue, across the street from the school, as she watched officers crowd around the body. “It makes me scared for my girls.”

And again, from this article:

At a vigil for Jessica Wesson behind Sterling Middle School, the same place where the 18-year-old’s body was found Wednesday morning, more than 100 adults locked hands and created a circle around several dozen children.

It was a symbolic embrace of the community’s youth, which speakers at the vigil said are too often left without love and supervision.

….

When the adults were told to look away from the children and into the Central Peoria community, it was a show of guardianship.

Carl Cannon, a former prison guard who led the vigil with his commanding voice, told the adults to repeat his words, to shout them into the neighborhood.

“Criminals, can you hear us now?” the adults repeated.

“Enough, enough, enough,” said the voices in unison, rising with each syllable.

What’s the picture that’s being painted here? A sweet girl, struggling with her past yet a vibrant part of her community, is struck down by a Criminal. You know, those Evil People who lurk in our cities. People? Nay, Monsters! They roam the streets at night, seeking to catch those who wander from the safe zones.

But now, look at the quotes from this article:

Jessica Wesson was seen hours before her death last week getting into a car with her alleged assailant, with whom she had an “unconventional relationship,” said Kevin Lyons, Peoria County state’s attorney.

…

Lyons said authorities learned of the relationship through friends. There had been no violent episodes between the two reported to police, but the prosecutor said Wesson’s friends confirmed that aspect.

“She was a young lady who may not have had the skills to resist (Coffey),” Lyons said, noting the larger man was trying to force the smaller Wesson into a lifestyle that “wasn’t a good one.” He didn’t elaborate.

Police have said Wesson was employed at Fantasyland, though a person who answered the phone at the adult entertainment club declined to comment.

(Emphasis mine)

And from the previous article about the vigil:

Wesson, who lived much of her life as a foster child and reportedly suffered sexual and emotional abuse, was left drifting at times. She told friends she didn’t feel loved in her latest foster home, those friends said.

(Again, emphasis mine)

This doesn’t sound like a sweet, innocent girl who was suddenly struck down by a Criminal without warning.

We saw this same process with Mary Finnegan. Initial reports painted her as a nice woman, quiet, and a good neighbor. But, as the story unfolded, other facts came to the surface, including a four-year consensual sexual relationship with the son that is accused of murdering her.

Again, it’s not exactly like a Criminal struck from the shadows there either.

To be fair, some of these more lurid details are coming from the State Attorney’s office. Government officials have been known to be wrong before, and certainly these allegations have not been proven in open court. But, if Kevin Lyons is even close to the truth, the point remains.

No one deserves to be murdered. In the case of both of these women, their murderers should be tried and, if convicted, executed. That is the proper penalty for one who takes a life.

And yet, I think that it’s important to break the myth of the Evil Criminals, roaming our streets like vampires, attacking random passers-by. Usually, murder victims are killed by people that they knew. In the cases of Wesson and Finnegan, they made themselves vulnerable to attack by the bad choices they made. It wasn’t because they just happened to live in a “bad neighborhood” or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why am I saying this? Seems dangerously close to speaking ill of the dead, doesn’t it?

I’m saying this because many people live in fear of crime while completely missing the underlying causes. So, let’s not sugarcoat the truth in these cases. Instead, let us learn from these horrible acts and do what we can do to prevent them in the future.

And what would that look like?

Here’s one angle. Did you notice that both of these murder cases have parental failure at their core? Oddly enough, it would seem that the Sunday vigil had a good point:

Community leaders called on parents and neighbors Sunday night to reign in, protect and show love to children who, if left alone, risk being lost to crime.

Check this out.

And, really, how often can you say “parking ramp” and “awesome” in the same title?

HT: Rob Donaghue

…you don’t live in University East!

Ha! I kill myself.

Yeah, the power is out in various places across the city, including University East. Quite the storm, eh?