A Dark And Quiet Room

Something that has been suggested for bloggers is to put links to “Best of…” in their sidebars. That way, a new visitor can get a sense of the sort of content available on the blog and returning visitors can easily locate popular articles. If you look to your right (no, the other right), you can see where I’ve started doing this. I currently have four items on this list. My question to you, my faithful readers, is this: are there any other items that you can think of which you think should be added to this list? Please let me know in comments. If I don’t get any comments, then I’ll know that no one is listening.

(For those of you bored with game-related entries, please ride this one out. There is a point at the end. Two, in fact!)

Last night I stayed up way too late and finished my current game of Civilization IV. For those of you who don’t know, Civilization IV is the latest entry in the Civilization series. In it, you take a civilization from founding its first city into the modern era and beyond. The game can be won in a variety of ways, including overall performance, control of a large portion of the available land, simply wiping out everyone else, earning a diplomatic win from the United Nations, building the three greatest cities in the world, or being the first to launch a colony ship to Alpha Centauri. There’s a lot of detail in the game, and I enjoy the changing technologies and time periods. Early in the game, you’re building city walls mustering spearmen and archers to defend against barbarians. Late in the game, you’re launching SDI satellites and running bombing missions with Stealth bombers. Lots of fun.

In the game that I just finished, I was playing the Aztecs. Recently, I bought a board game called Mexica which is about building the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, so I’ve been doing some reading about these people. So, they were on my mind when I started this game.

Now, like any self-respecting Aztec, determined to preserve himself, when I located the Spanish, I killed them as quickly as possible. Then I settled into the raising of a large and prosperous civilization and intimidating everyone else into submission. I figured that I’d aim for a Time Victory, which means that I have the overall best civilization by the year 2050.

Then disaster struck. One of my neighbors across the sea (the Americans, actually) began the project of building the colony ship. I knew that he would complete the project before 2050, costing me the game. So, my course was clear. I declared war on him and launched my attack.

However, this was different than my war on the Spanish. The conquest of the Spanish had been led by hordes of Jaguar Warriors, armed with obsidian-studded clubs. The war against the Americans was spearheaded by a massive nuclear strike.

That’s right. I pushed the Red Button. I will confess that, game or no game, I cringed a bit at the necessity. There was something sobering about the initial strike. Even though the American SDI system shot down most of my missiles, a couple made it through.

Mushroom clouds bloomed over Boston.

It was a little disturbing at first. But soon that changed.

The other surrounding nations also began building colony ships. So I declared war on all of them. At one point, I was at war with three nations at the same time. I needed that edge, if I were to take them on. So, as my tanks crossed the frontier, the missiles again began to rain from the sky.

Soon I had thrown the entire weight of my economy behind producing tanks and ICBMs. Every five turns or so, I had another salvo ready to be launched. Most were shot down by defense lasers, but enough found their mark to deliver their deadly payload.

Other ill effects began to show themselves. The fallout spread across the globe, damaging the earth. Large stretches of desert appeared as the result of my constant nuclear bombardments. But still I persevered.

I presided over my very own World War III.

Finally, one of the other nations built the United Nations and quickly implemented a nuclear ban. I was unable to continue my nuclear assault. But, by then, the damage had been done. By 2050, none of the colony spaceships were ready for launch, and I won. The American homeland was literally glowing in places as we slid across the finish line. Doing a little poking around, I discovered that they would have completed the final component of their spaceship in just three turns. Three more turns and I still would have lost.

It was a nail-biting end to what could have been a fairly mundane endgame.

But that’s not my point in writing all this up.

Instead, I have a couple of thoughts.

First, while I have a hard time asserting that a game is a reasonable historical simulator, I found myself thankful that the Aztec people had not developed their culture into the modern era. The little reading that I have done confirms for me that they were a blood-thirsty and violent people. What if the Aztecs had been equipped with nukes? Is my scenario so far off?

The second point is a little more personal. Even though it is only a game, I had the feeling of crossing a line when I launched my first nuke. I was about to do something irreversible. Something deadly. Something…bad. Indeed, the icon on the screen to launch a missile is a picture of a Big Red Button. I pushed the Red Button.

Anyone who grew up during any part of the Cold War should understand this sort of feeling. I remember living in New Jersey at age six or so, seeing a map of the devastation that would result if a 100-megaton warhead were to be detonated in New York City. My home would have been affected by the blast. It scared me deeply.
So, here I was, starting a nuclear war.

Yet, very quickly, necessity took over. After all, I needed these nukes to win the game. Losing was not an option. So, soon I needed more missiles. More missiles! Easily half of my economic power was dumped into creating these missiles. As soon as one was ready, I launched it. What had started as a horrible act became normal and, indeed, rejoiced over. I was thrilled whenever a missile became available, and I mentally cheered whenever one penetrated the SDI defenses of my foes.

And I realized how quickly we humans become hardened. What was once evil becomes distasteful, then becomes needful, and soon becomes rewarded. Bleak? Perhaps. But very true.

And I wonder how much of our foreign policies are formed in just the same way.

I’ve been reading about the Mayans recently. I figure that I’ll end up blogging about it in the near future, but, in the meantime, check out this virtual tour of Tikal.

The Town of Allopath Does this sound like any place you know?

I don’t feel like I’ve really been blogging much recently. Maybe that’s because I haven’t been. So, now I have some time. I could blog. I could write about Tikal or about how I’ve been reading about Mesoamerica, because of the board games that I recently bought (Tikal and Mexica). I could discuss how I read my first John le Carre book. Or I could go play Civilization IV. See ya round!

Trial By Internet I’ve been appreciating Pastor Wilson’s series entitled “A Justice Primer”, but I thought that this article was particularly apt.

I’m not sure how I should be feeling right now. I feel like maybe I ought to be upset or heavy-hearted. Instead, I’m just tired.

Maybe that’s a coping technique; I don’t know.

I went down to the hospital tonight to see William. I had been there in the morning, and he was moving a bit and was warm to the touch. I was planning on going back down there to read Beowulf to him. William and I had talked a bit about Beowulf; it was one of his favorite stories.

But when I arrived at the hospital, I found that William was doing worse. His skin was pallid and yellow, and he was cool to the touch. It reminded me of touching my mother when she was dead. He wasn’t moving anymore. But still the ventilator continued its hideous mockery of human breathing. Inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate, in, out, in, out. And his chest heaving up and down, like his body was pretending to breathe.

It’s run off me. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

At least, it doesn’t hurt now. At the hospital, I held it together because I wasn’t there for me; I was there for William’s family. And now, honestly, I’m just too tired to feel hurt. The pain doesn’t stab anymore. It just drags at me, like gravity, pulling me down.

Yesterday I cried. Today I am cold.

Am I cold? What does this mean? Have I done something wrong that I am not feeling anything? Or is it just too much, and so I shunt it to the side? Or is it a special grace from God? I don’t know. I’m tired, but I think that I will be able to sleep well. So, perhaps I should. After all, there’s still much to be done. My work isn’t over.

And tomorrow, William may be dead.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I’m in an odd mood. Feel free to share your results in comments.

Anatomy of a Game: Blue Moon For both of you who care, a dissection of the Knizia game Blue Moon, including a discussion of strategy. Did you know that Blue Moon is actually an auction game? (Why yes, Gabrielle, I am looking at you.)

For those who care, we are selling kefir grains on eBay. Buy early and buy often!

(The previous report is here.)

(This account was also posted on The Forge. You might find the responses from the folks there to be interesting.)

Here we go again. We’ve shuffled the player roster a bit, but we’re back in the game. That’s right. We’re playing Polaris again! Indeed I have three sessions to summarize. So, let’s get to it, shall we?

Long ago, the people were dying at the end of the world.

Quotables:

“You’re the one who possessed him in the first place.”

“He’s far too cool to actually draw his sword.”

“Because everyone knows you don’t look into a mirror around possessed people.”

“Perhaps his miraculous healing threw him off.”?

Players

Since we’ve started a new game, I figure that I’d introduce the players again, including our newest member.

Seth: that’s me. I like mythic settings that are more poetic than “real”?. I like stories with tragic endings. I am therefore squarely in the target audience for this game. Last game I played Na’ir al-Saif, a younger Knight stuck in the shadow of his older brother. This time I wanted to play a more extroverted character with more opportunities for action. Oh yeah, and I wanted a dragon.

Gabrielle: my sister. She has similar tastes to mine in roleplaying, which made Polaris a no-brainer for her. Last game she played Mintaka, a brooding, self-absorbed Knight whose jealousy drove him to murder. This time, she wanted to play someone a bit grander, who perhaps wouldn’t be so internally oriented.

Raquel: our friend. Raquel had tried roleplaying with us once before, when I ran Jailbreak from Unknown Armies. That session was mixed success at best; however, her interest in the activity was peaked enough that she had expressed an interest in trying again. Polaris was a much more successful endeavor with her. In our last game, Raquel played Bellatrix, the haughty Knight whose pride brought so much pain to so many. I’m not precisely sure what Raquel was angling for in this game, but I’m guessing from her comments that she was hoping to avoid being the chew-toy for the story. So far, I’m not sure that she’s actually getting her wish.

Ralph: another friend. Yep, this is the Ralph Mazza of Universalis fame. He games with us on Friday nights and had expressed an interest in playing Polaris. Actually, it was closer to groveling; he really wanted to play. He is still getting the hang of the Key Phrases, but I think that he is quite enjoying himself.

We set up the seating arrangement in the following order, going clockwise around the room: Seth, Gabrielle, Ralph, Raquel. So, for those of you keeping score at home, that means that Ralph and I are a Heart/Mistaken pair, as are Raquel and Gabrielle.

Characters

Last game, I think that we may have woven our characters a bit too tightly to each other, which kicked things off into a higher gear than may have been good. This time we created characters that were a bit further from each other, which has created a slower game pace. Ralph also discovered a rule that we had missed last game. During character creation, each player gets to add one item to every other player’s character sheet in the section of the Cosmos for which he is responsible. This means that I added one item to Ralph’s Mistaken section, Raquel’s New Moon section, and Gabrielle’s Full Moon section. This was an addition that I appreciated. In this way, each player could actually put his mark on each character before play actually began. As a result, there was a lot more discussion and cross-pollinating of ideas during character generation, which is always a good thing.

In the end, we produced four characters.

Altair, a reckless dragonrider for the remnant (Seth)
Sadal Melick, Champion of Clan Draco, one of the greatest Knights of the remnant (Gabrielle)
Rastaban, a Knight-assassin determined to avenge his father’s death (Ralph)
Maia of the Order of Mesarthim, a healer-Knight (Raquel)

In other words, we have Tom Cruise from Top Gun, Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove, an elvish ninja, and a fairly well-adjusted, even-keeled Knight. So, of course, we start doing our best to dump all the trouble in the entire game on Raquel. It’s fun!

Overview of Play

I’m not going to go into any particular details about play. Suffice it to say that our first scene involved Maia accidentally getting one of the lords of the remnant possessed by a nasty demon, and things have gone badly since then. In addition, Altair brought a baby back to the remnant, which he found in the haunted ruins that he obsesses over. This child has already revealed herself to be more than an ordinary child. Indeed, she is the Spring Child. What exactly this means, we haven’t established, although we all have our theories.

And, of course, Maia currently has the Spring Child and is about to be at the center of a political firestorm. Fun!

On Being a Moon

In retrospect, I think that we shortchanged the Moons in our last game. Any character that was in opposition to the Heart ended up being guided by the Mistaken, so frequently the Moons were in a secondary or passive role. Upon further review of the rules, though, I realized that we had been messing this up, so we resolved to change it this game.

Hoo boy. What have we released? Bits of the game broke open even further for me.

Here’s one example. The scene was centered on Sadal, which meant that Gabrielle was the Heart, Raquel was the Mistaken, and I was Full Moon. In this scene, Sadal is confronting Knight-Captain Megrez who was supposedly accused of being possessed. We all knew that he was not possessed, as the entire situation was the result of a communications mishap that we had seen earlier in the game. However, it seemed to me that it would be boring for Captain Megrez to simply roll over and submit to an exorcism “just in case”?. So, instead, I started playing him as having an offended pride, eventually calling in several of his Knights to see this miscreant off.

The funny thing about this is that I was heaping on all sorts of trouble, but I was not the Mistaken. According to the logic that we had assumed during our last game, I was “only”? a Moon. But I learned an important fact to consider as a Moon. You want to align your interests with either the Heart or Mistaken in a given scene. In this case, I knew that I was giving Gabrielle all sorts of trouble and that, when she finally tried to veto with “But It Was No Matter”, Raquel would be waiting to take up my statements with “We Shall See What Comes Of It”?.

And she was.

On Getting Started

When we got together for our first session of actual play, we went over our characters so that we could remember them. Then we stared at each other. Someone needed to get things going, but no one had a good idea. So Gabrielle decided to kill someone. That’ll work. So she started a scene where the Demon in the Mirror killed one of Maia’s patients. Well, that wouldn’t do, of course, so instead the death was negotiated to a possession and then the patient turned out to be an important noble and you can’t let possessed nobles just run around, so Maia tried to chase him, but then she was stopped by someone else needing help…. And things were suddenly in motion. The moral of this story: sometimes you just need something to get things moving, and then everything will be fine.

Random Thought

Ralph hates elves. He thinks that elves are silly.

Ralph hates ninja. He thinks that ninja are silly.

Ralph is playing an elvish ninja.

And liking it.

This game rocks.

But that was all long ago, and there are now none who remember it.

Andreas Katsulas dies of lung cancer. He played the One Armed Man in the movie version of The Fugitive and, more importantly, played G’Kar on Babylon 5.

fair flower
blown on Heaven’s breeze
far from my outstretched hand

A couple of years ago, my wife suffered from chronic chest pain. It would strike at different times but especially in the evening. She would be reduced to soaking in a hot tub, trying to get the pain under control. It was hard on her and on the rest of us, too. We ruled out heart trouble fairly quickly, although that seemed like a reasonable idea. We didn’t know quite what to do.

And then Crystal’s birthday rolled around.

I don’t recall exactly what we did for a birthday party, but I do remember what I bought as a present for Crystal. It was a cast-iron tea kettle, complete with cast-iron trivet and infuser. It was a beautiful item, and I knew that Crystal would absolutely love it. So, after the party, Crystal had to run an errand. While she was out of the house, I arranged the tea ceremony that I had planned, brewing tea in the new kettle, getting everything ready. I was right. She loved it. She was so very excited.

And then the pain set in.

In fact, it was the worst that she had ever experienced. The romantic evening was lost beyond recovery. But, there was something about her description of the pain that rang a bell. It was located in her back, not her front. How very odd. A couple of Internet searches, and I had it nailed. Crystal was undergoing a gallbladder attack. We returned to the doctor, and he confirmed the diagnosis. A month later, and Crystal went into the hospital to have her gallbladder removed. She hasn’t experienced any pain since.

At the time, Crystal’s gallbladder attack was a hard providence to accept. But, in retrospect, it was one of the best things that happened to her. Now, we both see it as God’s birthday present to her: a diagnosis of an ailment that was plaguing her for months.

Why do I write all this now?

As I was driving into work this morning, I received word that a co-worker’s daughter had died last night. She was sick, but still no one had expected that this would happen so soon. She was only three years old. Just barely three, in fact. Her birthday was last Friday. The family was going to celebrate her birthday, but she was struggling with respiratory issues, so they postponed the party. Now, they will never celebrate it.

We gathered together at work to pray for this family. I was in tears, as were many of my co-workers. A common prayer was, “Lord, You know why, even though we don’t.” And it’s hard. It’s really hard. Bryan said it best, “Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children.”

And yet, I think back to Crystal’s birthday present from God. It was not a pleasant one, but it was really what she needed. And now we can give thanks to God for it.

This little girl suffered greatly from her sickness. Now she is free. Her spirit is perfected, and her body awaits the Resurrection, when she will receive a new body which will be perfect in every way. Her sorrow is over. Her suffering is over. Her pain is ended. How is this not a beautiful present from God?

I find myself remembering something that I said to my father when my mother died:

When we returned home, I served wine. Everyone gathered in the living room, where I held aloft a goblet of red Fredonia wine and read from Isaiah 25. I explained what we were doing and why. “Mom loved wine,—? I said, “and the next wine that she will drink will be in the wedding feast of the Lamb.”? And then I turned to my father. “For you, this is a cup of bitterness,” I said, “but remember that for your wife, it is a cup of joy. So drink.”? And I gave him the goblet. With tears in his eyes, he drank.

For all of us, most especially her parents, this is a cup of bitterness that we must drink. Yet for this little one, this day is a day of joy. For the first time, she awakens to an endless day of glory. Happy birthday, Hannah. Enjoy your present. We will all be with you soon.

Gone Gaming: Blue Moon Blue Moon has risen quickly in the ranks to become one of my favorite games. So, I was happy to see this excellent description of the game posted. So, geek that I am, I thought that I would share it with all of you.